Rumsfeld: W.H. lacks vision for Libya

Donald Rumsfeld says the White House’s lack of a coherent vision for Libya and reliance on an international coalition has muddied attempts to gain support for the mission, and is hurting American efforts in the north African country.

“I’ve always believed that the mission should determine the coalition,” the former Bush and Ford defense secretary told POLITICO on Wednesday, but instead the Obama administration has let the coalition – the group of European countries partnering with the United States in attacking Libya – determine what the mission is. Thus far, that’s meant that there’s no U.S. objective other than establishing a no-fly zone, the measure the United Nations Security Council approved last week.


“You decide what it is you want to do and then you get other countries to assist you in doing that,” he said, “And, in this case, it looks like just the opposite was done, that the coalition is trying to determine the mission and it’s confused. … If peoples’ lives are at risk and you’re using military forces, you need to have a rather clear understanding as to who’s in charge and who’s making the decisions.”

Some members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, as well as potential Republican candidates for president, have expressed similar concerns, wondering whether the U.S. goal is to push Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi out of power or to do something else.

President Barack Obama is returning early from his trip to Latin America in large part to manage the brewing Libyan crisis from domestic soil. He and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have stressed that American forces will give up the lead in coalition efforts within days and have a finite mission in Libya.

Rumsfeld said that uncertainty over the U.S. role in the mission likely made the administration reluctant to set out its goals from the beginning, or to launch an effort to get congressional support. While House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and some others in the president’s own party have said they support the attacks, other Democrats including Sen. Jim Webb, of Virginia, have questioned U.S. involvement. “I really don’t believe that we have an obligation to get involved in every single occurrence in that part of the world,” Webb said earlier this week. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), meanwhile, has called the Obama’s decision to strike without congressional approval an “impeachable” offense.

“When people criticized [Obama] for not going to Congress, criticizing the administration for not going to Congress, going to the United Nations and the Arab League instead, I kind of could understand why he didn’t,” Rumsfeld said. “If you went to Congress and asked for authorization to do something, you’d have to know what it was you wanted to do and you had to have decided before the fact with some precision and some clarity, as to what the mission would be.”

Were he still in his former Pentagon post, Rumsfeld said he would advise the commander-in-chief to weigh the various factors at play in the region.

“When one talks about Libya or Tunisia, you have to also ask yourself this question: What I do there, in Libya or Tunisia, is going to have an effect elsewhere, and if these most important activities are going on in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states … one has to make sure that whatever you do in Libya is done with an awareness that it’s going to have an effect — either a favorable or an unfavorable — effect in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.”

As for whether the administration’s stated mission to protect the Libyan citizens with minimal involvement by the U.S. military, Rumsfeld said “only time will tell” whether such an objective can be achieved.

“If you’re going to put Americans at risk, militarily, it seems to me you have to have clarity in what you’re doing and be willing to do it in full. You have to be willing to do it well and to persevere and accomplish what it was you set out to do. And the reluctance and the ambivalence that we’ve seen reflected, I think, is probably worrisome for the people of the military.”