To the victors the glory the men who took the risks deserve the credit Risks there were

To the victors, the glory; the men who took the risks deserve the credit Risks there were. The world’s staff colleges will be discussing the Iraq war for decades to come and the sheer temerariousness of the American strategy will remain controversial. To go in so light, with such long lines of communication and no reserves – it was one of the bolder successes in modern military history.Early on, it was by no means clear that this boldness would be rewarded. Back then, there was a great deal of scarcely concealed anxiety among those in charge of the war, on both sides of the Atlantic. In those initial days, if you had listened to the whispers around Whitehall and the Pentagon, you might have heard the dread word “reinforcements”. It was not clear how quickly the Americans could have got additional troops to the front – or where on earth the British could have found some. So there was a nightmare: American troops marking time on the Euphrates, awaiting the extra armour that should have been there in the first place, while Saddam built up his defences in Baghdad.At the highest level of Anglo-American command, there were probably only two men who were immune from these fears: George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.

They have earned plaudits, although only one of them is likely to receive many. Don Rumsfeld is not the sort of character who attracts plaudits. A rough fellow who revels in his roughness, he reminds one of Sir Ian McGregor, the hero of the mid-Eighties miners’ strike.Largely without social graces, Sir Ian would have dismissed them as an irrelevance to the main task: winning Nor was he any good at “In victory, magnanimity”. He was more interested in keeping his boot on his defeated adversaries’ windpipe.

So once the battle was over, he became something of an embarrassment. The same may rapidly apply to Donald Rumsfeld; not that he would care. He deserves an A for almost all attributes, and if he could only have scraped a B double minus for schmoozing, he might have become president. But he failed the schmoozing paper as he has always failed any test involving sensitivity in employee relations. He will still go down in history as a great American who did his duty in difficult times.Not that many Europeans would subscribe to such a view. Even in Britain, Donald Rumsfeld is meat too strong for most people. On the Continent, they’re using his name to frighten naughty children.