Lunch With the FT: 52 Classic Interviews (33 page)

Until the final debacle of the Iraq war, Rumsfeld had a reputation as one of the most competent managers in Washington. Elected to Congress when he was still only 29, he served in top jobs under four different presidents – Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush. His two stints as secretary for defence – separated by a quarter of a century – have given him the distinction of being both the youngest and the oldest man ever to serve in the position.

At the Pentagon he was famous for working standing up, and he tells me that this is still his habit. His office houses his archive and the Rumsfeld Foundation, which among other things helps retired troops. I ask him what time he normally gets up and he replies, unsmilingly, ‘I get up at 4.30 or 5 and exercise generally and read the paper in the sauna.’ His way of life seems almost comically spartan. I suggest that perhaps we might order something to eat, and he seems genuinely surprised. ‘You want something to eat?’ A waiter is summoned. I order an avocado and bacon salad. Rumsfeld orders a cup of clam chowder and a glass of lemonade.

Rumsfeld also had a reputation for ferocity at the Pentagon. In his memoirs, he records Paul Bremer – the diplomat charged with the reconstruction of post-war Iraq – as complaining that many of Rumsfeld’s civilian employees were terrified of him. I ask Rumsfeld if he thinks that was true and I get an aw-shucks smile. ‘I’ve never heard anyone else say that, so I don’t give it a lot of credence.’

‘I wonder aloud whether ‘as a leader you have to be a bit intimidating’. But Rumsfeld demurs – ‘Oh no, in fact you don’t want to be. The truth is that I had tough jobs, a lot of them, and I’m comfortable taking tough decisions and I ask tough questions … and that isn’t fun sometimes for people … But I’ve always been open to people coming back.’

Rumsfeld’s book has certainly generated a lot of tough comeback from those who see it as an extended exercise in self-justification and score-settling. Unsurprisingly, Rumsfeld sees things differently. Sipping his lemonade, he says he has written ‘a serious book of history that is rooted in the primary documents that I will have on the website [
www.rumsfeld.com
], and historians and interested readers, serious people, will be able to go in there and make their own judgements’.

When I invite him to discuss the fairly damning remarks in his book about former colleagues, such as Condoleezza Rice, whom he criticizes for avoiding tough choices as head of the National Security Council, Rumsfeld’s instinct seems to be to back off. He tells me that Rice is a ‘smart and able woman, let there be no doubt. A very accomplished person and a good person.’

Some antagonisms, however, are too open to disguise. Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate in the last presidential election, became one of the foremost critics of Rumsfeld’s approach to the Iraq war. He is criticized in the book for having a ‘hair-trigger temper and a propensity to fashion and shift his positions to appeal to the media’. McCain’s reaction to these jibes has been to renew his criticisms of Rumsfeld and to remark: ‘Thank God he was relieved of his duties.’ I quote this back at Rumsfeld, who responds with a chilly smile: ‘That’s fairly typical of him … He was opportunistic. He spent his whole campaign attacking the Bush administration and he was not a good candidate.’ So, had Rumsfeld, the life-long Republican, actually voted for McCain? He frowns: ‘I did. It was not a happy choice.’

The inside-Washington score-settling will strike many of the people horrified by the Iraq war as supremely beside the point. For them, Rumsfeld is a guilty man because he presided over a ‘war of choice’ that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Unlike Robert McNamara, defence secretary during much of the Vietnam war, who was later very open about his regrets, Rumsfeld is unrepentant. In the book and in conversation, he presents the Iraq war as justified and ultimately
successful. ‘Is our country and region better off with Saddam Hussein gone?’ he asks me briskly, before answering his own question. ‘You bet.’

But, I point out, the justification for the war was Iraq’s alleged work on weapons of mass destruction – and the WMD were never found. Let’s say we had known there were no WMD, I ask, would it have still been justified to go to war? Rumsfeld’s response strikes me as oddly circuitous and detached. ‘Apparently. The Congress had passed regime change legislation in the 1990s and it passed overwhelmingly. Now you can’t know what you would do. What you know now helps you in what you do in the future. It can’t help you with what’s been done in the past.’

But was the Iraq war really worth all the pain and suffering it has caused? Rumsfeld’s tone becomes sharper: ‘Have you ever visited one of the killing fields in Iraq where Saddam Hussein killed hundreds of thousands of people and the mass burials and the godawful prisons he had and the rape rooms?’ he asks. ‘I’ve got videos of what they did to their political opponents. They cut their tongues off.’ As for the American troops who died – ‘they had families, they had children and it’s heartbreaking, there’s no question about that … But what they did was they liberated millions of people.’ Like Tony Blair, Rumsfeld is donating the profits from his book to help wounded troops. Unlike Blair, Rumsfeld’s decision to do so has not provoked an angry reaction.

For all his efforts to take the long view and to present himself as a detached elder statesman, Rumsfeld is clearly still infuriated by coverage of the ‘war on terror’ and the events surrounding it. He complains that reports that prison guards in Guantánamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet had caused riots and deaths – but then turned out to be untrue. The press had eventually apologized – ‘If some portion of their story was incorrect, they’re sorry … And, of course, the people they were sorry for were dead. Now everyone makes mistakes and that’s fair, but there’s no penalty for that.’

All this talk of making deadly mistakes and then paying no personal price for it rings a bell. It is, of course, exactly what infuriates some people about the sight of an elderly former defence secretary eating a comfortable Sunday lunch in a Washington hotel while the killing continues in Iraq and Afghanistan. As politely as I can, I say: ‘Some would say, “Here’s Rumsfeld, maybe he was wrong about the Iraq war.” What’s the comeback for you?’

Rumsfeld’s tone remains even. The only faint sign of agitation as he replies is the furling, unfurling and scrunching of a napkin with his left hand. ‘Well, I mean, there are plenty of people commenting on that about Afghanistan or Iraq or transformation, anything you do … That’s quite a different thing than what I’m talking about.’

Throughout his career, Rumsfeld has consistently been a man who cares above all about protecting and extending American power. So I wonder if he has any regrets on that score. Does he think that Iraq and Afghanistan have left the US looking stronger or in some senses have they weakened America because the wars went on for so long? I am expecting another brisk dismissal. Instead, there is a long pause and Rumsfeld simply replies: ‘Time will tell.’

My salad is long gone, so I suggest that perhaps we might have a coffee. I order a double espresso. Rumsfeld smiles at this indulgence and says: ‘I don’t need caffeine.’ He has a decaf.

As we get ready to part, we resort to the standard topic for male banter – sport. The Super Bowl – the most important game of the American football season – is being played that night, and Rumsfeld asks if I will be supporting the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Green Bay Packers. I say I like the Steelers, because I have memories of watching them play some epic games against the Oakland Raiders, in my first visits to the United States in the 1970s. ‘Oh nobody could support the Raiders,’ he says, ‘they’re evil.’ At this the retired boss of the Pentagon laughs heartily, and strolls back to his office and his archive of documents.

11 MARCH 2011

Over ‘sundowners’ at his Harare home the prime minister of Zimbabwe talks about what working with a former enemy is really like

By Alec Russell

One moment all we can hear are the cicadas, the next the quiet Harare evening is broken by the sound of a rapidly accelerating engine. The security guard outside the Zimbabwean prime minister’s residence turns quickly as a car appears at the end of the road. He peers through the gloaming and speaks urgently into his phone. Then he relaxes. It is the prime minister’s spokesman, Luke. Paranoia? Probably. Then again, where else in the world can you arrive, having flown thousands of miles to speak to a prime minister, and yet be advised by government insiders that it may be best not to tell police or immigration the reason for your visit?

Luke is wiry, besuited and angry. He has spent much of the day in court, where dozens of activists were facing treason charges for having watched video footage of the Egyptian democracy protests. In Zimbabwe this is a capital offence. The activists’ lawyer says they have been badly beaten in prison. It seems clear that if there is one person who definitely won’t be popping round to join Luke’s boss, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, and me tonight, it is his partner in government since 2009, that veteran African autocrat, President Robert Mugabe.

I wait in his garden, relishing the cool air after an afternoon rainstorm. In a continent where political power all too often leads to Croesan wealth, Tsvangirai’s home in Strathaven, one of Harare’s northern suburbs, has a modest feel – though I later learn he is having a big new house renovated in another part of the city. A colonial-style bungalow,
it is one of thousands of unassuming family homes favoured by mid-level civil servants in the days of white-run Rhodesia. Only a dilapidated sentry post inside the gate signifies the occupant’s status. Clearly neither the Irish street names nor the road surfaces have been changed since independence in 1980.

I have come to see Tsvangirai over ‘sundowners’, that ritual of the African safari: the serving of drinks at the close of the day. My ambition of dinner at Meikles, the gloomy old colonial hotel in the centre of town, or maybe the Harare Club, has had to die. Dinner was at the last minute impossible in these frenetic times. It is not just that after two years of a relative truce between Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, whose ruinous three decades in power had devastated the economy, and Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, Mugabe’s thugs are intimidating voters again ahead of a possible mid-year snap election. Tsvangirai, a dogged battler through a decade in opposition, is facing increasing questions in the press, and not just the pro-Mugabe state media, about his private life – and, from some in his own party, suggestions that he is not up to the job of prime minister.

One of the prime minister’s younger brothers emerges from the tin-roofed outhouse that is his private office. ‘He is bearing up,’ he says. ‘But he needs support, spiritual and moral as well as political.’

When I first visited Tsvangirai’s home three years ago, it was at an electrifying time, just days before the 2008 elections. As leader of the MDC opposition, the bluff ex-union leader seemed to have Mugabe on the run. We ate a snatched lunch of sandwiches on the campaign trail – which was probably all to the good, as if we had opted for a formal Lunch with the
FT
I would have needed a satchel of banknotes. Those were the days of 100,000 per cent inflation and billion-dollar notes, when the price of drinks could and did change between courses.

It is a sign of the times that you no longer need your calculators to go for lunch in Harare. Just over two years ago, shortly before the coalition government was sworn into office as part of a regional deal to end months of impasse, the Zimbabwe dollar was abolished in favour of the greenback. To the delight of business, the world’s second-worst recorded hyperinflation in a century is over. (The worst, according to Steve Hanke at the Cato Institute, was Hungary in July 1946, not Weimar Germany.)
After a decade of freefall, the economy is at last growing. And yet Zimbabwe is far from out of the abyss.

As I settle back in Tsvangirai’s office, my eye is caught by an old 2008 election poster leaning against the wall. It shows him smiling, relaxed, exuding vigour and fire. We begin by reminiscing about a barnstorming trip together to a Zanu-PF heartland when we met a rapturous welcome in a hitherto no-go zone for the MDC. He relaxes into his seat. On the table in front of him are an iPad and a copy of Tony Blair’s recent memoir,
A Journey
. We share our experiences as Apple newcomers and trade impressions on the lessons of the former British prime minister. ‘Politics is the same the world over,’ Tsvangirai chuckles. Blair’s relationship with Gordon Brown, his Chancellor of the Exchequer and successor as premier, was indeed poisonous. But they were as blood brothers when compared to Zimbabwe’s president and PM.