Rumsfeld: Congress Should Be Like Corporate Board of Directors

SEC. RUMSFELD: The reports thus far indicate that the level of violence has been low, and I think that we have every prospect of seeing a highly successful election in Iraq, a country that wrote its own constitution, went out and risked violence when they voted to ratify that constitution in a referendum, and today went out and voted to elect an assembly under that new constitution that they wrote and that they ratified. And that is just an historic accomplishment,….

… The election today in Iraq is something that the American people, I am sure, understand the importance of. …[it] is not only important to those Iraqis, it's important to the people in the region. It would be the first real democracy in the Arab world. And I think the back-side of it is also important. This election constitutes a defeat for the enemies of the Iraqi people, the enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government. It constitutes a defeat to the people who have been doing the beheadings and conducting the suicide raids and threatening people and assassinating people who were bold enough to go out and run for public office, or to go out and vote, or to serve.

… There seem to be growing divisions among the enemies.

… Despite these tangible measures of progress, some here at home still say we should withdraw from Iraq , before the Iraqis are ready to defend their own country. The truth is that that would not save American lives. Indeed, it would likely put many more American lives at risk. And let there be no doubt about that.

… every single person in uniform in this country is a volunteer. They weren't conscripted. They weren't forced. You weren't drafted. Every single person said, “Send me.”

...GEN CASEY: … the Iraqi people are having a great day today. It's the third national poll that they've had this year. …We expect the violence to be at or below the October level.

…SEC. RUMSFELD: …I just saw some information that said like -- the approval of the American forces in Afghanistan is something like 80 percent. They are welcomed. …The approval of the foreign forces is low, and not high. And fair enough. Most countries don't want an occupying power in their country. ...[Al-Jazeera and others] say it's a war against Muslims; and there isn't a person in this room who doesn't know that that's not true. They say it's to get their oil; and that's utter nonsense.

…we have to overcome the kinds of misinformation that is just drummed into the heads of those people in that part of that world. I mean, I think if the person asking this question, the captain, and all of you or I lived over there and saw what was said about our country every single day, we'd begin to believe it too. It's hard not to if you hear all that stuff and the lies that get perpetrated and the allegations that get made, unsubstantiated. So I think it's something that over time will solve itself because eventually the truth prevails. The truth comes around and people find that they are misled and that they're lied to and that the things that they were told about our wanting to stay there and take over the country and just in there to take their oil -- that oil belongs to the Iraqi people, and that's where it ought to belong.

…in the private sector, you have a board of directors of 10 or 12 people, and here you've got the Congress, which is 535, and they all have different views and different perspectives. And I was a congressman, and it's a wonderful thing to be the human link between your constituency and the federal government of the United States . And you feel that obligation, and you have an obligation to represent those people. But it's a quite different thing from a board of directors in a company. In a company, you can decide what you think you want to do, go do it, put it in place, see what happens in the marketplace, discover it wasn't perfect, change it, adjust it, calibrate it, and then go in that direction, and leave it there long enough to see if it works.

In the public sector, you can meet with your people, decide what you think you want to do, it leaks out -- (laughter) -- there are public hearings -- public hearings held on why it's such a lousy idea because, you know, if you're going to do something, somebody's not going to like it. And if you don't do anything, you don't have that problem. On the other hand, it wouldn't be a very satisfying life if you didn't do anything. So what do you is you decide what you think you want to do. We meet -- General Pace and I meet in -- so long with meetings with wonderful people, work things out, and the next thing you know it's in the paper. And it's a totally different thing in the paper, and then, you're suddenly defending against something you never even thought about doing. And you end up with hearings and discussions and debates and letters and complaints and speeches, and so you waste an enormous amount of time on things that are not important in the public sector.

Now, you can say, "Well, they are important because they're part of the public dialogue on these issues, and these issues are important."

… I don't believe in [nation building]. I don't think it's possible. I think people of a nation build their own nation. And you can't go into another nation and build it. And the concept is a misunderstanding, I think, of human nature. What we can do as a country, and what other countries can do and what international organizations can do is to contribute to an environment where the people of that country can build their country. But it's their country, and they're the ones that are going to have to defend it, in the case of Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world, ultimately. They're the ones who are going to have to rebuild it and pay for the penalty of -- goodness -- decades of Saddam Hussein underfunding his infrastructure. They're the ones who are going to have to fashion the political system that fits them, not us. We can't go in and say here's the political system that -- a cookie mold, the template we're going to plop down on another set of people who have a different history, a different culture, a different background.

So I think we ought to try to avoid the nation-building concept, and we ought to think of it as creating an environment that is hospitable for those people to be able to build their own nation and to fashion it in a way that fits them. That's what's going on in Afghanistan. That's what's going on in Iraq , not withstanding the way it's characterized in the press.

… I'm kind of a free enterprise- type, and I think that a college ought to be able to do anything they want [on the issue of military recruiting on campuses]. And then they ought to pay the penalty for it.

Secretary Rumsfeld Town Hall Meeting with Gen. Peter Pace. Pentagon, 12/15/05.