Donald Rumsfeld, Architect of Warfare in Afghanistan, Is Laid to Relaxation

WASHINGTON — A horse-drawn caisson with a flag-draped coffin handed slowly by the gates of Arlington Nationwide Cemetery on Monday, a hushed tableau towards a metropolis loud with recriminations in regards to the misplaced conflict in Afghanistan.

The cortege carried Donald H. Rumsfeld, the hard-charging, two-time secretary of protection and one of many conflict’s chief architects, whose burial on a sweltering August afternoon served as one other coda to the 20-year battle.

Mr. Rumsfeld died on June 29, at 88, of problems associated to a number of myeloma. The date for his interment and an earlier non-public funeral service on Monday at Fort Myer, Va., had been set lengthy earlier than, however the timing meant that Mr. Rumsfeld was laid to relaxation throughout the identical type of shell shock as on Oct. 7, 2001, when the USA launched its first airstrikes in Afghanistan.

And but, the ceremonies appeared to happen in a contained, parallel universe, sealed off from the strife of Washington. “This was very a lot in regards to the man and his instances, and never any specific challenge of the day,” mentioned Larry Di Rita, a prime deputy to Mr. Rumsfeld on the Pentagon in the course of the George W. Bush administration.

Say what you’ll in regards to the man generally known as “Rummy,” and plenty of have, harshly, for turning away from Afghanistan and waging a conflict in Iraq that left hundreds of Individuals and a whole bunch of hundreds of Iraqis useless and finally wrecked the top of Mr. Rumsfeld’s political life. However at Memorial Chapel at Fort Myers, the eulogists recalled a special man.

“Our capital metropolis has many acquainted varieties,” former Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld’s longtime ally, recalled of his closest good friend, in line with his ready remarks and confirmed by friends on the funeral. “But in all my years round this firm city, I’ve by no means heard anybody described as ‘the Rumsfeld kind.’ There is no such thing as a such factor as a result of nothing about Don was typical or by-product or standard-issue.”

Mr. Cheney additionally introduced up a few of Mr. Rumsfeld’s signature maxims, which Mr. Rumsfeld would generally adapt from acquainted Washington sayings. “Harry Truman supposedly mentioned, ‘If you’d like a good friend in Washington, get a canine,’” Mr. Cheney mentioned. “To this, Don added the Rumsfeld corollary: Get a small canine — he would possibly activate you.”

The phrases “Afghanistan” or “Iraq” have been barely spoken by Mr. Cheney and a procession of different eulogists, amongst them Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees on the outset of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Victoria Clarke, Mr. Rumsfeld’s longtime communications aide on the Pentagon.

Ms. Clarke invoked one in all Mr. Rumsfeld’s favourite sayings, or so-called Rumsfeld Guidelines. “Cemeteries are stuffed with irreplaceable individuals,” Ms. Clarke mentioned earlier than the burial, quoting her former boss, however amending the rule in his honor. “Arlington Nationwide Cemetery will quickly have somebody who is actually irreplaceable.”

Particulars of the funeral and burial have been intently held by the Rumsfeld household and none have been launched publicly after it was over. Company included Protection Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, who knelt earlier than Mr. Rumsfeld’s widow, Joyce, who was in a wheelchair, and offered her with the flag from her husband’s coffin.

Others there have been Consultant Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, Mr. Rumsfeld’s No. 2 on the Pentagon who pushed exhausting for the conflict in Iraq.

“Principally, it was simply lots of people who hadn’t seen one another in a very long time, in some instances since Rumsfeld left the Pentagon,’’ mentioned David Hume Kennerly, the presidential photographer who Mr. Rumsfeld introduced on because the official chronicler of President Gerald R. Ford’s White Home when Mr. Rumsfeld was Mr. Ford’s chief of workers. “And there have been loads of tales being shared.”

The tales surfaced within the eulogies, which have been typically drawn from the within of the Pentagon, the place Mr. Rumsfeld served as protection secretary to Ford within the 1970s and 1 / 4 century later to President George W. Bush.

“There’s 9/11, in fact,” Ms. Clarke recalled, when Mr. Rumsfeld left his workplace to help rescue crews after a hijacked American Airways airplane crashed into the western facet of the Pentagon, killing all 64 individuals aboard the jet and one other 125 inside. “Many people have been within the constructing attempting to determine what had occurred,” Ms. Clarke mentioned. “He’s the one who went and discovered.”

A former Navy pilot, Princeton-educated wrestler and aggressive squash participant into his 80s, Mr. Rumsfeld’s aggressive model was effectively established. “He gave no quarter, and there was typically blood on the finish of the match,” mentioned Mr. Di Rita, a frequent squash opponent of his boss. “If you performed with him, it was principally simply Don Rumsfeld being Don Rumsfeld.”

Ms. Clarke additionally informed the story of seeing Mr. Rumsfeld stroll right down to the Pentagon briefing room and choose up a misshapen paper clip he noticed within the hallway. He spent the assembly twisting and remodeling the lonely paper clip again into preventing form.

“Good as new,” he informed Ms. Clarke, holding up the paper clip as he left the briefing room.

Just a few hours later, a doc was despatched right down to Ms. Clarke’s workplace, held along with that very same paper clip. “Saving the taxpayers’ cash,” Mr. Rumsfeld scrawled on a yellow Put up-it be aware affixed to the restored object.

Mr. Cheney described the tumultuous interval after Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, and Mr. Ford was about to call his personal vice chairman. Mr. Rumsfeld was a finalist for the job, and occurred to be at Mr. Cheney’s dwelling in Bethesda, Md., listening on a kitchen radio as the method culminated.

“We heard information experiences describing the scene on the Rockefeller property,” Mr. Cheney recalled, referring to Mr. Ford’s eventual selection, former New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. There was a fleet of sedans exterior the mansion, Mr. Cheney famous, with household jets primed to fly the Rockefeller entourage to Washington.

“Don laughed on the superior sources Rockefeller delivered to the competitors,” Cheney remembered. “He mentioned to me, ‘Right here’s Nelson Rockefeller with planeloads of individuals flying down from New York, and all I’ve acquired is you, Cheney.’”

Members mentioned the meeting erupted into laughter, led by the chuckling Mr. Cheney himself. It took a couple of seconds for solemnity to be restored. “Till we meet once more, goodbye outdated good friend,” Mr. Cheney mentioned on the shut of his remarks, his voice catching, in line with a visitor, in a uncommon trace of public emotion.

“I had duties and experiences far past something I might have ever identified,” Mr. Cheney mentioned, crediting Mr. Rumsfeld for all of them. “He determined he might belief me and it modified my life.”

Left unsaid, for higher or for worse: It modified historical past, too.