What Are Neuhaus, Weigel, Novak, et al. Saying at this Point in the Iraq War? Does Anyone Know?

[Phillip Carter, the author whose piece is referenced below, is an attorney and former Army officer, writes on legal and military affairs. He recently returned from a year advising the Iraqi police in Baqubah with the Army's 101st Airborne Division.  What follows is from the Opinionator, New York Times online:]

[A]t Slate, Iraq war veteran Philip Carter details the impact of Rumsfeld’s disastrous tenure on Iraq and the larger the war on terror. “Rumsfeld’s failures transformed the Iraq war from a difficult enterprise into an unwinnable one,” Carter writes. “Make no mistake: These were not tactical failures, made by subordinate military officers. Rather, these were strategic errors of epic proportions that no amount of good soldiering could undo. Blame for these strategic missteps lies properly with the secretary of defense and his senior generals, and, ultimately, with the White House.”

Perhaps most important, Carter says that after Sept. 11, 2001, “The Rumsfeld Pentagon failed to articulate a successful strategic vision for the war.” Carter continues:

Consequently, America’s wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and East Africa since Sept. 11 have lacked strategic coherence. There is no sense that the sum of these small victories would equal a larger victory over al-Qaida [sic] or terrorism generally.

Indeed, Rumsfeld’s dominance of the cabinet and the Bush administration may have guaranteed that America chose the entirely wrong paradigm for the past five years. Notwithstanding the spectacular violence of the Sept. 11 attacks, America might have done better had it not chosen a war paradigm to fight terrorism and instead chosen to employ a comprehensive array of diplomatic, intelligence, military, and law enforcement approaches.

Andrew Sullivan, unsurprisingly, puts things more bluntly:

Rumsfeld has blood on his hands — American and Iraqi blood. He also directly ordered and personally monitored the torture of military detainees. He secured legal impunity for his own war crimes, but that doesn’t mean the Congress shouldn’t investigate more fully what he authorized. He remains one of the most incompetent defense secretaries in history (McNamara looks good in comparison). But he is also a war criminal: a torturer who broke the laws of this country. The catastrophe in Iraq will stain him for ever. His record of torture has indelibly stained the United States.