Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has made mistakes, just as anyone who has ever done anything has made mistakes. That isn’t the questions. The question before us is this: what did Donald Rumsfeld ever do to create the current firestorm? The answer, insofar as I can tell, is this: pretty much nothing.

Forgetting the present mini-controversies about up-armouring Humvees and the use of the autopen to sign condolence letters, what are the charges against Rumsfeld? There appear to be two major lines of attack against the Secretary, one from the right and one from the left.

The first, ostensibly from the right (but often echoed from the left) is that he should be held at fault for the fact that there are “too few” troops in Iraq. This is an often-repeated but little thought upon notion.

Think about it for a moment: what would “more troops” do, were they to actually be deployed to Iraq, except serve as additional targets for the insurgents? Really think about it. What would these additional troops be doing? The answer seems to be “patrol.” Patrol what? The streets? The roads?

More troops would be called for if we were fighting a conventional army. But we’re not: we’re actually fighting no more than a handful of insurgents who kill, in essence, with purposeful randomness. “More troops” might be called for if US forces were engaging another army and being defeated. But they aren’t. The overwhelming majority of US casualties are the result of acts of terrorism being carried out by a relatively small band of people.

Think back to October of 2002 when the DC Snipers were wandering around. They managed to kill ten people in twenty-three days before they were caught, almost entirely by accident. That was two people, with one rifle and beat-up old Chevy Caprice. Imagine how many people they might have killed if they had access to everything that Saddam left lying around the country.

What Coalition forces in Iraq are facing isn’t an “army” but a number of people operating it the same fashion that Muhammad and Malvo did: wandering about looking for targets of opportunity. Given the present casualty level, I’d say that the number of active Iraqi insurgents (those killing, as opposed to those attending meetings and pledging their willingness to die for Allah before going home to enjoy Whisky and pornography) is probably a number in the hundreds. A few thousand, at the most, might be added to those numbers if we count those willing to act as members of ad hoc local militias into those numbers.

This means, in essence, that the potential benefit of adding additional troops to the mix would be outweighed by the increased causalities. You can’t just throw whole Army Divisions against the insurgents (except in exceptional cases like Fallujah or the Sadr-inspired uprisings where things have spun out of control). To track down most of these insurgents you need first-rate local intelligence derived from the cooperation of the local population. US forces aren’t ever going to truly get that. To truly run the “mad killer” insurgents to ground, Iraqi forces are going to have to do the work.

So what, then, would these additional troops do? They’d really do nothing, other than provide dozens of new mess tents for the “mad killer” terrorists to lob rockets or mortar shells into. You’d sustain hundreds of additional losses in exchange for a minimal benefit.

The present number of US troops is adequate to perform the essential functions which the United States is called upon to undertake: securing key sites, supporting the new government, preventing overt foreign intervention, attacking Jihadists, and standing at the ready against any attempt at the launch of a more general insurgency. Troops beyond the present level promise nothing more than diminishing returns.

People angry about the troop levels in Iraq are suffering from a failure of imagination. A lot of the people talking seem to think that additional forces could just storm the “bases” the insurgents are using and things would be over with. Far from it. In order to do that you’d have to storm every single house in Iraq at the exact same time. And you’d have to burn down every other potential hiding place while you’re at it.

Carthaginian strategies are wonderful against an enemy you wish to destroy, but foolish against a population you wish to lead to liberty.

All additional troops will do is force the US to assume security roles that should be taken by Iraqi forces as soon as possible. All flooding the country with another 100,000 troops would do is delay the date of Iraq’s political and military self-sufficiency. More troops, ultimately, would mean nothing more than more dead.

The second attack against Rumsfeld is part of the developing effort to point US actions against prisoners as a Nazi-like war crime. This is occurring, of course, mostly from the left but, as in the first attack, the assault is being joined from the right as well. In the case of the right, it’s being supported by alleged conservatives who are smart enough to support the war, but not quite smart enough to accept that strong measures are needed to fight it.

I think, though, that all of this will pass soon enough. When Iraq, about a month from now, holds its first free elections the scale of our achievement there will be undeniable. Better still, it seems likely that the next month will be the high-point of the insurgency in Iraq. As democracy takes root in that nation and free political processes run their course, the government will gain the courage and the political support to take on the killer terrorists who provide the insurgency with its punch.

Rumsfeld may be being beat up upon now, but history will vindicate him.