The designer and architect of the Iraq-Afghanistan wars has died at the age of 88.
The family of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced his death at the age of 88 in a statement on Thursday morning.
Rumsfeld was the son of the Bush administration from 2000 to 2006 during the Iraqi military occupation. He was at the helm of the Pentagon when previous US governments decided to attack and start aggressive wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense at the time of the largest “terrorist” incident in US history, the 9/11 attacks. Subsequently, during the Unexpected Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rumsfeld became one of the most controversial figures in the United States.
Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense for Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George W. Bush, who presided over America’s Cold War strategies in the 1970s and, in the new world of terrorism decades later, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died on Tuesday at his home in Taos, N.M. He was 88.
The cause was multiple myeloma, said Keith Urbahn, a spokesman for the family.
Encores are hardly rare in Washington, but Mr. Rumsfeld had the distinction of being the only defense chief to serve two nonconsecutive terms: 1975 to 1977 under President Ford, and 2001 to 2006 under President Bush. He was also the youngest, at 43, and the oldest, at 74, to hold the post — first in an era of Soviet-American nuclear perils, then in an age of subtler menace by terrorists and rogue states.
A staunch ally of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who had been his protégé and friend for years, Mr. Rumsfeld was a combative infighter who seemed to relish conflicts as he challenged cabinet rivals, members of Congress and military orthodoxies. And he was widely regarded in his second tour as the most powerful defense secretary since Robert S. McNamara during the Vietnam War.
