My point about nation-building goes far beyond the issue of Iraq.
Bush’s embrace of it – with Rumsfeld’s quiet acquiescence – re-fashioned U.S. armed forces for the worse. Most important, through the workings of domestic political partisanship, it converted a previously sensible sector of America’s body politic to a dumb approach to the problems of peace and war.
That is what Rumsfeld should have apologized for.