Perhaps because the king is untouchable, any disapproval of the royal couple has been targeted at Rania.
As we move on to the second course, I glance at her khaki handbag and ask how she feels when she is called the ‘handbag’ queen in the fancy salons of Amman, the Jordanian capital.
‘Of course I shop, every woman shops, and everything in my wardrobe I bought because I need to be involved in every aspect of my life,’ she says. ‘Labels will come and go, but the most important thing is not to feel victimized. It just comes with the territory.’
It is easy to be a popular leader, she says. ‘But those who follow public opinion all the time sometimes make the weakest leaders.’
Is this not a time when the monarchy in Jordan might want to make an effort to win popular approval for the sake of stability? Since the Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip erupted last year, neighbouring Jordan has faced concerns of a spillover.
Most of the kingdom’s population is of Palestinian origin and it complains of discrimination in politics and public service. Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel – never favoured by the local population – has become increasingly difficult to defend.
The government has appeared to raise tensions through a ban on anti-Israeli demonstrations and a brief decision last month to restrict access to Palestinians from the occupied territories.
‘People have the right to express themselves but we’ve had enough demonstrations. The trouble with them is that they’re not peaceful and they turn into non-productive situations,’ says Rania, toeing the official line. ‘And if you’re in the UK and you see demonstrations in Jordan, the tourists won’t go.’
Jordan, she says, can only help the Palestinians in the territories if it is strong and stable.
While Rania’s Palestinian origins were once thought an asset to the king, they have become controversial. During a soccer match last year, supporters of the Jordanian team called on the king to take a Jordanian wife.
Rania is unperturbed when the subject is brought up. ‘When I came, people started saying that I’ll bring the two people together, but I think the fact that I’m married to the king means that the two people are already together.
‘Now we have an uprising and people are using me as a symbol of what’s going on. There will always be some people who will say I’m not Palestinian enough and others who will say I’m not Jordanian enough, no matter what I do.’
As a chocolate cake with caramel ice-cream is placed before her – chocolate is ‘one of my major vices’ – we talk about Tulkarm, the West Bank town her family comes from and where her grandmothers now live under Israeli economic blockades.
She has not been there recently.
An aide approaches to remind her she is due at another appointment. Half the cake is left on the plate when she rises to leave.
That evening, she was to attend the dinner of the Osteoporosis Foundation of which she is the international patron. I learn later that it was the event where the Prince of Wales publicly kissed Camilla Parker Bowles for the first time. I am kissed, too – as she leaves, the queen places three kisses on my cheeks, as is the Arab tradition, and says she hopes we will keep in touch.
11 FEBRUARY 2011
Donald Rumsfeld
‘Are we better off now? You bet’
Intimidating? Mistaken? Repentant? Not me, says the controversial former US defense secretary over an austere lunch that takes in Saddam, score-settling and the Super Bowl
By Gideon Rachman
On a silent Sunday afternoon in Washington DC, I am sitting at a table in the restaurant of the Mayflower Hotel, waiting to be joined by one of the most controversial men in recent American history. Donald Rumsfeld was defence secretary for George W. Bush and, along with the president himself, became the public face of the invasion of Iraq. He left office at the end of 2006, three years into the conflict, reviled both by opponents of the war and by many of its most ardent backers.
For the anti-war movement, Rumsfeld had become the face of a cruel and misconceived conflict. He was the man whose reaction to looting in Baghdad – ‘stuff happens’ – was regarded as the epitome of a callous disregard for the consequences of the invasion. But for many of the war’s strongest advocates, Rumsfeld had become the scapegoat for everything that had gone wrong in the early years of the war. He was accused of pig-headedly refusing to send enough troops to fight the conflict and of neglecting the vital task of nation-building in Iraq.
Now, four years after his resignation, Rumsfeld is publishing his own account of events, entitled Known and Unknown. The Café Promenade, where we are meeting, is situated in the Mayflower, one of Washington’s grandest hotels. This is no ordinary hotel café – it has marble pillars, thick carpets and a huge chandelier. At 12.30, there are just three other diners in a room that could easily seat a hundred.
Rumsfeld arrives bang on time and greets me with a disconcertingly warm smile. He is dressed formally in a grey suit, pale blue shirt and striped tie. He sits down and swiftly asks me a question: ‘Have you read the book? What was your reaction?’
I say that I have read most of the book on the flight over from London and that I had enjoyed it – particularly the early chapters about his life growing up in suburban Chicago and his memories of selling newspapers, carrying the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Rumsfeld laughs with apparent pleasure – and points out that, at the age of 78, he has been alive for a third of the entire history of the United States. ‘You multiply my age three times and it takes you back to 1776 … Isn’t it amazing. It’s a third of American history.’ For 54 of those years he has been married to his wife Joyce and the couple have three children.
Until the final debacle of the Iraq war, Rumsfeld had a reputation as one of the most competent managers in Washington. Elected to Congress when he was still only 29, he served in top jobs under four different presidents – Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush. His two stints as secretary for defence – separated by a quarter of a century – have given him the distinction of being both the youngest and the oldest man ever to serve in the position.
At the Pentagon he was famous for working standing up, and he tells me that this is still his habit. His office houses his archive and the Rumsfeld Foundation, which among other things helps retired troops. I ask him what time he normally gets up and he replies, unsmilingly, ‘I get up at 4.30 or 5 and exercise generally and read the paper in the sauna.’ His way of life seems almost comically spartan. I suggest that perhaps we might order something to eat, and he seems genuinely surprised. ‘You want something to eat?’ A waiter is summoned. I order an avocado and bacon salad. Rumsfeld orders a cup of clam chowder and a glass of lemonade.
Rumsfeld also had a reputation for ferocity at the Pentagon. In his memoirs, he records Paul Bremer – the diplomat charged with the reconstruction of post-war Iraq – as complaining that many of Rumsfeld’s civilian employees were terrified of him. I ask Rumsfeld if he thinks that was true and I get an aw-shucks smile. ‘I’ve never heard anyone else say that, so I don’t give it a lot of credence.’
‘I wonder aloud whether ‘as a leader you have to be a bit intimidating’. But Rumsfeld demurs – ‘Oh no, in fact you don’t want to be. The truth is that I had tough jobs, a lot of them, and I’m comfortable taking tough decisions and I ask tough questions … and that isn’t fun sometimes for people … But I’ve always been open to people coming back.’
Rumsfeld’s book has certainly generated a lot of tough comeback from those who see it as an extended exercise in self-justification and score-settling. Unsurprisingly, Rumsfeld sees things differently. Sipping his lemonade, he says he has written ‘a serious book of history that is rooted in the primary documents that I will have on the website [www.rumsfeld.com], and historians and interested readers, serious people, will be able to go in there and make their own judgements’.
When I invite him to discuss the fairly damning remarks in his book ab
out former colleagues, such as Condoleezza Rice, whom he criticizes for avoiding tough choices as head of the National Security Council, Rumsfeld’s instinct seems to be to back off. He tells me that Rice is a ‘smart and able woman, let there be no doubt. A very accomplished person and a good person.’
Some antagonisms, however, are too open to disguise. Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate in the last presidential election, became one of the foremost critics of Rumsfeld’s approach to the Iraq war. He is criticized in the book for having a ‘hair-trigger temper and a propensity to fashion and shift his positions to appeal to the media’. McCain’s reaction to these jibes has been to renew his criticisms of Rumsfeld and to remark: ‘Thank God he was relieved of his duties.’ I quote this back at Rumsfeld, who responds with a chilly smile: ‘That’s fairly typical of him … He was opportunistic. He spent his whole campaign attacking the Bush administration and he was not a good candidate.’ So, had Rumsfeld, the life-long Republican, actually voted for McCain? He frowns: ‘I did. It was not a happy choice.’
The inside-Washington score-settling will strike many of the people horrified by the Iraq war as supremely beside the point. For them, Rumsfeld is a guilty man because he presided over a ‘war of choice’ that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Unlike Robert McNamara, defence secretary during much of the Vietnam war, who was later very open about his regrets, Rumsfeld is unrepentant. In the book and in conversation, he presents the Iraq war as justified and ultimately successful. ‘Is our country and region better off with Saddam Hussein gone?’ he asks me briskly, before answering his own question. ‘You bet.’
But, I point out, the justification for the war was Iraq’s alleged work on weapons of mass destruction – and the WMD were never found. Let’s say we had known there were no WMD, I ask, would it have still been justified to go to war? Rumsfeld’s response strikes me as oddly circuitous and detached. ‘Apparently. The Congress had passed regime change legislation in the 1990s and it passed overwhelmingly. Now you can’t know what you would do. What you know now helps you in what you do in the future. It can’t help you with what’s been done in the past.’
But was the Iraq war really worth all the pain and suffering it has caused? Rumsfeld’s tone becomes sharper: ‘Have you ever visited one of the killing fields in Iraq where Saddam Hussein killed hundreds of thousands of people and the mass burials and the godawful prisons he had and the rape rooms?’ he asks. ‘I’ve got videos of what they did to their political opponents. They cut their tongues off.’ As for the American troops who died – ‘they had families, they had children and it’s heartbreaking, there’s no question about that … But what they did was they liberated millions of people.’ Like Tony Blair, Rumsfeld is donating the profits from his book to help wounded troops. Unlike Blair, Rumsfeld’s decision to do so has not provoked an angry reaction.
For all his efforts to take the long view and to present himself as a detached elder statesman, Rumsfeld is clearly still infuriated by coverage of the ‘war on terror’ and the events surrounding it. He complains that reports that prison guards in Guantánamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet had caused riots and deaths – but then turned out to be untrue. The press had eventually apologized – ‘If some portion of their story was incorrect, they’re sorry … And, of course, the people they were sorry for were dead. Now everyone makes mistakes and that’s fair, but there’s no penalty for that.’
All this talk of making deadly mistakes and then paying no personal price for it rings a bell. It is, of course, exactly what infuriates some people about the sight of an elderly former defence secretary eating a comfortable Sunday lunch in a Washington hotel while the killing continues in Iraq and Afghanistan. As politely as I can, I say: ‘Some would say, “Here’s Rumsfeld, maybe he was wrong about the Iraq war.” What’s the comeback for you?’
Rumsfeld’s tone remains even. The only faint sign of agitation as he replies is the furling, unfurling and scrunching of a napkin with his left hand. ‘Well, I mean, there are plenty of people commenting on that about Afghanistan or Iraq or transformation, anything you do … That’s quite a different thing than what I’m talking about.’
Throughout his career, Rumsfeld has consistently been a man who cares above all about protecting and extending American power. So I wonder if he has any regrets on that score. Does he think that Iraq and Afghanistan have left the US looking stronger or in some senses have they weakened America because the wars went on for so long? I am expecting another brisk dismissal. Instead, there is a long pause and Rumsfeld simply replies: ‘Time will tell.’
My salad is long gone, so I suggest that perhaps we might have a coffee. I order a double espresso. Rumsfeld smiles at this indulgence and says: ‘I don’t need caffeine.’ He has a decaf.
As we get ready to part, we resort to the standard topic for male banter – sport. The Super Bowl – the most important game of the American football season – is being played that night, and Rumsfeld asks if I will be supporting the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Green Bay Packers. I say I like the Steelers, because I have memories of watching them play some epic games against the Oakland Raiders, in my first visits to the United States in the 1970s. ‘Oh nobody could support the Raiders,’ he says, ‘they’re evil.’ At this the retired boss of the Pentagon laughs heartily, and strolls back to his office and his archive of documents.
CAFÉ PROMENADE
Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
* * *
cobb salad $18
clam chowder $9
lemonade $4.50
iced water
double espresso $7
decaffeinated coffee $4.50
* * *
Total (excl. service) $43
* * *
11 MARCH 2011
Morgan Tsvangirai
‘Mugabe is very humane’
Over ‘sundowners’ at his Harare home the prime minister of Zimbabwe talks about what working with a former enemy is really like
By Alec Russell
One moment all we can hear are the cicadas, the next the quiet Harare evening is broken by the sound of a rapidly accelerating engine. The security guard outside the Zimbabwean prime minister’s residence turns quickly as a car appears at the end of the road. He peers through the gloaming and speaks urgently into his phone. Then he relaxes. It is the prime minister’s spokesman, Luke. Paranoia? Probably. Then again, where else in the world can you arrive, having flown thousands of miles to speak to a prime minister, and yet be advised by government insiders that it may be best not to tell police or immigration the reason for your visit?
Luke is wiry, besuited and angry. He has spent much of the day in court, where dozens of activists were facing treason charges for having watched video footage of the Egyptian democracy protests. In Zimbabwe this is a capital offence. The activists’ lawyer says they have been badly beaten in prison. It seems clear that if there is one person who definitely won’t be popping round to join Luke’s boss, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, and me tonight, it is his partner in government since 2009, that veteran African autocrat, President Robert Mugabe.
I wait in his garden, relishing the cool air after an afternoon rainstorm. In a continent where political power all too often leads to Croesan wealth, Tsvangirai’s home in Strathaven, one of Harare’s northern suburbs, has a modest feel – though I later learn he is having a big new house renovated in another part of the city. A colonial-style bungalow, it is one of thousands of unassuming family homes favoured by mid-level civil servants in the days of white-run Rhodesia. Only a dilapidated sentry post inside the gate signifies the occupant’s status. Clearly neither the Irish street names nor the road surfaces have been changed since independence in 1980.
I have come to see Tsvangirai over ‘sundowners’, that ritual of the African safari: the serving of drinks at the close of the day. My ambition of dinner at Meikles, the gloomy old colonial hotel in the centre of town, or maybe the
Harare Club, has had to die. Dinner was at the last minute impossible in these frenetic times. It is not just that after two years of a relative truce between Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, whose ruinous three decades in power had devastated the economy, and Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, Mugabe’s thugs are intimidating voters again ahead of a possible mid-year snap election. Tsvangirai, a dogged battler through a decade in opposition, is facing increasing questions in the press, and not just the pro-Mugabe state media, about his private life – and, from some in his own party, suggestions that he is not up to the job of prime minister.
One of the prime minister’s younger brothers emerges from the tin-roofed outhouse that is his private office. ‘He is bearing up,’ he says. ‘But he needs support, spiritual and moral as well as political.’
When I first visited Tsvangirai’s home three years ago, it was at an electrifying time, just days before the 2008 elections. As leader of the MDC opposition, the bluff ex-union leader seemed to have Mugabe on the run. We ate a snatched lunch of sandwiches on the campaign trail – which was probably all to the good, as if we had opted for a formal Lunch with the FT I would have needed a satchel of banknotes. Those were the days of 100,000 per cent inflation and billion-dollar notes, when the price of drinks could and did change between courses.
It is a sign of the times that you no longer need your calculators to go for lunch in Harare. Just over two years ago, shortly before the coalition government was sworn into office as part of a regional deal to end months of impasse, the Zimbabwe dollar was abolished in favour of the greenback. To the delight of business, the world’s second-worst recorded hyperinflation in a century is over. (The worst, according to Steve Hanke at the Cato Institute, was Hungary in July 1946, not Weimar Germany.) After a decade of freefall, the economy is at last growing. And yet Zimbabwe is far from out of the abyss.
As I settle back in Tsvangirai’s office, my eye is caught by an old 2008 election poster leaning against the wall. It shows him smiling, relaxed, exuding vigour and fire. We begin by reminiscing about a barnstorming trip together to a Zanu-PF heartland when we met a rapturous welcome in a hitherto no-go zone for the MDC. He relaxes into his seat. On the table in front of him are an iPad and a copy of Tony Blair’s recent memoir, A Journey. We share our experiences as Apple newcomers and trade impressions on the lessons of the former British prime minister. ‘Politics is the same the world over,’ Tsvangirai chuckles. Blair’s relationship with Gordon Brown, his Chancellor of the Exchequer and successor as premier, was indeed poisonous. But they were as blood brothers when compared to Zimbabwe’s president and PM.
Lunch With the FT: 52 Classic Interviews Page 24