"Saddam kept a lid on it," those same people say. Well, such lids are now coming off across the region. The institutions of the international community continue to display the same moral decrepitude that they did in Rumsfeld's day, and the dictators still look for ways to do what they wish. What has changed is that when people across the world look to the free world for leadership today all they see is prevarication and doubt.

Much of the West is lost in a fog not of war but of peace. For all the faults and things that would be done differently, Rumsfeld and his generation knew we faced enemies and that they should be defeated: a known known. It is a lesson his successors could do with learning fast.