Donald Rumsfeld, Architect of War in Afghanistan, Is Laid to Rest
In a quirk of timing, the two-time former defense secretary’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday seemed to serve as a kind of coda to America’s 20-year lost war.
WASHINGTON — A horse-drawn caisson with a flag-draped coffin passed slowly through the gates of Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, a hushed tableau against a city loud with recriminations about the lost war in Afghanistan.
The cortege carried Donald H. Rumsfeld, the hard-charging, two-time secretary of defense and one of the war’s chief architects, whose burial on a sweltering August afternoon served as another coda to the 20-year conflict.
Mr. Rumsfeld died on June 29, at 88, of complications related to multiple myeloma. The date for his interment and an earlier private funeral service on Monday at Fort Myer, Va., had been set long before, but the timing meant that Mr. Rumsfeld was laid to rest during the same kind of shell shock as on Oct. 7, 2001, when the United States launched its first airstrikes in Afghanistan.
And yet, the ceremonies seemed to take place in a contained, parallel universe, sealed off from the strife of Washington. “This was very much about the man and his times, and not any particular issue of the day,” said Larry Di Rita, a top deputy to Mr. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration.
