Still In The Dark
May 14th 2011 20:39
I just finished reading former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s book, "Known and Unknown: A Memoir," and while I certainly expected him to explain his actions while Secretary of Defense during the two terms of the George W. Bush presidency, I didn’t expect a whitewash.
Let me start by saying that I’m a middle of the road Democrat who has been critical, in the past, of the Bush administration involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Having disclosed that, I have to admit that some of my criticism, in hindsight, was unwarranted. Having studied the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks, and how unprepared the country was to respond, I now realize that President Bush and his team did what they thought appropriate at the time to protect the country from any further attacks.
Previous administrations (Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton) didn’t realize or underestimated the terrorist threat to this country posed by Islamists. The Department of Defense, the CIA and NSA were unprepared to fight an asymmetric war against terrorists, and Congress had fought spending at those agencies. 9/11 was a wake up call for this country, and whatever I or anyone else thought of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, they had to face and protect us from an enemy that we had never faced.
Rice, Powell and Bush, by remaining largely silent since the end of the Bush administration, appear as statesmen. Even Cheney has largely ended his criticism of President Obama, as if he too has realized that he doesn’t have to defend his actions in protecting the country in the aftermath of 9/11.
Rumsfeld begins the book with a discussion of decision making based on what we know, what we don’t know, and what we don’t know that we don’t know. After reading this little discussion, I felt I was being set up with an excuse for some of the bad decisions that occurred during Republican administrations (Nixon, Ford, Regan, and Bush); he could make plans and advise the President based on what he knew and what he knew he didn’t know, but how could anyone make plans based on what they didn’t know they didn’t know. But, that wasn’t the case. Instead, Rumsfeld discusses every historical event that occurred from the time of his first run for Congress in 1962 until his dismissal from the Bush cabinet in 2006. Every time a problem occurred, he seems to have anticipated it, had plans already in place to mitigate it, and offered these plans to the President or the Secretary of State. It was their fault that they didn’t always follow his advice (and Dick Chaney’s). If they did, things would have turned out differently and so much better.
It was always the fault of the press and media for not understanding him and misinterpreting what he said, yet hardly ever his fault for not explaining himself clearer or explaining himself at all. He claims to never have been overbearing as a CEO or defense secretary, never micromanaging, yet he proudly explains how he inundated his subordinates under a blizzard of memos and notes, he called it “snow,” to remind them how to do their job. He demanded that his subordinates criticize his pronouncements at meetings, but who would ever take on a boss who makes that kind of demand. Wouldn’t asking for criticism of ideas be more appropriate instead of demands?
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it was always Rumsfeld and the Department of Defense that shouldered the burden of winning and trying to get the Iraqi’s to assume control of their country, while he portrays Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s National Security Advisor and successor to Powell as Secretary of State, as slackers who, along with L. Paul Bremer, did everything they could to stall the turnover of control to the Iraqi’s and stall the return home of U.S. troops. If only Bush listened to him, the Shiite’s never would have grown impatient, U.S. troops would have stationed themselves in the North sooner so the Sunni’s wouldn’t have allied with al Qaeda, and there never would have been a battle for Fallujha. Instead, Rice and Powell had the President’s ear, and everything turned out poorly, or so Rumsfeld says.
There is no denying the historical events as they occurred, and there is no denying Rumsfeld’s part in them. However, his attempts at modesty are self serving and egotistical. I don’t care how perfect a person is, there are times in their life, in their personal life, on the job, in their relationships with others, when they make mistakes, and some of those mistakes are whoppers. Rumsfeld admits to nothing.
When he briefly talks about the drug addiction of two of his children, he doesn’t admit to any responsibility. I don’t know of any parent, including myself, when faced with a sick child, who wouldn’t look inward to see if he/she could have done something different in the raising/caring of the child, and at least take some responsibility for what happened. It’s natural for a parent to have those kinds of feelings towards a child. Rumsfeld doesn’t discuss this. If he’s a very private man, why write a book? If he wants us to be sympathetic and understanding to what he and President Bush faced after 9/11, then he should have given us some insight into his emotions during this period.
Nobody doubts his patriotism; what we couldn’t stand was his being a know-it-all.
Let me start by saying that I’m a middle of the road Democrat who has been critical, in the past, of the Bush administration involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Having disclosed that, I have to admit that some of my criticism, in hindsight, was unwarranted. Having studied the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks, and how unprepared the country was to respond, I now realize that President Bush and his team did what they thought appropriate at the time to protect the country from any further attacks.
Previous administrations (Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton) didn’t realize or underestimated the terrorist threat to this country posed by Islamists. The Department of Defense, the CIA and NSA were unprepared to fight an asymmetric war against terrorists, and Congress had fought spending at those agencies. 9/11 was a wake up call for this country, and whatever I or anyone else thought of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, they had to face and protect us from an enemy that we had never faced.
Rice, Powell and Bush, by remaining largely silent since the end of the Bush administration, appear as statesmen. Even Cheney has largely ended his criticism of President Obama, as if he too has realized that he doesn’t have to defend his actions in protecting the country in the aftermath of 9/11.
Rumsfeld begins the book with a discussion of decision making based on what we know, what we don’t know, and what we don’t know that we don’t know. After reading this little discussion, I felt I was being set up with an excuse for some of the bad decisions that occurred during Republican administrations (Nixon, Ford, Regan, and Bush); he could make plans and advise the President based on what he knew and what he knew he didn’t know, but how could anyone make plans based on what they didn’t know they didn’t know. But, that wasn’t the case. Instead, Rumsfeld discusses every historical event that occurred from the time of his first run for Congress in 1962 until his dismissal from the Bush cabinet in 2006. Every time a problem occurred, he seems to have anticipated it, had plans already in place to mitigate it, and offered these plans to the President or the Secretary of State. It was their fault that they didn’t always follow his advice (and Dick Chaney’s). If they did, things would have turned out differently and so much better.
It was always the fault of the press and media for not understanding him and misinterpreting what he said, yet hardly ever his fault for not explaining himself clearer or explaining himself at all. He claims to never have been overbearing as a CEO or defense secretary, never micromanaging, yet he proudly explains how he inundated his subordinates under a blizzard of memos and notes, he called it “snow,” to remind them how to do their job. He demanded that his subordinates criticize his pronouncements at meetings, but who would ever take on a boss who makes that kind of demand. Wouldn’t asking for criticism of ideas be more appropriate instead of demands?
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it was always Rumsfeld and the Department of Defense that shouldered the burden of winning and trying to get the Iraqi’s to assume control of their country, while he portrays Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s National Security Advisor and successor to Powell as Secretary of State, as slackers who, along with L. Paul Bremer, did everything they could to stall the turnover of control to the Iraqi’s and stall the return home of U.S. troops. If only Bush listened to him, the Shiite’s never would have grown impatient, U.S. troops would have stationed themselves in the North sooner so the Sunni’s wouldn’t have allied with al Qaeda, and there never would have been a battle for Fallujha. Instead, Rice and Powell had the President’s ear, and everything turned out poorly, or so Rumsfeld says.
There is no denying the historical events as they occurred, and there is no denying Rumsfeld’s part in them. However, his attempts at modesty are self serving and egotistical. I don’t care how perfect a person is, there are times in their life, in their personal life, on the job, in their relationships with others, when they make mistakes, and some of those mistakes are whoppers. Rumsfeld admits to nothing.
When he briefly talks about the drug addiction of two of his children, he doesn’t admit to any responsibility. I don’t know of any parent, including myself, when faced with a sick child, who wouldn’t look inward to see if he/she could have done something different in the raising/caring of the child, and at least take some responsibility for what happened. It’s natural for a parent to have those kinds of feelings towards a child. Rumsfeld doesn’t discuss this. If he’s a very private man, why write a book? If he wants us to be sympathetic and understanding to what he and President Bush faced after 9/11, then he should have given us some insight into his emotions during this period.
Nobody doubts his patriotism; what we couldn’t stand was his being a know-it-all.
| 27 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
