RUMSFELD DOCUMENTARY DOESN”T PROVIDE ANSWERS TO THE WAR IN IRAQ

…Donald Rumsfeld, he is not an “unknown, known”.

“Rummy” should be removed from the staff of Stanford's  Hoover Institute.

Back in 2007, having previously attended Stanford U., I was one of the 4,000 faculty, staff, students and alumni, that signed an online petition objecting to an appointment of honor for the former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.  The appointment was for becoming a “distinguished visiting fellow” of the conservative Hoover Institute, located on the Stanford University campus.  The petition stated that the appointment was, fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws, and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed."

The director of the Hoover Institution, Mr. John Raisian, told the Stanford Faculty Senate that he did not regret his decision of the appointment.

It seems that due to the petition and all of the noise being made by the students and faculty on the campus, Mr. Raisian, had been invited to appear before the school's senate to explain the criteria he used to make the controversial Rumsfeld appointment.

Speaking to the senate , Raisian said he was "saddened by the reaction of some of my Stanford colleagues." He said the appointment was "not intended to be provocative."

 

Yeah, right!

Raisian defended the appointment by saying Rumsfeld has "a remarkable record of accomplishments in public service" and he noted that he served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, was the U.S. ambassador to NATO, served in the Cabinet of President Richard M. Nixon and served as secretary of defense under presidents Gerald R. Ford and George W. Bush.

"Like it or not, he has had a distinguished career," Raisian said.

Well, that may be a fine review of Rumsfeld in looking in long-term hindsight, but it doesn’t fit well for today.

After his last positive career-move of working for President Gerald R. Ford, everything afterwards for Rumsfeld started heading down a slippery slope and then proceeded straight into the dumper.  And this man definitely does not deserve to be revered as a “distinguished visiting fellow of the Hoover Institute”.

But now there is a new documentary about this previous US Defense Secretary that is being produced by the distinguished film director, Errol Morris.  The documentary is called “The Unknown Known”.  And this is such an appropriate title for a Rumsfeld documentary.

The title obviously comes from the bizarre statement Rumsfeld made in 2002 when he was asked by NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski, if there was, “any evidence linking Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq with terrorist organizations.”

This was Rumsfeld’s strange response to this very clear question: “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

No, he did not answer the actual question, but this was his response to what eventually became an unnecessary war that killed more than 4,400 Americans in Iraq. Let’s also not forget that the figures for the dead Iraqis, which have been all over the place, but it seems that at least 140,000 civilians perished. And of course, the killing continues as we speak.

This is all largely a consequence of the illegal war and the breathtakingly incompetent way those that sent us to war handled the 10 years of the post-“mission accomplished” period. Along with all of this, it appears that the Secretary and his bosses didn’t pay much attention to what would happen after Saddam was ousted and his army defeated. It was all as if the people of Iraq did not matter after the US president landed on that US aircraft carrier.

The new documentary is said to bring all of this out, but after spending 34 hours with Mr. Morris in putting this film together, apparently, according to Mr. Morris, Rumsfeld used this time to just talk about himself.  Now, it could be that he knew he was a real loser, so he decided, “Why should I admit all that on film?”  And doing that definitely would not fit appropriately with Mr. Rumsfeld’s personality.

What does not get answered in the film after 34 hours in an interview, is what were they thinking when they went to war?  Why didn’t they factor in the obvious Shiite-Sunni conflict?  What about the potential effects of the dissolving of the Iraq military and the Baath Party and what that might do to the situation in Iraq after the invasion?  Why, why, why, and more whys?

After viewing the documentary, as expected, the details of the war in Iraq will still be a very big mystery.

But even today, Rumsfeld is aggressively selfish in his refusal to say what he must really know. He talks of things known and unknown and then moves off into a quagmire in which there is no such thing as telling the truth. Yes, he does outwardly weep for the American dead and wounded, as he damn well should. But of course, these individuals were the ones that had the courage to face the enemy.  While Rumsfeld in contrast, cannot even face the truth of his own war.

I think that Donald Rumsfeld is possibly so diluted that he will be very surprised that the Mr. Morris’ documentary does not say good things about him.

But the film won’t have the answers that we, as Americans, deserve.  Yes, I mean the same Americans that paid for George W’s, and Rummy’s extravagant and unnecessary and expensive war on the other side of the globe.

Yes, it’s all very disgusting, but it is still very true.

Copyright G.Ater  2014