Rumsfeld's got some great quotes, most of which were delivered in the context of explaining how the Iraq war turned into such a clusterfuck, and boy could that whole situation have used the kind of leadership Donald Rumsfeld's quotes would lead you to believe the man could've provided.
JFYI, the "Unknown Unknowns" quote is from before the invasion (2002-02-12). It was deflection on whether there was evidence of Iraq building WMDs or of cooperating with e.g Al Qaeda.
> Q: Could I follow up, Mr. Secretary, on what you just said, please? In regard to Iraq weapons of mass destruction and terrorists, is there any evidence to indicate that Iraq has attempted to or is willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction? Because there are reports that there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.
> Rumsfeld: Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because 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. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
> And so people who have the omniscience that they can say with high certainty that something has not happened or is not being tried, have capabilities that are ...
I haven't read the transcript of this conversation in a long time, but thank you for sharing it.
The sophistry of his argument is extreme.
Yes, of course there are always "unknown unknowns"-- but the statement "there is no evidence that Iraq is supplying WMDs to terrorists" is not a statement made in a vacuum, in which all permutations of known/unknown are equally likely.
It really is jarring that this is about the actual justification for a war, and his response basically boils down to "well we don't know they haven't done it or if they might in the future".
If I remember it correctly (it was a long time ago), he never fully supported the war. It didn't take a genius to notice that the goals set by the presidency were (literally) impossible and not the kind of thing you do achieve a war.
But whatever position he had, Iraq turning into a clusterfuck wasn't a sign of bad leadership by his part. It was a sign of bad ethics, but not leadership. His options were all of getting out of his position, disobeying the people above him, or leading the US into a clusterfuck.
Rumsfeld personally advanced the de-baathification directive - the lynchpin of the clusterfuckery - all on his own, and he certainly would have known to expect the 'unexpected' results to be similar to de-nazification. This was absolutely his choice. Another point you have (unintentionally?) brought up is the dignified resignation option. While it is often a naive, self-serving gesture, we can reasonably imagine that the Defense Secretary publicly resigning over opposition to a war during the public consideration of that war, might have had some effect on whether that war was started. I want to like him too, with his grandfatherly demeanor and genuine funnyness ("My god, were there so many vases?!") but, come on.
> In the first emergency meeting of the National Security Council on the day of the attacks, Rumsfeld asked, "Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?" with his deputy Paul Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily—it was doable," and, according to John Kampfner, "from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case."
As history, this is completely incorrect, but beyond that, if you don’t believe in the mission of the President in committing an act of war, you have a responsibility to resign, and it can’t be bracketed as “bad ethics”.
Anyway, another historical point besides what the other commenters have said is that Rumsfeld believed in “transformation” which meant you could do more with less in modern war. He was totally wrong about it.
It wasn’t his fault Turkey didn’t let the US attack from the north, but other than that, the fuck up is his responsibility, among others.
There's a distinction missing here. Rumsfeld's Transformation idea was correct with regard to the invasion, which was one of the most successful invasions in history, period. No one has ever taken over such a large country, so far away, so fast, with so few troops, before or since.
The occupation afterward was where the clusterfuck came in, and (somehow) none of the preparation had been directed toward that.
At no point in US history was it ever the case that every military operation was considered a war, nor that a war declaration would be necessary and/or appropriate to conduct such operations. What's more, Congress has frequently and explicitly given the President authority to conduct large scale military operations and held oversight hearings, etc. of the execution of those operations - all without formal declarations of war; Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan being prime examples of this.
Calling them "special military operations," poor taste aside, especially with a focus on the formal process used, ignores the fact that all of those conflicts were entered and conducted with the full knowledge and involvement of Congresss.
If someone is 83.7% likely to provide good leadership, how would you evaluate the choice to hire that person as a leader in the hindsight that the person failed to provide good leadership -- was it a bad choice, or was it a good choice that was unlucky?
Like everything in politics, I think this is a function of what team you cheer for. If your goal was to come up with an excuse to invade Iraq, that person was an excellent choice. If you’re on the other team, what a clusterfuck.
Then you add in a party system and it gets more complicated. Realistically, you don’t get to be the United States Secretary of Defense (twice) if you’re the kind of person who will ignore the will of the party and whoever is President.
I like to remind myself that very few people reach positions of great power after mediocre lives. Rather there’s a thread of talent that runs through government.
Once they’re in, the predilections that led to power often rear their dark long tails. But they’re all (even the ones I disagree with) talented.
Politics is fundamentally the art of convincing people of things - usually “vote for me.” That is the only skill that acquisition of high office is evidence of. Many politicians have more skills than just than that, but the mere fact of having acquired high office tells you nothing more about a person than that they’re particularly good at politics.
