Rumsfeld’s snowflakes

I had some sympathy for Donald Rumsfeld when he became lost in translation in 2002:
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.

Almost poetic really! But then the War on Terror erupted and I read more “poetry” from Rumsfeld and quickly lost any sympathy I may have had. And then of course I read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and wondered how on earth such a dangerous person became US Defense Secretary. Because here are some of his “snowflakes” as they’re known or daily, brusque missives to staff. Staff sometimes were the recipients of 20 to 60 snowflakes a day.

• Muslims “avoid physical labour”
• he wrote of the need to “keep elevating the threat” around an increasingly unpopular war and “link Iraq to Iran”
• when he was being denounced by retired generals for his handling of the Iraq War he advised “Talk about Somalia, the Philippines etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists.”
• he said that “Iraq is only one battleground” and clearly signalling the next battleground – “Iran is the concern of the American people, and if we fail in Iraq, it will advantage Iran”
• he considered renaming the War on Terror to a “worldwide insurgency”

For some reason, Rumsfeld sounds like Richard Nixon to me. Anyone who’s studied the personality of Nixon would know what I mean – paranoid distrust of others, destructive behaviour, criminal and ruthless activity, power hungry. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that Rumsfeld served in various positions in the Nixon adminstration. Rumsfeld and other neocons are more concerned with whipping up a state of fear and removing from the world any country or people who get in the way of the righteous mission of the US (which is – take your pick – grabbing oil reserves to preserve national security; making Halliburton richer by the minute; ensuring that Blackwater gets every contract under the sun; erecting a corporatist state).

Source: Washington Post