Known and Unknown: A Memoir
By Donald Rumsfeld
832 pp. Sentinel HC. $36
The title of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs-Known and Unknown-is appropriate of almost any position that requires making decisions based on predictions. In national security matters, especially during war-time as in Afghanistan and Iraq, there will be good intelligence and bad intelligence, and Clausewitz’s concept of ‘fog of war‘ can confuse even the most prescient of individuals. Fortunately, Rumsfeld’s memoir reads not as a “long, hard slog” (to use his description of the war in Afghanistan), but rather as a well-researched defense of his decisions in the midst of that fog. However, the picture of Rumsfeld that emerges in Known and Unknownshows more hesitancy from living through Watergate rather than an uncanny ability to find solutions for America’s national security issues.The title Known and Unknown comes from a Rumsfeld press conference early in his post under President George W. Bush where he stated, “We…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.” Known and Unknown has a strange habit of insinuating that whenever a “known unknown” occurred, another person was culpable and whenever an “unknown unknown” occurred, no one could be blamed. Rumsfeld cites hundreds of “snowflakes” or memos that he wrote during his time as Secretary of Defense, and eventually, Known and Unknown becomes predictable in that whenever a decision was considered to be made poorly, it was because Rumsfeld’s opinion wasn’t adhered to.
Rumsfeld begins with the Nixon and Ford era, which proves to be the most interesting part of the book. His anecdotes about Nixon and Ford coupled with a short history of his time as a Congressman are more distant and less defensive. Whether it’s an example of the humility that Rumsfeld desires the memoir to aspire to or just the ability to be more candid and descriptive about presidents no longer living, the first 300 pages of this 726-page book show a young staffer and then Secretary of Defense with novel anecdotes about those men.
A line stood out to in this section that provided some explanation as to why Rumsfeld has a number of memos that paint him in a favorable light. During the Nixon Administration, Rumsfeld discovered that he had been secretly taped by the president and had said things in confidence he did not expect repeated or recorded. I think he learned this lesson wholeheartedly, and so his memos and directives sound as if they were the work of a man who has been frightened into extreme political caution.
Unfortunately, there is not much information about Rumsfeld’s time at private corporations such as pharmaceutical company G.L. Searle or his dealings with Monsanto; indeed, I had to make sure I hadn’t skipped a chapter accidentally as the period of his life between the end of Ford’s presidency and the beginning of George W. Bush’s covers only a few pages. Ironically, Rumsfeld’s most lasting legacy may be aspartame, the artificial sweetener used in over 500 products including diet soda.
By the time Rumsfeld reaches 2001, he has slipped into quantitative analysis of troops and weaponry rather than his obviously opinionated, but amusing character descriptions earlier in the book. His description of the Bush administration’s oversights are generally limited to Bush’s hasty appointment of Colin Powell as Secretary of State (“it looked as if he needed Powell much like it looked like Ford needed Kissinger”) as well as general discomfort towards the State Department and Condoleezza Rice’s conciliatory management style. His account of the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is steeped in frequent references to 12-hour 7 days-a-week information vortexes and meetings with top brass in a race against a doomsday clock.
When Rumsfeld does address President Bush’s possible missteps, they are steeped in a hesitant tone. Rumsfeld writes, “the President might instead have pushed for more education and scholarship on Islam and more training in languages like Arabic, Pashtu, and Farsi…we might have more energetically encouraged young people to volunteer in a civilian reserve corps or in the U.S. military and intelligence services.” This is the only reference positively [positive reference?] towards education in the book as a policy recommendation to improve national security. Ironically, the book begins with Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein commiserating in the 90s that it was a pity that Americans knew so little about Iraqis and that Iraqis knew so little about Americans. Nevertheless, there is no extrapolation that America’s national security issues might be solved by a long-term education strategy rather than hegemonic “Whac-a-mole.”
Ultimately, Rumsfeld’s writing style is accessible and it provides a relatively thorough picture of his tenure in public office. There are the expected explanations of his more media-attended gaffes such as the “stuff happens” response to looting after the fall of Hussein or the tutting of Chevy Chase’s portrayal of Ford. As Rumsfeld now dwells in old age, it is understandable that he publish his memoirs before his memory and intellectual capacity fades. Unfortunately, the latter half of the book suffers from a feeling that he is withholding a clear picture of the administration with which history will associate him. Predominately though, Known and Unknown is an argument that claims Rumsfeld always knew the right course of action and made decisions based on the known. However, it lacks the burden of proof as Rumsfeld offers no solution for the future based on his years of experience. If Rumsfeld is nearly always right, then a “snowflake” on what is to come for the country he served would make this memoir unique.
The title of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs-Known and Unknown-is appropriate of almost any position that requires making decisions based on predictions. In national security matters, especially during war-time as in Afghanistan and Iraq, there will be good intelligence and bad intelligence, and Clausewitz’s concept of ‘fog of war‘ can confuse even the most prescient of individuals. Fortunately, Rumsfeld’s memoir reads not as a “long, hard slog” (to use his description of the war in Afghanistan), but rather as a well-researched defense of his decisions in the midst of that fog. However, the picture of Rumsfeld that emerges in Known and Unknownshows more hesitancy from living through Watergate rather than an uncanny ability to find solutions for America’s national security issues.The title Known and Unknown comes from a Rumsfeld press conference early in his post under President George W. Bush where he stated, “We…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.” Known and Unknown has a strange habit of insinuating that whenever a “known unknown” occurred, another person was culpable and whenever an “unknown unknown” occurred, no one could be blamed. Rumsfeld cites hundreds of “snowflakes” or memos that he wrote during his time as Secretary of Defense, and eventually, Known and Unknown becomes predictable in that whenever a decision was considered to be made poorly, it was because Rumsfeld’s opinion wasn’t adhered to.
Rumsfeld begins with the Nixon and Ford era, which proves to be the most interesting part of the book. His anecdotes about Nixon and Ford coupled with a short history of his time as a Congressman are more distant and less defensive. Whether it’s an example of the humility that Rumsfeld desires the memoir to aspire to or just the ability to be more candid and descriptive about presidents no longer living, the first 300 pages of this 726-page book show a young staffer and then Secretary of Defense with novel anecdotes about those men.
A line stood out to in this section that provided some explanation as to why Rumsfeld has a number of memos that paint him in a favorable light. During the Nixon Administration, Rumsfeld discovered that he had been secretly taped by the president and had said things in confidence he did not expect repeated or recorded. I think he learned this lesson wholeheartedly, and so his memos and directives sound as if they were the work of a man who has been frightened into extreme political caution.
Unfortunately, there is not much information about Rumsfeld’s time at private corporations such as pharmaceutical company G.L. Searle or his dealings with Monsanto; indeed, I had to make sure I hadn’t skipped a chapter accidentally as the period of his life between the end of Ford’s presidency and the beginning of George W. Bush’s covers only a few pages. Ironically, Rumsfeld’s most lasting legacy may be aspartame, the artificial sweetener used in over 500 products including diet soda.
By the time Rumsfeld reaches 2001, he has slipped into quantitative analysis of troops and weaponry rather than his obviously opinionated, but amusing character descriptions earlier in the book. His description of the Bush administration’s oversights are generally limited to Bush’s hasty appointment of Colin Powell as Secretary of State (“it looked as if he needed Powell much like it looked like Ford needed Kissinger”) as well as general discomfort towards the State Department and Condoleezza Rice’s conciliatory management style. His account of the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is steeped in frequent references to 12-hour 7 days-a-week information vortexes and meetings with top brass in a race against a doomsday clock.
When Rumsfeld does address President Bush’s possible missteps, they are steeped in a hesitant tone. Rumsfeld writes, “the President might instead have pushed for more education and scholarship on Islam and more training in languages like Arabic, Pashtu, and Farsi…we might have more energetically encouraged young people to volunteer in a civilian reserve corps or in the U.S. military and intelligence services.” This is the only reference positively [positive reference?] towards education in the book as a policy recommendation to improve national security. Ironically, the book begins with Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein commiserating in the 90s that it was a pity that Americans knew so little about Iraqis and that Iraqis knew so little about Americans. Nevertheless, there is no extrapolation that America’s national security issues might be solved by a long-term education strategy rather than hegemonic “Whac-a-mole.”
Ultimately, Rumsfeld’s writing style is accessible and it provides a relatively thorough picture of his tenure in public office. There are the expected explanations of his more media-attended gaffes such as the “stuff happens” response to looting after the fall of Hussein or the tutting of Chevy Chase’s portrayal of Ford. As Rumsfeld now dwells in old age, it is understandable that he publish his memoirs before his memory and intellectual capacity fades. Unfortunately, the latter half of the book suffers from a feeling that he is withholding a clear picture of the administration with which history will associate him. Predominately though, Known and Unknown is an argument that claims Rumsfeld always knew the right course of action and made decisions based on the known. However, it lacks the burden of proof as Rumsfeld offers no solution for the future based on his years of experience. If Rumsfeld is nearly always right, then a “snowflake” on what is to come for the country he served would make this memoir unique.