May 21, 2004

May 21, 2004
 

Well, I learned something in writing my first blog entry that I hadn't realized.  What I learned is to never promise to write something in the next blog entry unless you basically you have it written.  In the first entry I promised to write something about Rumsfeld in the next entry.  I shouldn't have done that.  The reason being that I was kept from writing anything because I couldn't bear to think of writing something about Rumsfeld.  But I had to do it eventually so here goes. 

 

Im having difficulty in thinking about Rumsfeld in some sense because he's an enigma.  It's not that he is stupid in the same sense that the others are.  On the other hand he clearly just doesn't get it.  We'll come back to that a bit later.  So what do we know about Rumsfeld?  First we know that he was involved in the Vietnam War.  I could be very curt and to say that that's enough.  But let's look at beyond that. 

 

His next major entry in public life was as CEO of Searle.  One could expect that that would require a certain amount of of competence.  In fact it probably does, and as I said before he probably isn't at the level of stupidity that the others are.  So what did he really do it Searle.  There are two versions of this.  One is that he used political influence to bring to market aspartame which is a dangerous product.  The other version is that he used political power to bring to the market aspartame, a useful product.  I don't at this point know which is true and will not get into the issue of whether or not aspartame is a hazardous product or not.  Fact is it is on the market and I use it.  However, I think that doesn't change the fact that the reason it's on the market it is because of his political influence and not because of any other reason.  I think if you were to ask even his closest supporters whether aspartame came to market because he used his political juice or because he used his intrinsic knowledge of neurochemistry to prove it was safe there wouldn't be much a question as to what the answer was.  So his major accomplishment was using political influence to license a product in the market and make a lot of money for himself.  Fine enough and I wouldnt personally criticize him for that.  However, it doesn't really make him competent to do what he is doing now.

 

So why is he having these issues.  If you recall years ago when Nixon first went to China people in this country were shocked that the Chinese leadership was so old.  About as old as Rumsfeld is now.  It was explained that this was the reason China was so isolated from the rest of theworld.  Out of touch with the rest of the world.  And perhaps that's really the problem. 

 

The world we live in now is very different from the world that he grew up in and the world that he understood how to deal with.  Rumsfeld might have been a very good Secretary of Defense in 1965 or 1970 but not in 2000.  The reason is that he just doesn't understand that the world is fundamentally changed from a world that he grew up in.  He grew up with his way of thinking predicated upon a great struggle between great nations.  He's probably been able to modify that a bit to bring in smaller nations that we have had to deal with as well.  But he seems incapable of grasping that were aren't fighting against a small nation or a large nation.  We are  fighting against ideology that rather than destroying by invading Iraqi we are supporting.  For him the new way of looking at things was that we could attack a country with a smaller army and more focused army than we had done in thepast.  But, that's far far below the level of innovation needed to deal with fighting a political ideal.  So while Rumsfeld felt we were dealing with the problems facing us an innovative way he was in fact dealing with yesterdays with problems in a new and innovative way.  This is very apparent from the recent developments. 

 

Most of the advice I’ve seen on damage control from people involved in dealing with difficult situations in political or incorporate environments said after the initial release of pictures of Iraqi prisons that it was important to get everything out as quikly as possible because it would come out eventually.  That wasn't what they did, however.  They decided they could keep the pictures hidden.  They could only have done that if they thought that they somehow had control of the situation.  That tells me that Rumsfeld  doesn’t  have of much of an understanding of digital mediam, e-mail and personal factors involved in the situtation situation.  Personal factors include a lot of people at very low levels who think they're going to get the blame for something they didn't feel totally responsible for.  So they're going to lash out and try to blame others and that can mean releasing things.  We combine that with the fact that the digital media makes these images pervasive and its pretty clear that the pictures would appear.  But Rumsfeld didn’t see that so I can only assume that's because he doesn't understand world we live in it all.  He doesn’t understand e-mail, he doesn't understand digital media and he doesn't perhaps even understand human nature.  All that adds up to someone who perhaps isn't stupid in the way that I think Cheney in Bush are but someone who's unable to deal with the complex world we live in.