Keep Elevating the Threat

Rumsfeld’s ghost at the banquet

November 1, 2007  5 comments

In the Washington Post today are printed extracts from some of the “snowflakes”, or internal memos, produced by Secretary of “Defense”, Donald Rumsfeld, during his last tenure. For no good reason that I can see, the WP does not provide facsimiles of the actual documents in its possession, so we have to rely on the reporter’s partial and selective quotations. Even so, it is fascinating language:

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid “physical labor” and wrote of the need to “keep elevating the threat,” “link Iraq to Iran” and develop “bumper sticker statements” to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war. […]

“Talk about Somalia, the Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists,” he wrote.

People will “rally” to sacrifice, he noted after the meeting. “They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory.”

The meeting also led Rumsfeld to write that he needed a team to help him “go out and push people back, rather than simply defending” Iraq policy and strategy. “I am always on the defense. They say I do it well, but you can’t win on the defense,” he wrote. “We can’t just keep taking hits.”

Rumsfeld’s reminder of the need to “keep elevating the threat” is further proof (were any needed) that he and his colleagues were knowingly and deliberately indulging in fearmongering. (He does not talk of informing the American public of an objective threat that is actually increasing.)

Like most people who make thrilling, inspirational calls for “sacrifice”, meanwhile, Rumsfeld has in mind the sacrifice of anyone but himself. It is interesting to note further how he self-pityingly characterises his own position in terms of violence, “taking hits”, while at the same time not forgetting to congratulate himself on his fortitude (“They say I do it well”), and all the time in fact expecting those under his command, ordinary American soldiers, to take the real “hits” of bullets and bombs, in the service of his brilliant strategy to terrify the public into thinking that they are under attack from all sides.

(For more on civilian politicians bigging themselves up with military metaphors, compare also the juvenile bully’s glee with which Dick Cheney boasted that he “dropped the F-bomb on” Patrick Leahy.)

As these scraps remind us, Rumsfeld’s unique style of communication, in which jazzy egotism regularly won out over Machiavellian prudence, shone an especially bright light on the mind of this administration. He is sorely missed.