That
Creative Mr. Rumsfeld
by Karen
Kwiatkowski
       
"The
secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your
sources."
~
Albert Einstein
Talk
about your idea man! The thoughts from the mind of he who would be
Secretary of State and President fall like the rain we had this
spring in Virginia. When Rummy puts his sparks of brilliance in
writing, they call them "snowflakes," short one or two liners that
float like a gentle snow onto the mounding bloodless bureaucratic
landscape of the Pentagon.
Rain
might be a better analogy, because while snowflakes result in a
scenic view before it turns to water, too much rain tends to muddy
up the landscape. Of course, maybe I?m just thinking about the most
recent ideas from the great master.
For
example, Rummy?s latest ingenuity is to have the United States
organize "a standing international peacekeeping force that could be
dispatched
to trouble spots around the globe." Wow ? there?s an idea. We
don?t like the United Nations telling us what to do and being
incompetent ? better if we could create an alternate "United
Nations" (we don?t even have to reduce, disband, or reform the
existing United Nations!) to tell everyone else what to do and be
incompetent ? but with us in charge! It?s a wonderful
idea!
The
bubbling over Mr. Rumsfeld has suggested that the United States
search teams will ultimately find the smoking gun of WMD for which
we sent 200,000 invading and occupying troops to the region. He
promotes the Special Forces ? perhaps because if any smoking guns
are found, it might be the result of a fun game of hide
and seek played solely by United States special ops and CIA
operatives. Rummy disagreed with the CIA and State?s "intelligence"
? so he created a parallel universe of intelligence that he can
control. Rummy argued with former Army Chief of Staff Shinseki about
that 200,000 number ? and then refused to say goodbye at Shinseki?s
retirement ceremony. Didn?t attend, and apparently prohibited senior
members of the Office to the Secretary of Defense from attending. He
remains awfully angry at the French, mainly because, like him, they
are arrogant, and unlike him, have been honest and correct about the
Iraq war motivation and consequent quagmire. Because of his
feelings, he prohibited senior members of the military as well as
major aviation technology CEOs from attending this year?s Paris Air
Show. He seems to like NATO ? as long as the Belgians don?t arrest
him for war crimes when he shows up and he is allowed to oversee a
new parallel U.S.-dominated mini-NATO ring of American military
bases throughout Eastern Europe and the Islamic belt of the former
Soviet Union, and of course Iraq. He creatively believes that the
military has the right to interrogate prisoners of war without
Geneva protections, and prosecute without due process those boys and
old men accidentally picked up in Afghanistan along with the
occasional American citizen.
The
list goes on and on. But if you look closely, a theme emerges in the
idea generation machine that is the mind of Mr. Rumsfeld.
We
have some reason to expect that Mr. Rumsfeld is an imaginative man.
One of my favorite storytellers, W. Somerset Maugham, said
"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is
more powerful in the mature than in the young."
His
age gives him an advantage. But on closer examination of his
creativity, one sadly finds it predictable, pedestrian, and
uninspired. His formula is too obvious: Take something that doesn?t
work your way (whether it is the United Nations, NATO, European
Union Standing Force, General Shinseki, the Army, France, the United
States Bill of Rights) and simply put yourself in charge of it ? or
a new version of "it." Looks just like a snowflake ? but unlike
those uniquely formed and precious glimpses of nature ? each
Rummy-gram is imprinted and belched out from the same well-used
industrial form. Kind of like how shoes and refrigerators and
television sets used to be in the Soviet Union. They looked like the
purposed item from a distance, but met no identifiable need or
function beyond the factory quota.
Rumsfeld seems to believe in things like the United Nations,
a robust NATO in the absence of any of the original motivations for
that bureaucracy, and national security intelligence production ? if
only he were running them. He feels contempt for France?s arrogant
honesty, while harboring fantasies that only Napoleon would
understand. The oversized and under-trained United States Army would
be fine, if only he were directly managing it. If imitation is the
highest form of flattery, we have bigger problems than we thought.
Rumsfeldian creativity seems to be nothing more than a parody of
things that don?t work. While Einstein credited creativity to
pre-existing sources ? certainly that wise and humble man wasn?t
referring to Rumsfeld?s version of global government with himself as
the Great Don.
Ayn
Rand gives us a clue about Rumsfeld?s true nature in this regard,
writing, "A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not
by the desire to beat others." Even a casual observation of Rummy in
action ? from his boxing days to his Nixon and Ford Administration
service, his envoy work for Reagan, and now Bush?s Secretary of
Defense ? reveals that indeed what we are witnessing is not a
creative man.
When
it comes to over-funded government functions designed to destroy and
restrict activities of citizens, internationally through occupation
and domestically through compulsion, it is hard to say how our
freedom and honor are better served. Is the cause of American
freedom and honor better promoted by actual creativity of government
executives like the Secretary of Defense, or by the current
Secretary?s mind-numbing apelike plodding for control?
In
the American history case study that is Donald Rumsfeld, icon of the
George W. Bush administration, this question is irrelevant. As in
the old Soviet Union, your shoe size, personal preference that your
television not explode, and questions of freedom and honor make no
difference.
Funny how young George never mentioned any of this in his
last election campaign. Maybe he and his pals were just hiding their
sources!
 June 28, 2003
Karen Kwiatkowski [send her mail] is a recently
retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half
years in uniform working at the Pentagon. She now lives with her
freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley.
Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com
Karen
Kwiatkowski Archives
 
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