Kimberley Strassel: Rumsfeld's 'Slice of History' (interview)
[Ms. Strassel writes the Journal's Potomac Watch column.]
'I'd read other folks' books about things I'd been involved in . . . and I'd think, 'My goodness, that's not my perspective,'" chuckles former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in an interview last Friday. "I remember talking to [former Secretary of State] George Shultz and he said, 'Don, that's the way it is. Everyone has their slice of history and you need to write yours one day so that it is part of the records.'"
History, meet Mr. Rumsfeld's view. With today's release of "Known and Unknown"—the 78-year-old's memoir of his tenure as defense secretary under George W. Bush and Gerald Ford, his years in the Nixon administration and his three terms as an Illinois congressman—"Rummy" is offering his slice of history. As befits a man who has spent decades provoking Washington debate, his chronicle is direct and likely to inspire some shouting.
The usual Rumsfeld critics (including some in the Bush family circle) are rushing to categorize it as a "score-settling" account, but that's a predictable (and tedious) judgment. At the heart of Mr. Rumsfeld's book is an important critique of the Bush administration that has been largely missing from the debate over Iraq. The dominant narrative to date has been that a cowboy president and his posse of neocons went to war without adequate preparation and ran roughshod over doubts by more sober bureaucratic and strategic minds.
What Mr. Rumsfeld offers is a far more believable account of events, one that holds individuals responsible for failures of execution...
Read entire article at WSJ
'I'd read other folks' books about things I'd been involved in . . . and I'd think, 'My goodness, that's not my perspective,'" chuckles former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in an interview last Friday. "I remember talking to [former Secretary of State] George Shultz and he said, 'Don, that's the way it is. Everyone has their slice of history and you need to write yours one day so that it is part of the records.'"
History, meet Mr. Rumsfeld's view. With today's release of "Known and Unknown"—the 78-year-old's memoir of his tenure as defense secretary under George W. Bush and Gerald Ford, his years in the Nixon administration and his three terms as an Illinois congressman—"Rummy" is offering his slice of history. As befits a man who has spent decades provoking Washington debate, his chronicle is direct and likely to inspire some shouting.
The usual Rumsfeld critics (including some in the Bush family circle) are rushing to categorize it as a "score-settling" account, but that's a predictable (and tedious) judgment. At the heart of Mr. Rumsfeld's book is an important critique of the Bush administration that has been largely missing from the debate over Iraq. The dominant narrative to date has been that a cowboy president and his posse of neocons went to war without adequate preparation and ran roughshod over doubts by more sober bureaucratic and strategic minds.
What Mr. Rumsfeld offers is a far more believable account of events, one that holds individuals responsible for failures of execution...