Saying one thing while meaning another is an art as old as speech itself. Donald Rumsfeld, infamous for his hermetic pronouncements, may have practiced that art on the occasion of his "resignation." You've no doubt heard or read the words already, but take another look:
The great respect that I have for your leadership, Mr. President, in this little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century -- it is not well-known, it was not well-understood, it is complex for people to comprehend. And I know, with certainty, that over time the contributions you've made will be recorded by history.If you listen to the voice as he delivers this speech, you'll note that he speaks forthrightly and emotionally when praising those "talented men and women" of the DOD. But when he addresses Bush, his voice sounds odd. He never really finishes the sentence that begins with "The great respect I have for your leadership." The sentence makes no grammatical sense; it's as though he could not bear to finish the thought.
I must say that it's been the highest honor of my life to serve with the talented men and women of the Department of Defense, the amazing men and women -- young men and women in uniform. It's a privilege.
Note that he does not call the war justified. He simply implies that its origins are "complex" and not understood by the people. Rumsfeld as much as admits that a great secret lies at the heart of the war -- a secret known to him and to a select few, but not to the citizenry.
"And I know, with certainty, that over time the contributions you've made will be recorded by history." That's it. That's all he has to say about Bush's competence. Rumsfeld never states that Bush acted correctly -- he merely hints that, one of these days, historians will discover what really happened.
Perhaps the outgoing Secretary of Defense did his own version of the Billy Wilder sidestep. Doesn't "the contributions you've made will be recorded by history" sound an awful lot like "you've made THE Greatest Show on Earth"?
4 comments:
Which reminds me, Joe, of a drama teacher friend who went to see one of his students performing in a community theatre play. The teacher later told me, "It was one of the most hideous things I have ever had to sit through, and I tried to get out of the theatre as quickly as possible after the final curtain so I wouldn't be cornered by the student and asked what I thought of his performance. Alas, he got me just as I was leaving. Sure enough, he asked, 'Oh, Mr. Jules, what did you think? What did you think?' I stood there for a couple of seconds in unfeigned amazement and finally said, 'How do you DO it, night after night?'"
I then asked my friend, "What did your student do then"?
The reply was, "He almost collapsed in a paroxysm of ecstasy at the 'compliment' I had rendered".
Ride On! Joseph I had the same reaction to those "post election"quixotic remarks. A totally vacuous series of half thoughts and unsentences that allows us to project anything we want into the black grammatical holes..and we will..if there is a future to behold.
Either the secret government that has been running this country for lo fifty years or more, has a series of gruesome and spactacular traumas planned ahead for us..or, miracle of miracles, "we the people" are reaching enough of a critical mass of enlightenment, that we will finally take control of the reins of this runaway stagecoach just in time before it goes over the cliff of Mount Rushmore..in our collective fantasies crowding together in this common dream we can now call, The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Another bit of news to gladden the cockles of all our collective hearts is that Thomas Pynchon has published another masterpiece of phantasmagoria, aptly named, "Against the Day". This massive (thousand pages or so), missal , will take us all (that read it, ) on another dunpster dive into the collective troubled but awesome subconscious of America, where we can fish around again for lost national treasures and secrets, closely guarded by Leviathan and his consorts.
see here and here for those unaware of the most brilliant rider of our fiction mobile, we see madly careening around every street corner in every city and town in the United States today. HHyperbole yes..genius yes..fiction ??? Whatever we want to project on his massive metapysical screen we will.
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/
http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/
Happy Trails
hm. i dunno. those descriptions of the war (which almost sound like descriptions of rummy's "respect" for bush) could almost be taken as threats.
i can just imagine rummy looking at bush and thinking, you idiot, do you really want to cut me loose, knowing what i know?
these scenes are making the bard blush.
Good catch Joe... there is obviously a plan the public is not allowed to know of. The rhetoric has been the same rehearsed phrases since 911 when Bush appeared in an interview and said "This is the First War of the 21st Century!" He repeated that in several following interviews along with the other affected statement "This is a NEW kind of War!" When he said the word NEW it was trilled and emphasized with a sing-song sort of voice, exactly like when Howard Stern was being coached on how to read the radio station's call letters at a CBS affiliate, in his autobiographical movie.
Of course, Bush was referring to Afghanistan as the first war. Rummy is either talking about Iraq or "the War on Terra". Definitely a NEW kind of war...
also when Rumsfeld is praising the uniformed soldiers, he qualifies it - "with the amazing men and women -- young men and women in uniform." with the word "young". Does this throw a subtle arrow at the "older" uniformed soldiers who apparently were not enamored with his leadership?
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