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Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy
Book by Cockburn, Andrew
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
2 people are currently reading
190 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Cockburn
37 books66 followersAndrew Cockburn is the Washington Editor of Harper's magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editor's Choice Rumsfeld and The Threat, which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times, National Geographic and the London Review of Books.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 10, 2014
Cockburn begins the last chapter of this Rumsfeld bio by describing a March 2006 "Parade of Heroes." These were regular events in which veterans walked through the Pentagon, to be celebrated by Defense Department officials. This event was special because it was to be, according to a Pentagon email, "all amputees, and...with military members from all four services." The veterans, some wheelchair-bound, others steel-limbed, are applauded by the officials who mismanaged the wars that had injured them. Cockburn notes that "the hallways were lined with office workers, many of them in the combat fatigues that had become fashionable for day-to-day wear at the Pentagon since 9/11." If there's a better single image of patriotism warped to treason, I don't know it.
I sought this book out after reading Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy, in which Rumsfeld comes across as incredibly important, though he's hardly explored. Like The Bush Tragedy, Cockburn's Rumsfeld is brief enough to keep recreational news junkies like me interested and is written with a clear point-of-view. (This is in contrast to By His Own Rules, a much longer Rumsfeld bio, which supposedly relies more heavily on direct quotes with less analysis.) Unlike Weisberg, Cockburn's book often appears to be a hatchet-job, refusing any positive spin on Rumsfeld's actions. I give the book four stars because it's damn convincing. (I mean, come on, this is Donald Rumsfeld.)
The portrait Cockburn draws is of a power-hungy politician and life-long war hawk, the worst possible combination for a Secretary of Defense. I was particularly interested in his ruthless climb to the position under the Ford Administration and his ultimately unsuccessful jockeying for the Vice-Presidency, and his role in getting aspartame FDA approval is a stark reminder of the interplay of commerce and government. In later chapters, Cockburn writes well on the day-to-day of the Iraqi invasion/occupation, which makes sense, as he's written two books on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Here's my favorite anecdote, about Rumsfeld's rivalry with V.P. Nelson Rockefeller: "Relations were not helped by Rockefeller's habit of poking his head around Rumsfeld's office and saying 'Don, you know you will never be president.'"
I sought this book out after reading Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy, in which Rumsfeld comes across as incredibly important, though he's hardly explored. Like The Bush Tragedy, Cockburn's Rumsfeld is brief enough to keep recreational news junkies like me interested and is written with a clear point-of-view. (This is in contrast to By His Own Rules, a much longer Rumsfeld bio, which supposedly relies more heavily on direct quotes with less analysis.) Unlike Weisberg, Cockburn's book often appears to be a hatchet-job, refusing any positive spin on Rumsfeld's actions. I give the book four stars because it's damn convincing. (I mean, come on, this is Donald Rumsfeld.)
The portrait Cockburn draws is of a power-hungy politician and life-long war hawk, the worst possible combination for a Secretary of Defense. I was particularly interested in his ruthless climb to the position under the Ford Administration and his ultimately unsuccessful jockeying for the Vice-Presidency, and his role in getting aspartame FDA approval is a stark reminder of the interplay of commerce and government. In later chapters, Cockburn writes well on the day-to-day of the Iraqi invasion/occupation, which makes sense, as he's written two books on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Here's my favorite anecdote, about Rumsfeld's rivalry with V.P. Nelson Rockefeller: "Relations were not helped by Rockefeller's habit of poking his head around Rumsfeld's office and saying 'Don, you know you will never be president.'"
September 9, 2014
This is not a subtle portrayal but then its subject was hardly a subtle man. A major player in recent American politics and also in the U.S. corporate world, Rumsfeld gets a glossy, succinct overview full of revealing character details compiled and written by a veteran reporter. The subtitle accurately describes how Cockburn sees his target. His droll evaluations of the strategies, techniques, judgements and manipulations surrounding the Iraq War and its aftermath are hilarious...at least they would be except for the pain, suffering and death these machinations inflicted on American service personnel and the Iraqi people.
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August 1, 2013'Andrew Cockburn, for more than 20 years one of the most magnificently politically incorrect mavericks of English-language journalism, has now rectified the incompetence, laziness, and plain servility of the mainstream American media with this invaluable new book. Lean and muscular, with not a sentence wasted, it documents old suspicions, strips away hoary myths, and reveals startling new knowledge.'
Read the full review, "King of the Plastic Rambos," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
Read the full review, "King of the Plastic Rambos," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
August 28, 2022
“”The best time you can have,’ he once remarked,
‘is with a chainsaw.’”
‘is with a chainsaw.’”
March 16, 2008
Reads like a novel. If you think that "public servants" spend even five per cent of their time acting for the commonweal, you would be wrong. Ambition and petty infighting crowd out any concern for the American people. Read this book to learn how assholian Rumsfeld is.
July 10, 2014
Rumsfeld is an arrogant asshole, but we all knew that already.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 29, 2023
The surest sign that there is no god is the fact that Donald Rumsfeld lived a comfortable life and died at the age of 88 instead of being tortured repeatedly Hellraiser style and then dumped in a landfill. If there was a god, then Rumsfeld and about 99% of the Bush administration would have met this fate.
What an absolutely despicable man. Sycophantic, power hungry, status obsessed, ruthless, completely uninterested in the welfare of others, and deeply sociopathic in his foreign policy aspirations.
The torture memo authorization is the tip of the iceberg in terms of evil that he hath wrought. He is the embodiment of American bureaucracy, the type of individual credentialed and cunning enough with the right friends to work themselves into ideal circumstances, but never able to follow through in an actually successful manner. All hat, no cattle.
His decimation of the Pentagon and armed services’ administrative functions is one example of the lack of successful follow through, and at this point I shudder to think of the trillions wasted on defense budgets and inoperative projects that we are all still paying for that he helped midwife.
When you read about his plans or lack thereof for Iraq, the consequences for its people, and the malevolent nature of the occupation, you’ll wish you had the chance to smash a jagged, 30 pound rock repeatedly into his face.
All in all, this was an excellent biography and I’m absolutely interested in more of Cockburn’s writing. He has a superb method of structuring the aspects of someone’s life into a foundation for his narrative, and the evidence he uses to support his narrative is both damning and incredibly detailed. If Cockburn writes about you it’s not likely to be flattering, but it will be accurate and convincing.
What an absolutely despicable man. Sycophantic, power hungry, status obsessed, ruthless, completely uninterested in the welfare of others, and deeply sociopathic in his foreign policy aspirations.
The torture memo authorization is the tip of the iceberg in terms of evil that he hath wrought. He is the embodiment of American bureaucracy, the type of individual credentialed and cunning enough with the right friends to work themselves into ideal circumstances, but never able to follow through in an actually successful manner. All hat, no cattle.
His decimation of the Pentagon and armed services’ administrative functions is one example of the lack of successful follow through, and at this point I shudder to think of the trillions wasted on defense budgets and inoperative projects that we are all still paying for that he helped midwife.
When you read about his plans or lack thereof for Iraq, the consequences for its people, and the malevolent nature of the occupation, you’ll wish you had the chance to smash a jagged, 30 pound rock repeatedly into his face.
All in all, this was an excellent biography and I’m absolutely interested in more of Cockburn’s writing. He has a superb method of structuring the aspects of someone’s life into a foundation for his narrative, and the evidence he uses to support his narrative is both damning and incredibly detailed. If Cockburn writes about you it’s not likely to be flattering, but it will be accurate and convincing.
May 8, 2017
This is a short, stridently anti-Rumsfeld biography that focuses on his political career, business dealings, and time as SecDef. Has a bit of a rushed feel, as if the author was trying to get it published as soon as possible after Rumsfeld's demise. I did enjoy the rather strange story of Rumsfeld's Major themes include his history of threat exaggeration and challenging intelligence professionals to darken their analyses, his control freak handling of the policy-making process, the failure of his RMA transformation agenda, and his utter bungling of the Iraq War and failure to revisit his mistakes as the war ground on (his denials about the rise of an insurgency lasted for years, contributing to thousands of American deaths and who knows how many Iraqi ones). If you are unfamiliar with these themes/concepts or with Rumsfeld, this would be a decent book.
Possibly the most insightful point in this book is the idea of Rumsfeld as a modern courtier. His political career never got far off the ground (House of Reps, where his accomplishment were sparse), so he moved up through various federal agencies, attaching himself to powerful patrons, lobbying for better jobs, and isolating competitors in bureaucratic battles. If Rumsfeld has any true expertise, this is it. What's clear, however, is that he lacked the expertise or experience to be a good secretary of defense.
By no means is this book essential reading for students of the Iraq War or modern USFP. The best biographical study of the architects of the Iraq War remains Rise of the Vulcans by James Mann. Cockburn would have done better to have some critical distance from his topic the way that Mann did. Cockburn's contempt for Rumsfeld just drips from the page, which is not the appropriate method in my opinion. If you want to criticize Rumsfeld, just tell the truth, which is damning enough.
Possibly the most insightful point in this book is the idea of Rumsfeld as a modern courtier. His political career never got far off the ground (House of Reps, where his accomplishment were sparse), so he moved up through various federal agencies, attaching himself to powerful patrons, lobbying for better jobs, and isolating competitors in bureaucratic battles. If Rumsfeld has any true expertise, this is it. What's clear, however, is that he lacked the expertise or experience to be a good secretary of defense.
By no means is this book essential reading for students of the Iraq War or modern USFP. The best biographical study of the architects of the Iraq War remains Rise of the Vulcans by James Mann. Cockburn would have done better to have some critical distance from his topic the way that Mann did. Cockburn's contempt for Rumsfeld just drips from the page, which is not the appropriate method in my opinion. If you want to criticize Rumsfeld, just tell the truth, which is damning enough.
August 17, 2014
The life of the youngest, and oldest defence secretary in American history. This is a story, not of a politician, but of a wannabe king, or tsar, implanting himself at the higher echelons of political life and demanding fealty to his power. An arrogant, conceited tragedy of a man given one of the most important jobs to do at a critical time, and he failed. He failed his government, he failed his country, he failed Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of the world. Most of all, possibly, he failed morality and human dignity, neither of which can have a price. A wonderfully honest portrayal of the man Nixon called a “ruthless little bastard”.
October 22, 2013
Tragic story of a terribly flawed individual given immense power to destroy lives by the most inept President in our nation's history, many many people suffered and died as a result of their hubristic incompetence.
February 18, 2008
Why is this man not in jail? Where is he? How could we be such idiots as to allow men like this into power.
November 19, 2018
What a total bastard! Natuurlijk heerlijk om te lezen hoe Donald zich omhoog likt (onder andere via de smeulende puinhopen van de regering-Nixon) en onder zijn onderknuppels een waar schrikbewind uitoefent. Zijn obsessie om, niet gehinderd door enige kennis van zaken en vooral zijn aandelenportefeuille in de gaten houdend, het Amerikaanse leger te transformeren, culmineert in de rampzalige invasie van Irak, waar de snelle uitschakeling van het bewind van Saddam abusievelijk tot mission accomplished wordt uitgeroepen. Hoe slechter de situatie zich daar ontwikkelt, hoe stuitender de verantwoordelijken, meestal ten koste van elkaar, proberen hun eigen hachje te redden. Cockburn is vernietigend in zijn oordeel over Rumsfeld, maar beredeneert opmerkelijk genoeg dat de zwaar onderbemande aanval op Irak - een ideetje van zowel Rumsfeld als zijn adviseur, de besluiteloze neocon Wolfowi
tz - eigenlijk een blessing in disguise was; een veel grotere Amerikaanse troepenmacht zou net zo'n zooitje hebben opgeleverd, maar dan met nog veel meer doden, zowel onder de burgerbevolking als het Amerikaanse leger.
tz - eigenlijk een blessing in disguise was; een veel grotere Amerikaanse troepenmacht zou net zo'n zooitje hebben opgeleverd, maar dan met nog veel meer doden, zowel onder de burgerbevolking als het Amerikaanse leger.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews