Kathryn Jean Lopez (National Review Online): What does it say about our culture today ? and about American women (of all ages!) that Rumsfeld's become a sex symbol?
Decter: What Rumsfeld's having become an American sex symbol seems to say about American culture today is that the assault on men leveled by the women's movement, having poisoned the normally delicate relations between men and women and thereby left a generation of younger women with a load of anxiety they are only now beginning to throw off, is happily almost over. It's hard to overestimate the significance of the term "stud" being applied to a man who has reached the age of 70 and will not too long from now be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary.
In retrospect, it is hard to overstate how absurdly, insanely insignificant Rumsfeld's studmuffin persona was, no matter how nicely it may have rocked Midge's canoe, if ya get my meaning.
This dreamy exchange was in 2003, which seems so long ago and yet here we are still in Afghanistan, still in Iraq, with Osama Bin Laden still un-apprehended.
Does it bother Midge? Probably not. It is a hallmark of the Podhoretz creed never to concede mistakes, especially those made in the deep romantic throes of ideology and power-worship.
But it bothers Peggy Noonan, for whom love had fled and flown smack into the windowpane, ridding her of her Rummy illusions.
I like Donald Rumsfeld. I?ve always thought he was a hard-working, intelligent man. I respected his life in public service at the highest and most demanding levels. So it was with some surprise that I found myself flinging his book against a wall in hopes I would break its stupid little spine.
?Known and Unknown,? his memoir of his tumultuous time in government, is so bad it?s news even a month after its debut. It takes a long time to read because there are a lot of words, most of them boring.
[snip]
Second-rateness marks the book, which is an extended effort at blame deflection.
[snip]
If you asked most Americans why we went into Afghanistan in the weeks after 9/11, they would answer, with perfect common sense, that it was to get the bad guys?to find or kill Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda followers, to topple the Taliban government that had given them aid and support, to destroy terrorist networks and operations. New York at the time of the invasion, October 2001, was still, literally, smoking; the whole town still carried the acrid smell of Ground Zero. The scenes of that day were still vivid and sharp. New York still isn?t over it and will never be over it, but what happened on 9/11 was fresh, and we wanted who did it to get caught.
[snip]
The failure to find bin Laden was a seminal moment in the history of the war in Afghanistan. And it was a catastrophe. From that moment?the moment he escaped his apparent hideout in Tora Bora and went on to make his sneering speeches and send them out to the world?from that moment everything about the Afghanistan war became unclear, unfocused, murky and confused. The administration in Washington, emboldened by what it called its victory over the Taliban, decided to move on Iraq. Its focus shifted, it took its eye off the ball, and Afghanistan is now what it is.
[snip]
It is the great scandal of the wars of the Bush era that the U.S. government failed to get him and bring him to justice. It is the shame of this book that Don Rumsfeld lacks the brains to see it, or the guts to admit it.
Well, some of us uncouth lefties were saying this a while ago, but better late than never, Pegs!
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2011/03/aging-stud-releases-dud.html
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