Redstate

When facts get in the way, part two

By AcademicElephant Posted in War — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

As I noted in the previous installment of this series, I have no real interest in reviewing Andrew Cockburn's RUMSFELD: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy. If you want to read it you are as an American entitled to go over to Amazon.com and pay your $25.00 to get a copy. Did I say $25.00? I was mistaken. It's been marked down to $16.50 but even so, I consider that a steep price to pay for what lies within. I am much more interested in response to the book. Who will review and promote it? How strongly? And why?

The Washington Post was the first major outlet to step up to the plate, giving Mr. Cockburn an opportunity to write his own PR and then running a soft-ball review by Bing West, who admitted some of the more egregious of the many faults that plague this book but concluded that Cockburn's central thesis (Donald Rumsfeld is a sociopathic monster) is "right." Next the New York Times, perhaps concerned about the failure of the book to crack their non-fiction best-seller list, gave Mr. Cockburn an even greater publicity boost yesterday in their august Books section. Mr. Cockburn got a glowing review from Jacob Heilbrunn, who calls RUMSFELD "engrossing and perceptive," and as an added bonus the Times printed an entire chapter of the book to entice readers not already convinced by Mr. Heilbrunn's praise. That should certainly jump-start sales, at least among those who don't notice the rather startling disconnect between the review and the reprinted chapter and start wondering what the heck is going on here...

Read on...

You see, while Mr. Heilbrunn, like Mr. West, insists that Mr. Cockburn's "overall account is quite persuasive," he can't escape the distortions and bizarre analysis that are endemic to the book. As Mr. Heilbrunn admits, Mr. Cockburn relentlessly "places the most sinister construction possible on Rumsfeld’s actions" throughout, a highly-problematic methodology with predictably biased and myopic results. As an example to get a sense of how such a method works, review the events of your own day. Then imagine that a violently-hostile critic who has already made up their mind that you're evil through-and-through took up that day as evidence of your malfeasance. How hard would it be to take the most innocuous action and spin it into something wicked if you are not too picky about things like sourcing beyond, of course, the firmly-held convictions of your own fevered brain ("She went to the store. She bought chicken, salmon and pork chops. Don't you see? It's part of the pattern to destroy the innocent fish and fowl, not to mention the pigs, of this world!")?

Here's another example: Mr. Cockburn's first chapter as reprinted by the Times. His sources for his sensationalistic re-telling of events at the Pentagon on the morning of 9/11 are not any of the well-known principals who have a thorough knowledge of the situation. They're some (anonymous) senior administration official, described as a "friend" of Mr. Cockburn's and a member of the Mr. Rumsfeld's security detail, one Aubrey Davis, whom Mr. Cockburn credits with much greater intelligence and a more astute grasp of the situation on 9/11 than the Secretary of Defense.

Mr. Davis' recollections, which fly in the face of every other account given by Pentagon employees on that day, are the foundation for Mr. Cockburn's opening chapter. While not entirely original (the fringe left blog-o-sphere has many examples of Rumsfeld 9/11 conspiracy theories on offer, see here and here for examples), the assertion that Mr. Rumsfeld's actions right after American Airlines flight 77 hit the Pentagon were anything but his authentic and unscripted response in a book deemed worthy of such attention by the New York Times is noteworthy. Mr. Cockburn knows that his first chapter is hot stuff; he calls it a "metaphor" for his larger portrait of Mr. Rumsfeld as detailed in the rest of his book. So to buy the book, as it were, you need to buy its seminal first chapter.

And here's the problem with the first chapter and the review. Mr. Heilbrunn appears not to be buying what Mr. Cockburn is selling: "he [Cockburn] maligns Rumsfeld by stating that on 9/11 he tried to “micromanage” the crash site at the Pentagon, when, in fact, his instinct to help the wounded was admirable." So this barn-burner of a first chapter, this "metaphor" for the rest of Mr. Cockburn's portrayal of Mr. Rumsfeld, is in Mr. Heilbrunn's opinion gratuitous character assassination? The sort of "sinister" spin for which he faulted the book at the beginning of the review? So why on earth should we accept Mr. Cockburn's other outlandish claims about Mr. Rumsfeld? Just because they suit the preconceived notions and long-cherished justifications for self-righteous criticism of the Bush administration of the New York Times and the reviewer in its employ?

Perhaps, just perhaps, it would make more sense for Mr. Heilbrunn to conclude that since Mr. Cockburn's opening chapter is baseless, the rest of his book is not so very "persuasive" after all, but rather that his larger metaphor is an empty and meaningless one.

The danger of putting Mr. Cockburn's unsubstantiated and ill-considered claims out there as a book sanctioned by the New York Times are demonstrated by the response of blogger Andrew Sullivan, who links to the chapter reprint with the simple tag line "A glimpse of what happened in the Pentagon that day." Of course, it is not surprising that Mr. Sullivan, whose unhinged hatred of Mr. Rumsfeld rivals Mr. Cockburn's, would buy into his fantasy. But Mr. Sullivan might have done well to read the review in the Times before he linked to the chapter as authentic truth-telling to power, and learned that the paper's own reviewer thinks Mr. Cockburn's account of "Rumsfeld on 9/11" is bunk.