Beyond the Ends of the Earth: Donald Rumsfeld, the Mantra of Progress, and an Outer-Space View of America's War on Terror

¹ Memorandum by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz, Myers, Feith and Pace, 16 Oct. 2003, reproduced in “Rumsfeld's War-on-Terror Memo,” USA Today, 20 May 2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/executive/rumsfeld-memo.htm, accessed 28 March 2011.

² All quotes from Eric Schmitt and Tom Shanker, “Washington Recasts ‘War on Terror’ as Struggle,” New York Times, 27 July 2005.

³ “Clips from Last Night: Donald Rumsfeld on 9/11,” http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/09/clips-from-last-night-donald-rumsfeld-on-911–war-on-terror-and-sons-addiction/, accessed 28 March 2011.

⁴ On Rostow see David Milne, America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War (New York: Hill & Wang, 2008); Andrew Preston, The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 75–101.

⁵ Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (New York, 1965), 50.

⁶ Kilcullen quoted in Trudy Rubin, “Worldview: Obama's Detrimental Deadline,” 25 July 2010, http://articles.philly.com/2010–07–25/news/24969811_1_afghan-government-taliban-factions-afghan-people, accessed 20 Feb. 2011.

⁷ Mark Landler and Jeff Zeleny, “Among Obama Aides, Debate Intensifies on Troop Levels,” New York Times, 12 Nov. 2009.

⁸ George Herring, “The Vietnam Syndrome,” in David Anderson (ed.), The Columbia History of the Vietnam War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 411; for a depiction of the way that Vietnam has been “remembered” see McMahon, Robert, “Contested Memory: The Vietnam War and American Society, 1975–2001,” Diplomatic History, 26, 2 (Spring 2002), 159–84.

⁹ Address by President Nixon to the American people Announcing the Conclusion of the Vietnam War, 23 Jan. 1973, Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon 1973 (hereafter PPPUS, president name and year), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=58057&st=&st1=, accessed 10 Feb. 2011.

¹⁰ “Lessons of Vietnam” by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Draft Memorandum for President Ford, 12 May 1975 (unsent), taken from http://www.ford.utexas.edu/library/exhibits/vietnam/750512a.htm, accessed 17 March 2011; for a broader discussion of some of these issues see David Ryan, “Vietnam, Victory Culture and Iraq: Struggling with Lessons, Constraints and Credibility from Saigon to Falluja,” in John Dumbrell and David Ryan (eds.), Vietnam in Iraq: Tactics, Lessons, Legacies, and Ghosts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 111–39.

¹¹ On JFK, the Green Berets, concerns on the periphery, and the impact of Cuba, see Michael Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 1–21, 69–72; idem, The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and US Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 123–57; Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy's Wars: Cuba, Berlin, Laos, and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Robert Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 184–87; Stephen Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communism in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

¹² “Summary of President Kennedy's Remarks to the 496th Meeting of the National Security Council,” 18 Jan. 1962, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963: National Security Policy (hereafter FRUS) (Washington, DC: G.P.O, 1996), Volume VIII, 238–42.

¹³ Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chapters 1–4.

¹⁴ On Kennedy and Laos see Seth Jacobs, “‘No Place to Fight a War’: Laos and the Evolution of U.S. Policy toward Vietnam, 1954–1963,” in Marilyn Young and Mark Bradley (eds.), Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

¹⁵ Memorandum from National Security Advisor Walt Rostow to President Johnson, 21 April 1966, FRUS 1964–1968, Volume IV, Doc No. 125.

¹⁶ Sir Montague Burton Lecture by Walt Rostow, the University of Leeds, Leeds, England, 23 Feb. 1967, taken from The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume IV (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 666–67.

¹⁷ Memorandum for the Record drafted by Paul Nitze, 29 March 1968, FRUS 1964–1968, Volume VI, Doc No. 166; Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 248–51.

¹⁸ Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1970), 20 (emphasis added).

¹⁹ Armstrong quoted in Jeremi Suri, “Henry Kissinger and American Grand Strategy,” in Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston (eds.), Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969–1977 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 67–68.

²⁰ Ryan, “Vietnam, Victory Culture and Iraq,” 111–39.

²¹ For a wide-ranging discussion of the idea that Vietnam was “lost” due to America's mistakes and a fulsome critique of those ideas see Andrew Wiest and Michael Doidge, Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War (New York: Routledge, 2010).

²² Rice quoted in Lloyd Gardner, “Obama Says He's a Realist in the Mold of George H. W. Bush. What Does that Really Mean?”, History News Network, 1 Dec. 2008, http://hnn.us/articles/57132.html, accessed 12 Jan. 2011.

²³ Memorandum from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to President Bush, 29 Nov. 2005, The Rumsfeld Papers, http://www.rumsfeld.com/library/default.asp, accessed 21 Feb. 2011.

²⁴ Remarks by Congressman Donald Rumsfeld to Congress on the US Problem in South Vietnam, 11 April 1966, The Rumsfeld Papers, accessed 18 March 2011.

²⁵ Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Sentinel, 2011), chapter 14.

²⁶ Memorandum from Donald Rumsfeld to Secretary of State George Shultz, 23 Nov. 1983, The Rumsfeld Papers, accessed 18 March 2011.

²⁷ Letter and memorandum from Donald Rumsfeld to Political Advisor to Texas Governor George W. Bush, Joshua Bolten, 12 April 1999, The Rumsfeld Papers, accessed 18 March 2011.

²⁸ Speech by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at NATO Council, 7 June 2001, http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2001/s010607c.htm, accessed 19 Feb. 2011.

²⁹ Transcript of Media Roundtable, Canberra, 29 July 2001, http://www.usrsaustralia.state.gov/us-oz/2001/07/29/rumsfeld.html, accessed 19 Feb. 2011.

³⁰ Media availability with Russian Journalists, 13 Aug. 2001, http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd59/59docs10.htm, accessed 18 Feb. 2011.

³¹ For an insightful analysis of this see Andrew Bacevich, The Long War: A New History of US National Security Policy since 1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

³² Excerpt from interview on NBC Meet the Press, 2 Dec. 2001, http://www.cnss.org/rumsmtp1202.htm, accessed 22 Feb. 2011.

³³ Memo from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to Torie Clarke, 23 Sept. 2001, The Rumsfeld Papers, accessed 12 March 2011.

³⁴ Memorandum from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to Paul Wolfowtiz, Douglas Feith, Torie Clarke, and Larry Di Rita, 16 Oct. 2002, The Rumsfeld Papers, accessed 18 March 2001.

³⁵ Defense Department Briefing by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 23 Dec. 2002, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2002/12/mil-021223–usia01.htm, accessed 20 March 2011.

³⁶ “Rumsfeld Says Iraq Weapons Inspectors Need More Time,” 4 Feb. 2004, http://www.acronym.org.uk/docs/0402/doc02.htm, accessed 23 Feb. 2011.

³⁷ Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Remarks at the US–Korean Business Council Lunch, 23 Sept. 2003, http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3175, accessed 22 Feb. 2011; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Remarks at the American Chamber of Commerce Joint Breakfast Meeting, 18 Nov. 2003, http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcriptaspx?transcript=2961, accessed 23 Feb. 2011.

³⁸ Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 643–44.

³⁹ Memorandum from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to President Bush, 18 Jan. 2005, The Rumsfeld Papers, accessed 18 March 2001. Underlining in original.

⁴⁰ “North Korea Might Now Have the Bomb, but It Doesn't Have Much Electricity,” 13 Oct. 2006, Mail Online, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-410158/North-Korea-The-Bomb-doesnt-electricity.html, accessed 21 Feb. 2011.

⁴¹ Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “A Perfect Failure: The Iraq Study Group Has Reached a Consensus,” Weekly Standard, 12, 13 (11 Dec. 2006).

⁴² Transcript of President Bush's Speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention, New York Times, 22 Aug. 2007.

⁴³ On the notion of decline in the 1970s see the essays in Niall Ferguson, Charles Maier, Erez Manela and Daniel Sargent (eds.), The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

⁴⁴ “Korean War Was No Tie, Obama Assures Alllies,” Associated Press, 11 Nov. 2010, http://www.journalgazette.net/article/202101111/NEWA/311119963/1006/NEWS, accessed 12 Nov. 2010; “Obama Speech Marks Shift on North Korea,” New York Times, Nov. 11 2010.

⁴⁵ Remarks by Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 6 Dec. 2010, http://nixonfoundation.org/contact-us/media-center/press-releases/remarks-by-sec-donald-rumsfeld-december-6–2010, accessed 20 March 2011.

⁴⁶ Mike Brownfield, “Donald Rumsfeld: American Remains the Greatest Republic Ever Established,” The Foundry: Conservative Policy News, 27 June 2010, http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/27/37139, 21 Feb. 2011.

⁴⁷ Don Nissenbaum and Jonathan S. Landay, “U.S. Efforts in Kandahar, Barely Begun, Already Are Faltering,” McClatchy Newspapers, 13 May 2010; and Karen DeYoung, “Results of Kandahar Offensive May Affect Future U.S. Moves,” Washington Post, 23 May 2010.

⁴⁸ “The ‘Lost’ Hillary Clinton Afghan Briefing Transcript,” Los Angeles Times Blog, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/12/hillary-clinton-robert-gates-white-house-afghan-briefing.html, accessed 20 Feb. 2011.

⁴⁹ Interview on ABC News, This Week, 7 Nov. 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-rand-paul-rep-mike-pence-david/story?id=120788248page=4, accessed 20 Feb. 2011.

⁵⁰ Ferguson, Niall, “Complexity and Collapse: Empires on the Edge of Chaos,” Foreign Affairs, 89, 2, (March/April 2010), 18–32.

⁵¹ State of the Union Address by President Obama, 25 Jan. 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address, accessed 22 Feb. 2011.

⁵² Remarks by President Obama on the way forward in Afghanistan, 22 June 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/06/22/remarks-president-way-forward-afghanistan, accessed 7 July 2011.

⁵³ Dexter Filkins, “Endgame,” New Yorker, 4 July 2011.

⁵⁴ “Independent Task Force Conditionally Supports U.S. Policy in Pakistan, Afghanistan, but Argues for Changing Strategy Absent Progress,” Council on Foreign Relations news release, 12 Nov. 2010, http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/independent-task-force-conditionally-supports-us-policy-pakistan-afghanistan-but-argues-changing-strategy-absent-progress/p23386, accessed 22 Feb. 2011.