rumsfeld0511.jpe

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

Some have called it poetry while others have called the wit and wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld bizarre. Rummy’s “known knowns” statement brought to mind my late paternal grandfather, the original introvert. He had a subtle, dry wit if one was lucky enough to draw it out. Once he was asked why he was so quiet. He answered, “I know what I know and I know what you know. But you don’t know what I know.”

My grandfather had that Rummy spirit, the kind of hearty toughness that willingly takes all the arrows with geniality and grace.

With his free-speaking verse the long suffering Donald Rumsfeld was attempting to impart wisdom to the negative naggers in the press corps who couldn’t or wouldn’t attempt to understand him.

I was never one to call for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation because as I saw it, he was serving our country valiantly, leading the Department of Defense through a difficult war with the vision to understand that our Armed Forces needed updating after being in mothballs for so long during the Clinton administration.

The troops could trust that Sec. Rumsfeld meant what he said.

Donald Rumsfeld has been treated by the media and the left no better than Kipling’s Gunga Din, the native water-bearer who saved the life of a British soldier. In that era the British considered any non-European of a “lower order”.

Serving as the Secretary of Defense to President George W. Bush automatically demoted Rumsfeld into the lowest caste of Americans according to the MSM and the left…. that of patriot and warrior. The only kind of patriot the media approves of is the kind who protests against our nations wars.

One day, if our history is still being written in Kipling’s English, Donald Rumsfeld will be celebrated as a very great man. It’s doubtful that those who are currently delivering all the news that hurts the troops will ever understand that “known known”.

Though I’ve belted you and flayed you / By the living God that made you / You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”