Old news I know, but I can't help giving at least passing notice to this Donald Rumsfeld memo from 2003 (h/t Sullivan via Tom O'Hare). Now, I've recently made a few brief forays into local electoral politics, and I'll admit that I've written memos that look a bit like this - to-do lists that make sure everyone's on the same page, things aren't falling off peoples' radars, and the trains are generally running on time. In such communication, one doesn't always spell out the nuances and complexities of given tasks. So, I'm trying to be a bit charitable. I'm sure (I hope) there's missing context. Still, bullets that say things like "make sure the printer is getting our palmcards printed" or "get that latest Chicago Tribune article up on the Web site" really aren't in the same league as "We also need to solve the Pakistan problem" or "Korea doesn't seem to be going well." Even in a quick status memo, those seem like points that merit a bit of explanatory verbiage - maybe even their very own whole document.
That said, the diplomacy-as-haiku really isn't the part of this document that disturbs me. The fact that Doug "dumbest-fucking-guy-on-the-planet" Feith was being told to just "[come] up with proposals for [Rumsfeld] to send around" regarding several of America's most complex and vexing international problems is pretty disconcerting. Is this really how policy gets made?
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