I found the sentence rather banal myself, although I can see why it's an easy target.

I think you're right to suggest that it illustrates the apparent lack of tolerance for subtlety or complexity, but I wonder how much of that apparent intolerance is actually a political ploy: "Al Gore uses big words and complex ideas; therefore, he's too smart to be trusted..." And in this case, the critique of Rummie is probably motivtaed by a politcal stance against the war...

Kept coming back to this post, didn't know why -- until it dawned on me that I'd been parsing Rumsfeld as Sutherland. Don't ask; I don't know. And the whole time I thought, disturbed: "didn't someone else say this?..."

Off to watch Fellini's Casanova, or else work...

The words in the sentence are plain enough, but I suspect that his audience for his remark were not PhDs well versed in the art of subtlety or complexity in language. Most plain language advocates care about whether the meaning of a text is understandable to the (desired) recipients. I'd bet that the reporters in this press briefing weren't parsing this remark at the speed at which it was uttered.

That's fair, Beth. I think what I was reacting to is the assumption that because a given piece of language isn't instantly transparent it therefore lacks reason or substance. Rumsfeld's comment won its award in the category for speech that is "truly baffling" for example. And it just isn't. That attitude carries over into critiques of professional groups with whom I have a lot more sympathy than the DoD.

"This is indeed a complex, almost Kantian, thought. It needs a little concentration to follow it. Yet it is anything but foolish. It is also perfectly clear. It is expressed in admirably plain English, with not a word of jargon or gobbledygook in it. A Cambridge literary theorist, US Air Force war gamer or Treasury tax law draftsman would be sacked for producing such a useful thought so simply expressed in good Anglo-Saxon words. So let Rummy be. The Plain English Campaign should find itself a more deserving target for its misplaced mockery."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1098489,00.html

I do think that Rumsfeld's remarks are obfuscatory, rather than Kantian. For one thing, Kant didn't deal in tautologies with quite such gusto. If a report of something not happening -- for instance, a report that there did not happen to be american soldiers guarding a ministry that was sacked -- was received by a modern day Kant, it is unlikely that he would have delivered himself of this set of platitudes in order to ... well, what? Explain it? Deny it? Show why he could neither explain it or deny it?

Wittgenstein is the philosopher we should turn to here, not Kant. Imagine uttering Rumsfeld's sentences when you are asked about an overdraft at the bank. Or when you are asked, by your lover, about why you failed to show up at a rendez-vous. Or when a friend, having heard a report that you failed to stand up for him at some meeting, confronted you about it. In each case, the sentences would still hold together. They would be true. But they exist as a substitute, a sort of verbal bloc, between one's reponsibilities and one's actions. Obfuscation is not lying -- it is about another dimension of language. By ignoring that dimension, you have stripped away the real rhetorical coordinates from the speech.

Roger, I know you're right: but there's a devil's advocate in me (and apparently someone at the Guardian too) that's making me stick by my position. When Nicholas Kristof in the NYT (see today's column) suggests that Howard Dean is unelectable because he's too smart (and shows it), that he needs a Berlitz course in "folksiness" and that he needs to stop using big (French) words like "contretemps" in public then I find myself lashing out at any and all attempts to ridicule language that sounds too obsucre, or too elitist, or too high-falutin'. In the end I'd rather have a world where reporters can take Rumsfeld's statement and engage with it on its own terms--perhaps even hauling out their Wittgenstein--than a world where the statement is simply dismissed as "baffling." That's not ever gonna happen, I know, but what are blogs for if not wish fulfillment?

MGK, Hmm, what we have here, I think, is a conflict in views about context. For me, Rumsfeld's speech evokes not an intellectual pose being beaten by anti-intellectual news celebrities, but the famous doublespeak of the Five O'Clock follies in Vietnam. The parallel is interesting -- in the case of Vietnam, the style was set by the management intellectual defense secretary, McNamara, with his arsenal of state of the art terms, derived from reforming the organizational structure at Ford by way of Peter Drucker. In the case of Rumsfeld, we have a man whose inner circle derives its ideological flavor from UChicago. I think Strauss is of less importance in that geneology than the UChicago economists. In both cases, what starts as an intellectually viable set of propositions becomes a liturgic refusal to address reality. And surely that is not the purpose of intellectually interesting speech. It is to the intellect what neurosis is to the sex life.
In my 'umble opinion.

We may want to revisit the full text of his comment (see transcript: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2002/t06062002_t0606sd.html). The secretary is essentially trying to extend the context in which discussions of WMD (do they or don't they exist) take place by enunciating the methodology of intelligence gathering and analysis. This is not an ontological argument for the existence of WMD, rather an explanation of the heuristic and reflexive nature of the search. Where the obfuscation may arise, then, is in his implied claim that our intelligence services are making dogged progress. Whether you believe this or not, I think, places you on either side of the clarity/obfuscation debate.

I appreciate Chris and Roger and everyone who has contributed to this discussion. At the end of the day I might be more sympathetic to the Plain English Campaign if it had shown as much subtlety and historical awareness as has been brought to bear here.

Rumsfeld's "poetry" set to music and sung by an opera singer.

Need I say more?

http://www.stuffedpenguin.com/rumsfeld/lyrics.htm