Movie Review – The Unknown Known

Donald Rumsfeld is a master or rhetorical flourish, as the title of this new Errol Morris documentary, The Unknown Known alludes to. Talking point sleight of hand like “Unknown Unknown,” and “The absence of evidence isn’t the evidence of absence,” was one of the reasons that Rumsfeld was, at once, both one of the most beloved and most hated senior advisors during the perilous first years of the War on Terror. Naturally, the man himself is staggeringly more complex than this simple caricature implies, and Morris has decided to put the spotlight him, albeit rather uncomfortably, in his latest film.

The Global Bore on Terror

Two weeks ago Monday, following the tragic events of Boston, CTV interviewed Tom Ridge as part of their coverage. Now Ridge is the former Secretary of Homeland Security, and aside from being the first man to hold that title and helping to manage the largest re-organization of the U.S. government in its history, his tenure in that post was largely unremarkable.

But Ridge, and this is how I took his appearance on the news, is a symbol of the immediate reaction post-9/11, a reminder that sweeping action was taken without a lot of thought about the consequences following a terrorist attack on American soil. Looking back on those events, it's easy to see where things might have gone wrong, and where other things might have gone too far, which is why it's a relief that any kind of visceral and emotional overreaction has been avoided - for the most part.

What Was It All For?

It was announced today on the TV news website TV Line that Jane Fonda has joined the cast for Aaron Sorkin's new program, which is currently titled Newsroom. (No relation to the classic Canadian show of the same name.) Within moments, a website that reports on casting news, ratings, and spoilers for American TV shows was spam bombed by angry objectors calling for Fonda's hanging, her trial for treason, the elimination of HBO and more than a few times, the term "Hanoi Jane" was thrown around.

Nearly 40 years after the fact, some people still carry a bitter, frothing resentment for Fonda and her 1972 excursion to North Vietnam where she was famously photographed laughing and clapping while posing on an anti-aircraft gun with a group of VC soldiers. This capped a week where she renounced American war policy on the radio, and visited with American POWs in Vietcong custody. On this latter point, it's been a persistent rumour for decades that Fonda was given messages by POWs for their families back in the States and she never delivered, a rumour that's as patently untrue as the notion that they filmed the moon landing on a soundstage in Burbank. 

It's interesting that this should come up today, because if the TV Line junk pile on Hanoi Jane four decades later is a reminder of anything, it's that America doesn't lose wars well. To put the failure of American foreign policy in Southeast Asia across three different presidencies at the feet of Fonda is disingenuous and simplistic; Fonda did her country no favours, and she has acknowledged as much in print interviews, TV sit-downs and even two books by her own pen in the years since. It makes me wonder though, on whose fault will responsibility lie for the failure of the Iraq War: the administration of George W. Bush, or Michael Moore and the Dixie Chicks?