Shock Doctrine: Rumsfelds war on bureaucracy

So I read this excerpt from the Shock Doctrine this afternoon and I felt compelled to share it.

In this part of the book, Naomi Klien makes the case that shock therapy has been used in our own country. The excerpt begins with a speech made by Donald Rumsfeld to Pentagon staff.

"The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America. This adversary is one of the world's last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating five-year plans. From a single capital, it attempts to impose its demands across time zones, continents, oceans and beyond. With brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk.
Perhaps this adversary sounds like the former Soviet Union, but that enemy is gone: our foes are more subtle and implacable today... The adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy."

As Rumsfeld's rhetorical gimmick revealed itself, the faces in the audience went stony. Most of the people listening had devoted their careers to fighting the Soviet Union and didn't appreciate being compared to Commies at this stage in the game. Rumsfeld wasn't finished.

"We know the adversary. We know the threat. And with the same firmness of purpose that any effort against a determined adversary demands, we must get at it and stay at it... today we declare war on bureaucracy."

He'd done it: the defense secretary had not only described the Pentagon as a grave threat to America but declared war against the institution where he worked. The audience was stunned. "He was saying we were the enemy, that the enemy was us. And here we were thinking we were doing the nation's business," the staffer told me.

It wasn't that Rumsfeld wanted to save taxpayer dollars- he had just asked Congress for an 11 percent budget increase. But following the corporatist principles of the counterrevolution, in which Big Government joins forces with Big Business to redistribute funds upward, he wanted less spent on staff and far more public money transferred directly into the coffers of private companies. And with that Rumsfeld launched his "war." Every department needed to slash its staff by 15 percent, including "every base headquarters building in the world. It's not just the law, it's a good idea, and we're going to get it done."

....the coverage of his declaration of war on the Pentagon was sparse. That's because the date of his contentious address was September 10, 2001.

The Shock Doctrine, pgs 361-363
Naomi Klein