The Fog of War

I sat and watched about 80% of a documentary on HDNet called "The Fog of War", a movie/documentary about Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense for Kennedy, then Johnson during part of the Vietnam War. It was pretty good and its always interesting to listen to someone who was so intrumental in history, especially when hearing in his voice, the regret he has over what happened and the choices that were made. He, of course, has a book...and I think I might put that on my Xmas list on Amazon

there were 11 lessons that McNamara discusses in his book and the movie, and the book was written in 1996. These lessons are frakkin eerie, especially given our current quandry in Iraq. I have taken liberty to post them below... read them and transpose those thoughts to current day events....

The eleven lessons in McNamara's 1996 book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam:

1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
4. Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine…
6. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
8. After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did.
9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.

Now...given that I am somewhat on both sides of the fence gieven the entire Iraq fiasco, I did find this somewhat thought provoking. sigh....