Robert s. McNamara's Ten Lessons

[sweetheart]

1. The human race will not eliminate war in this century, but we can
reduce the brutality of war - the level of killing - by adhering to
the principals of a "Just War," in particular to the principal of
"proportionality".

2. The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons
will lead to the destruction of nations.

3. We are the most powerful nation in the world - economically, politically
and militarily - and we are likely to remain so for decades ahead. But
we are not omniscient.
If we cannot persuade other nations with similar interest and similar
values of the merits of our proposed use of that power, we should not
proceed unilaterally except in the unlikely requirement to defend
directly the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii.

4. Moral principals are often ambiguous guides to foreign policy
and defense policy, but surely we can agree that we should establish
as a major goal of U.S. foreign policy and, indeed, of foreign policies
across the globe: the avoidance in this century of the carnage - 160
million dead - caused by conflict in the 20th century.

5. We, the richest nation in the world, have failed in our responsibility
to our own poor and to the disadvantaged across the world to help them
advance their welfare in the most fundamental terms of nutrition,
literacy, health and employment.

6. Corporate executives must recognize there is no contradiction
between a soft heart and a hard head. Of course, they have
responsibilities to stockholders, but they also have responsibilities
to their employees, their customers and to society as a whole.

7. President Kennedy believed a primary responsibility of a president
- indeed "THE" primary responsibility of a president - is to keep the
nation out of war, if at all possible.

8. War is a blunt instrument by which to settle disputes between or
within nations, and economic sanctions are rarely effective. Therefore,
we should build a system of jurisprudence based on the Interational
Court - that the U.S. has refused to support - which would hold
individuals responsible for crimes against humanity.

9. If we are to deal effectively with terrorists across the globe,
we must develop a sense of empathy - I don't mean "sympathy", but
rather "understanding" - to counter their attacts on us and the
Western World.

10. One of the greatest dangers we fact today is the risk that
terrorists will obtain access to weapons of mass destruction as a
result of the breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Regime. We in the
U.S. are contributing to that breakdown.


These lessons are as published in "The Fog of War", a DVD worth
seeing regarding history where he and curtis Lemay come out and
make the point that had the US not won WWII, they would all have
been charged with crimes against humanity. In this regard, the
honesty is somewhat refreshing, as well as the still-appearant
dishonesty.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001L3LUE/qid=1113963475/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-1076635-0783206?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846

[rockedthevoteinMA]

1. I watched that last summer. If you get the copy of the DVD, watch

the extras, because those 10 were his. In the extras, it talks about how the filmaker had 11 (or 12?) lessons... they were much more powerful. (Not that these aren't.)

Disclaimer: I'm a young one...wasn't born until 78. I watched it with my mother who I saw become irate throughout the doc, from his behavior.

edited to fix my mistake

[sweetheart]

3. Rather backwards, these are "his" 10, not the film maker's "11"

Yes, the extras are irreplacable material in US history.

Honestly, this film should be mandatory material in every US history
course ever taught.

[rockedthevoteinMA]

4. Sorry for the mess-up and thanks for the correction!

It was an assignment for college, we had to watch the DVD, and read the Illiad... then write an essay about the horrors of war.

Pretty intense assignment, and I agree it should be mandatory in every US history course too.

[sweetheart]

6. His exposure of his part in LeMay's firebombing of japan is...

most disconcerting. I accept his "cold war" greater hypothesis and
reference to his ignorance of the vietnamese people's struggles for
independence as typical american hubris.

As well, i found it inspiring, that someone who I consider complicit
in an evil war crime, has, in his years, made his best shot to make
good on this earth. It is all i could ask of any human being.... and
his wisdom was indeed wise. Perhaps having been involved so profoundly
with the near destruction of millions of people, his heat did a grinch-like
growth to become wise in his later years.

Could i only wish this for others of his karmic ilk. He is an
unapologetic neoliberal, and rather on DU, we must meet his arguments
head on, rather than ad hominem. Geez, he was a democrat on top of it
all, and for party moderates, perhaps even a figure of respect.

Even he says in the film as yhou know, "Lots of people think i'm a
son of a bitch, and to say more about viet nam is a damned if you do
and a damned if you don't situation. I'll stick with damned if you
don't."

[KG]

2. did he come by this wisdom before or after 1 million had died in VN?

[sweetheart]

5. After, as he's 85 at the film's making

It has the actual footage of the private conversations

"We have a committment to vietmanese freedom." - Lyndon Johnson

"You can have more war or more appeasement.... " - LBJ

"I always thought it was foolish to make any statements about
withdrawing." LBJ

If you're at all curious, i recommend joining amazon.com's DVD rental
programme for 1 month, and renting it... cheaper than buying it, and
a chance to dig in to a video library of profound depth.

[Melynn]

11. I'm glad someone said that

I don't care what McNamara says now. I neither forget or forgive him over his role in the Vietnam war.

[LynneSin]

14. I don't think the movie was looking for us to forget or forgive

Maybe it was just his way of saying "Look how I fucked up everything - don't allow it to happen again". There's one scene that I cry through each time I watch the movie, which is when he talks about the bombing of Japan and related the Japanese cities to American cities. He'd show something like 30% of Toyko was destroyed and then equate it 30% of New York City being destroyed. The way the filmmaker brought something foreign to us and made it seem so AMerican just broke my heart.

Unfortunately, it seems our administration is not doing a good job of learning from our mistakes

[Bridget Burke]

12. Oh, but Jane Fonda's the enemy!

She rightly opposed the war, but her trip to Hanoi was foolish. She has repeatedly apologized for it but was recently spat upon by an alleged Vietnam Vet.

McNamara has blood on his hands, but he's a respected elder statesman. How nice that he lived long enough to see the error of his ways.

I don't think McNamara deserves public abuse--but Fonda doesn't, either.

[Lexingtonian]

7. very Cold War

and, on the whole, very Sixties.

I'll have to find the link, but there was an online publication/editorial by a British expert at Oxford on the present status of the War on Terror. His analysis was that what we now call terrorism was a side effect of the Cold War, peaking in the late Seventies and early Eighties, and in decline ever since. Similarly, the amount of people dying in warfare that was primarily, secondarily, or tertiarily related to the Cold War, and the few instances of it unrelated to it, has persistently declined from 50,000-100,000 per year throughout that War to the present rate of under 20,000.

In his view the 9/11 attacks' effectiveness- number of victims- was unusual and would have been in line with trend toward ineffectiveness and constant decline in the number of victims of terrorism had not the two WTC buildings collapsed so rapidly. Iraq is the second exception to the decline in warfare globally, in line with the bizarre rationale offered for it.

His conclusion is that the 'War On Terror' is an artifice and rationally unwarranted degree of intensification of measures against something that was becoming marginal and inviable and collapsing on its own. He looks at his colleagues at the endless seminars and conferences and in their long reports about the unprecedented threat and apocalypticism, and he sees a lot of "experts" who in more rational times on the evidence alone would be looking at the unemployment line- "security' being a leftover Cold War industry, now feeding leftover Cold War psychological set of needs and desires and unsettledness.

I don't want to engage in total idealism, but the conclusion between the lines of the piece is that the 'WoT' is a kind of mop up of Cold War careers and attitudes and small military fights, but mostly psychological baggage and a revelling in a bit of murderous brutishness that doesn't put the instigators in danger. In a sense, the story is of a world that is running low- perhaps out, within a generation- of the kinds of regimes (monarchies/totalitarianisms) and disparities and problems that historically caused serious kinds of wars. Politics of the democratic and deliberately inclusive variety seems to have won out. And there are people who are not entirely reconciled with this.

[sweetheart]

8. Unemployed cold warriors

It seems people in the war profession don't like being unemployed, and
will attempt to make themselves useful, much as mcnamara has in his later
years.

There is a story mcnamara tells in the film about his discussions with
some old USSR generals, and how the mindset of the cold war itself was
so explosive that they were locked in an old context of understanding
the world. Perhaps it comes with age, as much as i've met old british
WWII era folks who still hate the germans... and as death cleanses the
human race of the hatreds of the past, what hatreds are being reborn.

... with what weapons. I like the warm conclusion in your post. I
as well believe that the internet has opened the doors to a complex
global understanding that will increasingly prevent wars in the future
by venting the steam before hand, with people jaw jaw'ing rather than
blowing each other to bits.

[Lexingtonian]

10. found the link

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8421.htm

A bit dryer than I remember it, but to the point nonetheless.

[sweetheart]

9. pope kick

n/t

[LynneSin]

13. The Fog of War is the most amazing DVD - 200% better than anything...

Michael Moore has done (NOt that I'm taking any kudos away from MM - FOW is just that much better).

I think I'll go home and watch it again tonight! I have the DVD - it's one of my favorites!

[nonconformist]

15. The Fog of War is a must see.

Absolutely fascinating.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

16. Errol Morris.

Errol Morris is the director of this film. He is a genius in the truest sense of that word. Here are the rest of his films, courtesy of IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001554/