Last night I watched The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. It was made in 2003 and released in 2004 when liberals knew Gulf War II was a mistake but long before the general public had turned against the war.The movie has stayed fresh not only because of its Iraq parallels, but because the hawks of the Vietnam era are still arguing that we could've won in Vietnam if only those yellow-bellied Congressional Democrats hadn't lost their nerve.
With four years of Iraq in our rear view mirror, McNamara's lessons are even more shocking because we've clearly failed to learn from them and have been doomed to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam. It's especially creepy because of Robert McNamara's eerie resemblance to Donald Rumsfeld.
Take McNamara's very first lesson: Empathize with your enemy.
In the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the end, I think we did put ourselves in the skin of the Soviets. In the case of Vietnam, we didn't know them well enough to empathize. And there was total misunderstanding as a result. They believed that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power, and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests, which was absolutely absurd. And we, we saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War. Not what they saw it as: a civil war.Replace "Vietnam" with "Iraq" and "Cold War" with "War on Terror," and you have a perfect analogy for how the Bush administration and its cheerleaders have failed to identify with the Iraqi people.
So now we're trapped in a quagmire with no clear mission for our troops with a liberal Congress working up the courage to stand up to a blindly militant White House and get our troops home as hawks prepare to say we could've succeeded if not for those pansy liberals pulling the rug out from our soldiers.
Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.
It makes you wonder if in 2045 our kids will be watching a 113-year-old Rumsfeld lamenting how he should've know Iraq would be disastrous. But would our kids buy Rumsfeld's regrets any more than I believe McNamara's?
Only when Dean gave an infusion of testosterone did some Libs finally open up. Now, some have even used the dreaded word "LIAR" although most, like Durbin and Shumer, will still use "mislead" or "obfuscate." But a person's instinct to not call another a liar is just part of normal non-aggresive behavior, so different from what you hear from Rush and Sean and Ann and Rummy, to whom any who disagree with their jingoism are traitors. In contrast to the liberal attitude, I remember a TV moderator asking Republican J.D. Hayseed (I believe it was he, who had just blamed even bad weather on Clinton policy) if there wasn't anything he wouldn't blame on Clinton, and Hayseed said "No." It's a stark contrast to the usual liberal fair play position.
We have seen how the Republicans acted regarding the war as a means to keep power; how they refused to allow voting on Clinton's nominations for various judiciary openings, in contrast to how Dems acted for Bush; hell, their lying about everything that affects us; their total unconstitutionality. If people of liberal bent (i.e., decent people) don't see this as a wake-up call, they never will.
There should be no allowances made for the Right. NO Tevyaisms. There is no "on the other hand." We are right and the administration is wrong, and their leaders, right up to the Decider, are no less than war criminals who, if we had lost the war, would be strung up just like the Nazis who were hung or jailed for their unjust war activities in THEIR "pre-emptive" war. And note that most of the war criminals stated as a defense that they were just "following orders."
Yes, Greenmiles. It is all so familiar. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
That said, I see no way to win this one. There's no enemy army to destroy or capitol to bomb. And I'm in agreement that both in Vietnam and Iraq, our leadership knew then and knows now we are not going to win. I think we had more choice about it in Vietnam, but in Iraq, I see no way to avoid a loss. How can we win anything when our leadership, to a man, has no experience in any kind of war. They understand none of the details, the hard part--they just don''t get it.
Even the most simple of military ideas--that good tactics cannot stand in place of a real strategy--something understood by every freshman cadet at VMI. This simple concept is beyond any living neocon's understand.
Sorry, I'm beginning to rave, but these fools have nearly destroyed our fine military, putting us decades back in terms of strategic readiness. They're promoting officers who would never make it if the military could hold the officers who are leaving in droves because of the constant deployments. The best leave first, because they have the most opportunity outside the military. The same thing is happening to our best NCOs and they are the very heart of every military.
Like I said, sorry to rave and go off-topic a bit. I've been thinking too much.
You are correct also in your assessment of the destruction of our military by the nincompoop Decider. When the noncoms go, the Army will never be the same, and the young officers who should be our next generals are bailing out in droves, leaving behind the marginal, the ideologues, the a**kissers. We will survive this mistake, but what about the next one?
And after watching the film, I frequently start transposing the names of McNamara and Rumsfeld.