
Death of the whiz kid: Robert Strange McNamara, 1916-2009. - terpua
http://www.slate.com/id/2222288/?from=rss
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spitfire
I have respect for McNamara after seeing the excellent documentry fog of war.

Many despise him for the things he had done during vietnam, but I have great
respect for the wisdom he decided to share later in life. We need more people
sharing the wisdom of their errors.

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TriinT
I wonder if the relatives of the 2,000,000+ or so Vietnamese civilians who
died during the war can also respect McNamara. Some mistakes are simply not
excusable. LBJ was the commander-in-chief, but McNamara was his right-arm.

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noonespecial
When I make a serious career level mistake in judgment, software projects
might fail. Someone might even lose their job. When people of certain levels
make the same order of errors, many people may die. We're both human. I
haven't the fortitude to make those decisions (even if I was in the position
to), but someone has to and sometimes they are wrong.

Some of them hang banners on aircraft carriers and pretend they are right
anyway. Some of them humbly admit they were wrong. The people still die.
Bummer.

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TriinT
So, you're comparing a software error to the act of initiating aggression and
killing millions of people, including 58K of your countrymen????

If so, you need to put things in perspective, imho.

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mhansen
I think he was aiming at contrasting the two.

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TriinT
I get that. But imho it's a tiny bit distasteful contrasting them, isn't it?

The total number of Vietnamese who were killed was to the tune of 3 million.
That's a "semi-Holocaust". No one would compare a software glitch to the
Holocaust, right?

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noonespecial
Ok, let me put the right hand brace on this one before it gets away. My point
was simply that humans are going to make mistakes in the course of their jobs.
People can be hurt by these mistakes. The difference is a matter of scale, and
not intent.

People want to make McNamara out to be Evil with the big e. I think he
probably wasn't. His actions later in life point to this. The idea is that if
we accept that people make mistakes (sometimes HUGE ones) we can prevent a few
of them in the future by learning from the past. If we'd really listened to
McNamara its quite possible we might have avoided Iraq. If we just call him
evil and forget about it, we miss the wisdom.

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TriinT
I entirely agree that one should try to learn from the past. I disagree on the
"scale x intent" issue, though. The initiation of aggression is immoral, in my
view. Attacking someone who did not attack you is wrong regardless of the
death toll. In this case, I believe that _intent_ does matter.

Sadly, McNamara would probably have been remembered as a great man had he left
his office after JFK was killed. After all, McNamara played an important role
in nuclear deterrence, during the Cuban missile crisis, etc. Too bad he was
foolish enough to help start an unwinnable, useless war in Indochina.

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tomjen
May he rot and burn in hell, and may all the world forget he ever lived.

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noonespecial
We went to Iraq, didn't we? I'd say we forgot him straightaway.

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TriinT
Good point. Only fools fall into the same trap twice.

Millions of Americans served in Vietnam. I think the veterans will never
forget nor forgive McNamara. He shall be remembered as the architect of one of
the greatest crimes in History.

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wlievens
> Good point. Only fools fall into the same trap twice

Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me ... you can't get fooled
again

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TriinT
Chomsky on McNamara (1995):

<http://www.chomsky.info/books/warfare01.htm>

Chomsky is rather ferociously critical of McNamara, as expected.

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joeycfan
Ho Chi Minh is responsible for the Vietnam catastrophe. He would have seen the
Vietnamese people go extinct before losing that war.

And, like in North Korea, they run a big song and dance on how they have to
reunify their country, but thats not it at all. It's Communism first. Have to
reunify _under Communism_

Until then, the hell with the country.

The Vietnam war was a triumph of evil. The bad guys won, and lots of people
here helped them.

