Spamming with a Relevant Quote

[dlgood]

"it was wishful thinking, overselling, the neutralizing of dissent within government and the idea that war was a test of national will..."

"To put it bluntly, at the heart of the calamity is a group of able, dedicated men who have been regularly and repeatedly wrong - and whose standing with their contemporaries, and more important, with history depends, as they see it, on being proven right. These are not men who can be asked to extricate themselves from error."

Points to those who can identify the speaker and the subject.

Comments

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

Robert McNamara on the Vietnam War. More specifically, those within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who orchestrated the war.

Re:

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming you either read McNamara's bio, or the Ellen Goodman article in the Washington Post this weekend. Or, you just know the subject.

She was trying to draw comparisons to the Bush administration's Iraq Policy, but I don't think it's entirely accurate. Primarily, because I don't think overthrowing Hussein was wrong. The real issue I've had with Iraq is the seeming lack of coherent objectives (beyond removing Saddam) which generally makes it hard to reach a satisfactory outcome.

But that McNamara observation is one I try to keep in front of me all the time. Mostly, because I try to make myself about determining objectives and subobjectives and then achieving them - not being "right".

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

I read the Ellen Goodman article. After. Google is my friend. After reading reviews for The Fog of War, I had suspicions, but I had to confirm.

I agree about the lack of objectives being a problem, and I hate that repeated mantra against nation-building from before the start, because the only way that a post-Iraqi Freedom world can be better than the pre-Iraqi Freedom world is by using a large amount of nation-building, and my take on the whole matter is that the post-WWII nation-building of Japan is among the greatest things America has done. While I'm not quite convinced Bush is doing it right, every Democrat besides Lieberman seems to have been saying "Get the Troops out now!"

I agree about the rightness of overthrowing Hussein. I'm sure, however, that in 1963 I would've supported Vietnam, too.