Accountability Eludes
There's no one as certain as a convert to a new way of thought. Having eschewed one's old way of belief, the new one takes the ascendancy and bursts into the brilliance of declared thought like the birth of a new star. Watching Robert McNamara during his interviews in a series titled The Fog of War, one had the impression that the man condemned everyone else's role in the calamity that was the U.S.-Vietnam War, withholding responsibility for his own careful direction of that very war.He comes across as the respected, wise old statesman. With the acuity of vision that hindsight renders. As though if everything had gone according to his script all would have been well. He was the policymaker for President John F. Kennedy, the trusted intelligence, the technical genius who could foresee how things would unravel if proceedings went according to his plan. He felt that war could be prosecuted successfully if one adhered to strict technical principles, just as one relied upon a sturdy business plan.
Analysis and statistics have their place. How, though, to quantify human reactions to various stimuli? Graph a war and be assured of its outcome on the basis of statistical analysis? In antiquity, ancient Rome developed a system of battle that defied its enemies, and it won all its battles because of its battle-proficiency, its development of a system that outranked that of its enemies' armies, with the unbreechable Roman phalanx.
Outside of the use of the greatest weapon of mass destruction, swiftly annihilating people and demolishing infrastructures, there is no manner in which modern battles can be fought according to the numerical strategy of an accountant whose business model for commerce was successful, but could not be successfully transcribed to warfare. But Robert McNamara believed in his genius to plan and predict, and so did the presidents who used his genius.
By the time it became evident that the manipulation of statistics would not and could not result in the victory he kept promising, it was abundantly clear that the prosecution of the Vietnam War was an utter failure, costly in lives and prestige, in trust and in self-confidence of two nations. Attempting to exonerate himself in his "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam", he never did quite manage to admit he erred horrendously.
That he was responsible for the deaths of countless lives. He conceded that errors were made, that there were misjudgements, but not that he held personal and singular responsibility for organized mass murder otherwise known as the unintended consequences of waging war.
Labels: Heroes and Villains, Human Fallibility, That's Life, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, July 08, 2009
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