I
must say I don’t object to its being called McNamara’s War. I think it is a
very important war and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I
can to win it.
Management is the gate through which social and economic and
political change, indeed change in every direction, is diffused through society.
You can never substitute emotion for reason. I still would allow a place for intuition in
this process, but not emotion. They say I am a power grabber. But knowledge is
power, and I am giving them knowledge, so they will have more power. Can’t they
see that?
Robert
S. McNamara (2004), Official Teacher’s Guide for The Fog of War, p. 5:
1. Empathize
with your enemy
2. Rationality
will not save us
3. There’s
something beyond one’s self
4. Maximize
efficiency
5. Proportionality
should be a guideline in war
6. Get the
data
7. Belief and
seeing are often both wrong
8. Be
prepared to re-examine your reasoning
9. In order
to do good, you may have to engage in evil
10. Never say
never
11. You can’t
change human nature
I
would rather have a wrong decision made than no decision at all.
Neither
conscience nor sanity itself suggests, that the United States is, or should or could be the global gendarme.
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.
Never answer the question that is
asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you.
I’m not so naive or simplistic to
believe we can eliminate war. We’re not going to change human nature anytime
soon. It isn’t that we aren’t rational. We are rational. But reason has limits.
There’s a quote from T.S. Eliot that
I just love:
We shall not cease from exploring
And at the end of our exploration
We will return to where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Now that’s in a sense where I’m
beginning to be.
 |
| Robert leading from the lectern |
