Archive: 7 posts

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Just heard the sad news that Robert McNamara has died at the age of 93. Many of you may not have heard of McNamara before but he was the secretery of defence under Kennedy and Johnson and later the head of the world bank. McNamara was a controversial figure but was an incredibly smart, rational and honest man. He later became a strong critic of the U.S.'s nuclear proliferation, military spending and the Vietnam war. If only someone like him had been present in the U.S. administration in the last decade perhaps many of the recent calamitys in U.S. foreign policies could have been avoided. So R.I.P. to a truly great man and a personal hero of mine. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8136595.stm http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.22.04/gifs/mcnamara-0404.jpg "Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve. LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" "What makes us omniscient? Have we a record of omniscience? We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe we should ever apply that economic, political, or military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn't have been there! None of our allies supported us; not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning." "I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today. There'll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. You make one mistake and you're going to destroy nations" "At my age, 85, I'm at age where I can look back and derive some conclusions about my actions. My rule has been try to learn, try to understand what happened. Develop the lessons and pass them on."

2009-07-06 17:40:00 Author: Sosaku Posts: 146

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Shmaaa!!! Why must people die constantly this week!!

2009-07-06 17:57:00 Author: Outlaw-Jack Posts: 5757

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He sounds like a pretty cool guy. RIP

2009-07-06 18:36:00 Author: Code1337 Posts: 3476

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aw, RIP

2009-07-06 18:41:00 Author: oldage Posts: 2824

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DENGIT. A lot of famous people are dying!

2009-07-06 19:48:00 Author: TheMarvelousHat Posts: 542

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McNamara? i thought you were talking about the football player >_<

2009-07-06 20:26:00 Author: Unknown User

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Everyone with a modicum of interest in the Cold War should see Fog of War. actually, strike that. Anyone with a modicum of interest in the human condition should see that movie. It's a documentary on McNamara by Errol Morris. this is a man intimately involved in some of the hardest military decisions of the 20th century. Recounting the decisions made, he breaks down in tears during interviews on this film. McNamara really is a fascinating figure with some serious wisdom to dispense. I saw more recent interviews with him on the Dr. Strangelove blu ray, and man has he aged in the last decade. In those interviews he just didn't have the vibrancy of the Errol Morris documentary - his voice is almost completely gone, and he just looks like a man on his way out the door. It's amazing that even in his 90s he was giving such clear, concise, vivid interviews. The guy had a brain on him, that's for sure. it's sad that he's gone - and it comes as yet another sign that we're in a new age, a new time, a new era of history.

2009-07-08 07:15:00 Author: Teebonesy Posts: 1937

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