The Fog Of War

I finally got around to watching The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara yesterday.

All I can say is, wow. Anyone who doesn’t think our situation in Iraq today is not similar to the situation in Vietnam needs to see this. It’s oh so clear that the people running this country have not learned a damn thing in the ensuing 40 years. Some of the things LBJ said in 1964 (according to the movie) could just have easily come out of GW Bush’s mouth. I’ve blogged previously about how Rumsfeld has channeled McNamara.

One point McNamara made that stands out in my memory was about the huge culture gap between the US and Vietnam, and its resulting problems. He more or less said, “we though we were fighting the Cold War. They (the Vietnamese) thought they were fighting a civil war”. This was contrasted sharply in the movie with how the Cuban Missile Crisis was handled, where McNamara describes how the US players put themselves into the Soviet shoes and thought through how to resolve the crisis and save face on both sides.

With Vietnam, LBJ is quoted as saying they didn’t know what was going on in Vietnam as they got into the war, except that they knew they had to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese. “We need to be able to guarantee their security” was another phrase I jotted down as I watched. The parallels with today are so obvious it’s not even funny.

McNamara paints himself now as someone who had grave reservations about Vietnam but ran the war as best he could out of loyalty, until finally he found himself disagreeing with LBJ so strongly he had to go. Whether that’s really how it was, I don’t know. And although he was pushed rather strongly by the filmmakers, he refused to say whether he regretted what he did as Secretary of Defense or explain why, if he felt the war was wrong, he would not speak out against it after he left government service. he sys he has his reasons, but doesn’t say what they are.

All in all, for history or political buffs, it’s well worth renting. In the additional materials on the DVD are several clips not included in the movie. One was the famous 1964 ‘girl with dasies/nuclear bomb’ commercial LBJ used. I’d read about it many times but never seen it. I sat there slackjawed as it played out – it is amazingly powerful.

Religion and Politics Don’t Mix

I let slide the recent report that the GOP is trying to get churches in PA more actively involved in politics, but taken together with this report about Bush’s trip to the Vatican it’s a disturbing trend.

It’s no secret that regular church-goers are significantly more likely to vote Republican. And as the Times pointed out, African-American churches are frequently strongly involved in ‘get out the vote’ efforts for the Democrats. So in that sense, why should this matter?

It matters because this administration has tried in numerous ways to blur the line between religion and politics. And as a member of a minority religion I find that profoundly threatening. The more talk I hear about Jesus in the public sphere and from elected officials, the less I feel like this is my America too.

Gorbachev calls W A Commie

Mikhail Gorbachev got off a good shot at George W Bush tonight on Nightline. It’s too soon for a transcript, but roughly here’s what he said:

The desire to bring democracy to countries that have other customs and traditions … it’s a very primative form of thinking, like what the old-line Bolsheviks would do.

In other words, Gorbachev called W a commie.

I’ll update tomorrow when a transcript is available.

Best Bit from the Day

The best quote from the Ronald Reagan funeral – perhaps from the entire week – belonged to Ron Reagan Jr today:

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.

Thanks Kevin Drum and the Washington Post for the pointers to a transcript.

Yay TiVo

Have had the blahs the last day or so, maybe I’m a bit blogged out. Here’s a bit of good news to those of us with multi-TiVo households:

TiVo has cut their monthly rates for the 2nd through 5th TiVo in the household. That’s $72 less I have to pay them.

My feeling?