Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

Last weekend I rented Errol Morris’potent documentary on Robert McNamara, The Fog of War. I found the movie to be incredably moving and would recomend it to anyone who has any interest in recent American history. In spite of my many preconceptions, I found myself surprised by my personal reaction to McNamara himself. It’s hard to imagine a more conflicted and unsettled man. The movie is presented as eleven lessons from his life, drawn from both before and during his tenure as secretary of defense.

One point that McNamara and Morris make in the movie is, I think, esspecialy pertinant to our current situation. McNamara states, succinctly, that the reason the United States acheived success in the Cuban missle crisis but was defeated in Vietnam was that the people in power understood, quite fully, our advesaries in the former but did not in the latter. This lack of insight was, in McNamara’s mind, the foundation for failure.

Here’s a question. On February 23, 1998 Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States of America. Was our love of freedom one of his reasons? It’s pretty easy to google this one, so I won’t give away the answer.

Another question. Does the Bush administration know the answer to the previous question? Only they can answer. Personally, I’m not convinced. If they do, should they discuss it with the Amercian people in the clearest possible terms and leave the catchy rhetoric to the campaign trail?

One more question. Does knowedge of the motivations of your enemy and use of that knowledge help you fight them? Honestly, I don’t know. History suggests that it surely does.

Looking at Iraq, I think the question is even more disturbing. The motivations seem clear and, again, hatred of freedom seems pretty low on the list. Does anybody, not named Juan Cole, know who the hell we are fighting? We’ve heard a lot about bad actors and bad apples and Saddam loyalist and stuborn Baathists. We’ve heard a lot about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and a lot about Muqtada al-Sadr, but do we really know who is killing American soldiers, police recruits and damn near everybody else? Do we know who we are sending our military to kill? Is this really the recipe for success?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 7th, 2004 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Iraq, I'm not sure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.