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TechnoratiRobert Gates, Meet Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara is dead.
So are two to three million people in Vietnam and Laos whom he outlived by three decades.
And so are tens of thousands of U.S. troops whom he outlived also.
McNamara wasn’t solely responsible for their deaths. Kennedy and Johnson bear the biggest burden—and Nixon after McNamara sought asylum at the World Bank.
But McNamara did more than his share, as Defense Secretary, to map out the U.S. war strategy in Vietnam and to stress body counts, as if that were any decent yardstick for winning—either morally or militarily. He also authorized the widespread use of napalm and carpet-bombing, which wreaked widespread horror.
One of the best and the brightest, he led one of the sorriest and most brutal and most foolish wars the United States has ever waged.
To his credit, he finally grasped some of the hideousness of it all.
But he never did anything significant, when he was in power, to try to extricate the United States from that war, even when he understood it might be unwinnable.
Today, Robert Gates and his boss, Barack Obama, might want to learn a thing or two from Robert Strange McNamara.
On CNN back in 1996, McNamara said: "External military force cannot reconstruct a failed state, and Vietnam, during much of that period, was a failed state politically. We didn't recognize it as such."
We ought to recognize that Afghanistan is a failed state politically.
“Today, Afghanistan is a mafia state,” Malalai Joya, the feminist member of the Afghan parliament, said in a speech in Oslo in early June. “The U.S. and its allies are busy in the warloridzation, criminalization, and druglordization of our wounded land.” (The Progressive is reprinting her speech in its August issue, along with a great speech by Naomi Klein on Sarah Palin. Subscribe now to get that issue when it comes out in a few weeks.)
Gates and Obama, like McNamara and Johnson before them, believe that “external military force” can get the job done, despite the failed state that exists.
It didn’t work in Vietnam. And it won’t work in Afghanistan.
15 Comments so far
Show AllForce creates counter-force; it's not only a law of physics, but one of human behavior.
When will these people learn that force won't work unless there are permanent financial incentives to divert the human behavioral aspects of counter-force reactions on a large scale?
Without these incentives, there is no reason for the subjugated majority to respond in a positive way.
A decent comparison of McNamara to Gates. If only Rothschild could have been as perspicacious concerning the events of Sept. 11, 2001 since he has seen fit to condemn and ridicule those millions of Americans who realize, with much justification, that, unlike Rothschild and Obama, the Bush administration has covered up, if not also been directly involved in, the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01.
It should never be forgotten that Obama, in his speech that he gave in Cairo, Egypt on June 4, declared that "Al Qaeda killed 3,000 people that day". He then warned Americans that "These opinions are not to be debated." Someone should inform Obama that he was elected president, as opposed to a dictator, in this country and that contrary to what he and Rothschild believe, there is certainly room to doubt and debate what happened on Sept. 1, 2001.
Hubris you can believe in!
· Yr Obd't Servant
is this Mckinney?
mckinney grilling rumsfeld:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eootfzAhAoU
missing
money from the Iraq invasion/war, ongoing war..
McKinney and Nader. Are you people nuts? Why dont you add Palin and turn coat Mccain in with them?
Deepa
General Suharto, a close ally of the US, came to power in October 1965 through a military coup by massacring an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 people. On March 12, 1966 The New York Times described it as "one of the most savage mass slaughters of modern political history." Commenting on the US role in this genocide, Gabriel Kolko, a historian, wrote, “No single American action in the period after 1945 was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia, for it tried to initiate the massacre.”
During Hearings on Foreign Assistance before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1966, US Senator Sparkman asked Robert McNamara, then US Secretary of Defense: “At a time when Indonesia was kicking up pretty badly - when we were getting a lot of criticism for continuing military aid - at that time we could not say what that military aid was for. Is it secret anymore?” McNamara replied, “I think in retrospect, that the aid was well justified.” When Sparkman asked again, “You think it paid dividends?” McNamara responded, “I do, sir.”
This highlights WHO McNAMARA IS.
Obama has inherited a failed economy due to 30 years of Republican influence in the white house.Stagnant wages since 1980 while doubling American productivity and cutting taxes for the wealthy .Right wing Neocon Republicans are traitors and right wing religious lunatics have become gang stalking spy's that support the right wing hijacking of America. Lets keep these Domestic Terrorists who love torture and impose their version of self righteous morality out of the White House and the supreme court forever. Not one should set foot in the white house ever again.
Our country is hemmeriging jobs,a flailing economy, and the wars in the middle east will not conclude until we turn over power to stable regimes. Then leave to see what happens.
Bottom line , war = jobs , and we need all of them right now.
Its the wrong thing to do, but Obama did not create this mess, Republican policy over the last 30 years in the middle east created the circumstances which led to 9/11 and these wars.
President Obama is working to move the country into civilized health care and a new energy policy so that America can provide a healthy stress free work force to build solar and wind power alternatives. All of which should create a boom in tech jobs if we don't allow corporations to move manufacturing over seas, our economy will rebound . Is there any doubt about that, that war for other country's resources is far to expensive in money,lives and national security to not create new enemy's.
Out with the old guard and in with the new, its going to take time.Say about 30 years of Democratic rule.
As a side note, I hope Sarah Palin runs for president , just to prove to the right wing when she looses to Obama, that their hijacking of America is finished.
Americans have awakened intellectually for good, and we will not allow right wing religious lunatics to steal our country and support war by not calling it evil.
You send your children off to unnecessary wars if you like, but stop brainwashing our children to go too.
Take off your Jesus bumper stickers, Tinkerbell bumper stickers, and Superman bumper stickers and come back to planet earth.
This is not your country Chrsitian Domestic Terrorists,, now , or ever,it belongs to all Americans form all walks of life and beliefs, whether you like it or not.
Get over it, take your warrant less surveillance gang stalking freaks and go to some communist country that wants your new skill set, we don't want it here.Your Fired.
bornfreemen yet a slave to the system:
"Its the wrong thing to do, but Obama did not create this mess, Republican policy over the last 30 years in the middle east created the circumstances which led to 9/11 and these wars."
-yes and everything the Republicans did was done with Democratic support including the wealth transfers for Wall Street Fat Cats (bailouts) and the war funding.
"You send your children off to unnecessary wars if you like, but stop brainwashing our children to go too."
-yes precisely what Obama is doing by sending an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan to fight and die for Big Oil & War Profits Inc.
"Get over it, take your warrant less surveillance gang stalking freaks and go to some communist country that wants your new skill set, we don't want it here."
-yes Obama's FISA vote did that in the US, good point.
Ah, Freeman, open up those tired eyes! Out slowly is one thing; 0's going in.
---- We need single payer; 0's against it.
---- The poor need $$; 0 feeds the banques.
------- He sends more soldiers
------- He asks more death fund$
------- He makes GM pay golden parachutes and short union contracts
------- He allows bailout funds to go to factories overseas & in Canada
0 is W with lubricant.
Another naive, narrow-minded apology for institutional, systemic, and cultural corruption. There is more to political theory than a black and white, two-party Duopoly, winner takes all, money as free speech, corporate personhood, oligarchic, kleptocratic state. The good cop bad cop routine has been done so many times, isn't it getting old? Would you trust any market with only two companies? Why do we trust our entire democratic process to only two parties who feed from the same corporate trough?
I would suggest reading: "The Peoples History of the US" by Howard Zinn. "On Democracy" by Robert Dahl; anything and everything by Noam Chomsky, anything by Arend Lijphardt, for starters.
After that re-read what you have just written and think about how our entire political process is corrupt. We must be able to see the forrest for the trees.
Wow! ObamaBots will defend him no matter what wrongs he does!
So because jobs are needed, WAR is justified?
And wasn't it Obama who said that he was from Planet Krypton in one of his speeches and that he was here to "save" the earth?!
Talk about someone who needs to be grounded.
Now don't get me wrong, I am no neo-con - but I see that Obama is only an Extension of George W. Bush - and if anything he is taking it a step or two or three further than even ol W did.
Neither your status quo Democrats or Republicans need to be let back into the Whitehouse anymore.
On the Democrats side, you have Dennis Kucinich and on the Republican side, Ron Paul.
Now I think they both need to become Independents alongside Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader - these Are the People we NEED to Elect before this country crumbles into nothing!
Obama, what a JOKE!
Very good, and oh so true.
Gates not so much as Colin Powell. It was his lies that enabled the illegal invasion of Iraq.
cynical, you are correct. The GOAL is continuous warfare for profit. "The terrorists" are an ideal target for this because they exist worldwide in a never ending supply as long as the U.S. continues its militarist interventionist paradigm for profit. It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Some would call it a vicious circle.
The good thing is that it can't last much longer, only up until creditors from individuals to corporations (banks) to foreign countries finally realize they are throwing good money after bad with their loans to the U.S. government.
SIMPLE WILD-ASSED SPECULATION: At some point the military efforts will continue with reduced or no pay and benefits for active military personnel. This will breed discontent and there will no longer be a sufficient number of volunteers, so one or both of the following will occur. The draft will be reimplimented and/or foreign citizens will be promised citizenship in return for no-pay-no-benefit U.S. military service. The police state will become even more repressive, and U.S. born conscripts will be rounded up by force and 'impressed' into the military.
On the other hand the U.S. government could avert all of this if it would just CUT THE IMPERIAL BULLSHIT.
"Gates and Obama, like McNamara and Johnson before them, believe that “external military force” can get the job done, despite the failed state that exists"
The only thing they KNOW for sure is that it will support the MIC and make $$$$$ for their cabal and keep the poppies growing (despite their BS to the contrary)....victory or defeat is inconsequential, except as something to be reconciled before the "unwashed" masses (formerly known as "We the People").
pretty much sums it up,
Rothschild's articles are a bit shallow in my opinion, I expect much more depth of analysis from the editor of the Progressive.