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Not A CN Post


Xiphosis

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... but kinda. It's relevant to CN, but more just something I found insightful. Link.

The eleven lessons explored in the documentary are:

  1. Empathize with your enemy
  2. Rationality will not save us
  3. There's something beyond oneself
  4. Maximize efficiency
  5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war
  6. Get the data
  7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong
  8. Be prepared to reexamine 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 have to say I have a good deal of respect for Robert McNamara, I think that's a fairly well reasoned list composed by a guy who saw and committed to a lot of heavy decisions.

Edit: There's more.

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Number 9 is just plain stupid. The real world good v evil idea is childishly simple. Both sides in every war claim to be the good guys and both claim to have god on their side. Whoever wins ends up being good and the defeated ends up being evil. There is no good and evil just human nature as he says in number 11.

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Number 9 is just plain stupid. The real world good v evil idea is childishly simple. Both sides in every war claim to be the good guys and both claim to have god on their side. Whoever wins ends up being good and the defeated ends up being evil. There is no good and evil just human nature as he says in number 11.

Number 9 isn't referring to good vs evil it is saying that you might have to do some evil tasks in order to achieve what you believe is good.

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I've seen the documentary twice. He raises some good points, though personally I vehemently disagree with his Vietnam policies and think he lost us that war. I suppose I'm more of a Curtis Lemay, scrambled half the U.S. airforce and had tank divisions ready to invade Cuba, while McNamara was saying to hold off and try diplomacy.

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I've seen the documentary twice. He raises some good points, though personally I vehemently disagree with his Vietnam policies and think he lost us that war. I suppose I'm more of a Curtis Lemay, scrambled half the U.S. airforce and had tank divisions ready to invade Cuba, while McNamara was saying to hold off and try diplomacy.

I have to say, I'm pretty sure it turned out better for both us and Cuba that we didn't invade Cuba.

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