The Fog Of Robert McNamara; Obama Nukes Initiative; McKinney Freed

July 6th, 2009 - by: danny

MAC THE KNIFE, RIP
ISRAEL FREES, DEPORTS MCKINNEY
OBAMA IN MOSCOW

I was on the ferry some years ago from Woods Hole to Martha’s Vineyard and a friend motioned towards a certain spot in the water.

“That’s where they wanted to do it,” I was told.

“Do what,” I asked?

Throw Robert McNamara, then a summer resident on the Vineyard, off the ship and into the water.

They never did it.

In the minds of a generation, it was that genius that convinced the country and his bosses, JFK and LBJ, that he/we could win the Vietnam War.

Mac The Knife was a briefer’s briefer, great at pointing at maps, with all the self assurance of a former President at the Ford Motor Company. He was the ultimate smartie. (Actually he would have been pleased by what Obama did yesterday in Moscow in meeting with the Ruskies about limiting nuclear weapons.)

He died at 93 early yesterday, and despite all of his “good deeds” and stint at the World Bank, he would always be known as the architect of the Vietnam War. His middle name was STRANGE, Robert Strange McNamara.

Never mind it was Ho Chi Minh who launched the wars of liberation after the American government turned down his bid for help against the French and who patterned Viet Nam’s Declaration of Independence after our own . Ho died in 79 and is still revered for reunifying his company and teaching various imperialists that his country was not to be fucked with. (I visited the mausoleum in Hanoi with “Uncle” Ho’s remains. It was mobbed by a constant stream of visitors. How many will visit Bob’s grave site?)

McNamara returned to his Waterloo (Hanoi) some years back for a conference on the “lessons of the war” with General Giap, the winner, and several American Generals, the losers. He was challenged by the feisty Vietnamese American documentary director, Tiana [Thi Thanh Nga], who made “From Hollywood to Hanoi” and other films for all the deaths he caused. There is precious footage of him freaking out and arrogantly lecturing her. The Vietnamese government was too diplomatic to express its rage.

In Vietnam, today they speak of the AMERICAN War, not the Vietnam War. If you missed it, you should see THE FOG OF WAR about McNamara’s role in the war and his unwillingness to admit that it was a crime.

Brad Schreiber writes about the film on Huntington Post

McNamara’s “lessons” in Fog of War take on a greater significance when applied to the current military action in Iraq and its corresponding connection to a Southeast Asian conflict that resulted in more than 58,000 American and 3.4 million Vietnamese dead. Morris feels the associations will be made and thus does not refer to current geopolitics in the documentary: “… For me, the meaning of the story is that when you have a predisposition to see something, you can ignore endless evidence to the contrary. And you can even imagine confirming evidence. That’s the worst of it. It was in service of this theme, believing is seeing, which as we all know has currency for our particular time in history, because regardless of whether this is a replay of Vietnam or something very different, there are identifiable themes here.

David Halberstam: Dead Wrong a review of McNamara’s book, IN RETROSPECT: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam [1995]

Robert McNamara says he miscalculated our chances in Vietnam, but what’s not in his book is as telling as what is.

[snip]

In these surprisingly bloodless, carefully sanitized pages, McNamara is like a player at the poker table who, when the game is over still refuses to show his cards. The book is almost devoid of mood, insight and spiritual texture. He does not reveal his own feelings at that terrible moment in 1967 when he realized that his military calculations were wrong, that thousands and thousands of Americans and Vietnamese were dying each week and that, of all the things that he had done in a seemingly admirable career, he would be remembered more than anything else for Vietnam. This is not his way; there are no feelings here. We will never even know if he has ever visited the Vietnam Memorial. READ FULL STORY HERE

Commentary: Galloway on McNamara: Reading an obit with great pleasure

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” – Clarence Darrow (1857—1938)

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell. McNamara was the original bean-counter – a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing. READ FULL STORY HERE

Moving on into the news stream, we had Obama and Medvedev meeting in Moscow. The National Security Network reported:

Washington, D.C. – President Obama met today with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in what was a highly anticipated summit, as the United States sought to steer U.S.-Russian relations back to a more productive focus on areas of mutual concern and interest. The summit produced two substantial achievements: commitment to a new START Treaty cutting both sides’ nuclear arsenals, and Russian commitment to allow the US to ship weapons and material into Afghanistan via Russia. This summit stands in stark contrast to one held eight years ago in Slovenia, where another American president in his first year in office infamously talked of looking into President Vladimir Putin’s soul.

That meeting laid the foundation for the Bush administration’s superficial approach toward Russia that focused on maintaining the personal “friendship” that they believed was established at the 2001 summit. Ã¢â‚¬Â¦

Obama also sought to break away from the cycle of silence and loud but ineffective protest that marked the Bush administration’s response as President Putin consolidated power and cracked down human rights. Obama spoke out forcefully on these issues prior to his trip and has scheduled a day of meetings with civil society figures in Russia. This careful balance lays the groundwork for a more business-like relationship that focuses on issues of mutual interest and concern – not on becoming soul mates.

PRAVA Reports in Moscow: Barack Obama and his family come to Moscow just as foreign tourists

Obama’s plane landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo-2 Airport. There was no guard of honor to greet Obama in Moscow because the US president arrived for a work, not for a state visit. It took the procession of the US president only 15 minutes to get from the airport to the Kremlin. The cars were traveling at the speed of 130 km/h. The traffic on Moscow’s Leninsky Prospekt was entirely blocked for that time. On Tuesday, Barack Obama is to meet former president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. The meeting will last for only 15 minutes.

Let’s hopscotch the world for headlines as John Cameron Swayze used to say:

China: 1434 Arrested After Riots in the Western part of the country.

Some Good News from Iran:

Reporters Without Borders welcomes yesterday’s release of Iason Athanasiadis-Fowden, a British-Greek journalist employed by the Washington Times who was arrested at Tehran airport on 19 June as he was about to leave the country. Confirming his detention on 23 June, Iranian foreign minister Hassan Qashqavi said he was arrested for “reasons conflicting with journalism and in relation with the recent street riots.”

As far as ReportersWithoutBorders.org knows, he is the only non-Iranian journalist to have been jailed since the 12 June Iranian elections. His reportage appears in the latest issue of Nieman Reports. It is excellent. Also, see the NiemanWatchDog.org site for more info.

Biden Stirs Controversy Over Iran and Israel Comment

Dahr Jamail, Truth Out: US Occupation of Iraq Continues Unabated

“We have passed the June 30 deadline that, according to a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on November 17, 2008, was the date all US forces were to have been withdrawn from all of Iraq’s cities. Today, however, there are at least 134,000 US soldiers in Iraq – a number barely lower than the number that were there in 2003. The SOFA is a sieve, and the number of US military personnel in Iraq is remaining largely intact for now.”

ISRAEL: Former US Congresswoman and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney was released from an Israeli jail.

The kidnapping of 21 international human rights workers attempting to deliver needed aid to a besieged people is an outrage, but it is hardly an isolated one.

AN ISRAELI VIEW BY GIDEON LEVY

It’s a good thing we have Shayetet 13. Operating at the crack of dawn – or was it before nightfall? – the daring naval commandos fearlessly took control of a rusty, rickety, unarmed boat bobbing in the middle of the sea. That’s exactly why we have a naval commando force – to take control of ships offering humanitarian aid. Behold, the guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

HONDURAS: A Few Facts About the Honduran Military Coup By Ken Silverstein

There’s very little truth to anything you’ve read about the coup in American newspapers.

AP reports movement against the Coup Growing.

The News Dissector