The Fog of War

[jimslip]

Just been watching the above documentary featuring interviews with Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara. He talks about Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis etc. After watching it, you wonder how on Earth we are all still here. Military madmen wanting to obliterate Cuba, Castro himself telling the Russians to nuke the USA even if it meant his own country flattened. The dubious events that triggered the bombing of Vietnam. Advisors trying to discourage Nixon from nuking Vietnam.

We can only thank God that diuring all these events there were people in the US government and the USSR who seemed to still have a grasp of reason. Here are a few of excerpts:

[Snowy]

Saw this at the pictures when it came out a couple of years ago and subsequently bought the DVD.

Enthralling stuff, and, as you say, thank God there were people who did have a grasp of reason in those truly terrifying days in the early 1960s.

[jimslip]

I couldn't believe it when McNamara desribes meeting a North Vietnamese diplomat after the war. He says how they nearly "Came to blows" because after 48,000 Americans died and 100's thousands of North Vietnamese deaths and the whole country torched, it was all a, "Misunderstanding".

Basically the Americans had never realised that all North Vietnam wanted was independence, they had no desire to invade the rest of SE Asia with the Chinese. He described how they'd been at war with the Chinese for a 1000 years.

Doh!