nature is not mute, but reductionism has made us deaf
Click to viewTHE CU CHI TUNNELS: A Documentary of the Vietnam War, as recounted by the Viet Cong
obviously, one cannot conduct "just war" without an ethical authority... and especially not against an underdog who is using Sun Tzu's Art of War as their handbook, and who is also willing to live in an underground civilization until they triumph!
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lately, my dreams have been haunted by the concept of a "just world"
most recently, my maternal grandfather was crying on my shoulder, literally calling for his "mommy!"
the most obvious macrocosmic situation (outside of our immediate family dynamics) that i could relate this to was...
Robert McNamara's about-face concerning his bungled Vietnam strategy & the obvious correlation to Afganistan
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McNamara put in place a statistical strategy for victory in Vietnam. He concluded that there were a limited number of Viet Cong fighters in Vietnam and that a war of attrition would destroy them. He applied metrics (body counts) to determine how close to success his plan was.
Although he was a prime architect of the Vietnam War and repeatedly overruled the JCS on strategic matters, McNamara gradually became skeptical about whether the war could be won by deploying more troops to South Vietnam and intensifying the bombing of North Vietnam, a claim he would publish in a book years later. He also stated later that his support of the Vietnam war was given out of loyalty to administration policy. He traveled to Vietnam many times to study the situation firsthand and became increasingly reluctant to approve the large force increments requested by the military commanders.
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McNamara has said that the Domino Theory was the main reason for entering the Vietnam War. In the same interview he states, "Kennedy hadn't said before he died whether, faced with the loss of Vietnam, he would [completely] withdraw; but I believe today that had he faced that choice, he would have withdrawn."[citation needed]
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His memoir, In Retrospect, published in 1995, presented an account and analysis of the Vietnam War from his point of view. Reviews were very mixed. The book was viewed as McNamara's attempt to apologize for his role in the war, but it also has been seen as shifting blame to other people and as an attempt to transform his image from an architect of the war into a virtual opponent.
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The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 Errol Morris documentary consisting mostly of interviews with Robert McNamara and archival footage. It went on to win the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The particular structure of this personal account is accomplished with the characteristics of an intimate dialogue. As McNamara explains, it is a process of examining the experiences of his long and controversial period as the United States Secretary of Defense, as well as other periods of his personal and public life. In this documentary in lesson 8 he referred to the Vietnam war and he said " None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning."
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from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara
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but these outlines are particularly crucial:
* R.S. McNamara's eleven lessons of war
* Ten additional lessons from R.S. McNamara
* Eleven lessons from the Vietnam War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War
When asked to apply the eleven lessons from In Retrospect to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, McNamara refused, arguing that ex-secretaries of defense must not comment upon the incumbent defense secretary's policies. He suggested other people could apply the eleven lessons to the war in Iraq, but that he would not, noting that the lessons are generally about war, not a specific war.
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...double-speak weaseling to not criticise the commamder in chief?
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however, @:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0125-01.htm
'It's Just Wrong What We're Doing'
In an exclusive interview, repentant Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara breaks his silence on Iraq: The United States, he says, is making the same mistakes all over again
by Doug Saunders
"...Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why..."
"I don't believe that Kennedy would be reacting the way Bush is. For one thing, Kennedy reached out. A critic in those early days of the administration was John Kenneth Galbraith [the Canadian economist, who believed Vietnam was a bad idea]. And Kennedy reached out, and appointed him to a high-level position, and he talked to him about Vietnam. You don't see that today."
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and here's the smoking gun, as it were ;~})>
_Death doesn't end Robert McNamara debate_
By DAVID ROGERS | 7/7/09 4:31 AM EST
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24616_Page2.html
“If McNamara had come out against the war in 1968, it would have had an impact,” Sheehan said. “But his ego was so large he could never apologize. He was haunted by those who died in the rice paddies and long grass but could never say he was sorry.”
Greenway recalls a meeting he witnessed between a much older McNamara and John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard University economist who had been an outspoken critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
The two adversaries met in Vermont at Galbraith’s home. “McNamara walked up to Galbraith, who was standing, all of 6-foot-7 whatever, and said, ‘Ken, you were right and I was wrong,’” Greenway said. “It was an extraordinary kind of event.”
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also q.v.
_Exit Strategy_
In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam
by James K. Galbraith
Originally published in the October/November 2003 issue of Boston Review
http://bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html
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Galbraith and Vietnam
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050314/parker
By Richard Parker, February 24, 2005
This article appeared in the March 14, 2005 edition of The Nation.
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And how does this relate to our current situation?
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Vietnam again, ask Galbraith
by Crispin Hull on October 10, 2009
http://www.crispinhull.com.au/2009/10/10/vietnam-again-ask-galbraith/
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not to get too confused by this whole mess, but there is also a curious coincidence that Peter Galbraith (son of economist John Kenneth Galbraith) is a career diplomat and former U.N. envoy who recently lost his post after alleging that the U.N. helped cover up fraud during and after the recent presidential election in Afghanistan.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/12/eveningnews/main5380448.shtml
http://www.thetakeaway.org/stories/2009/oct/01/dismissed-afghan-envoy-speaks-out/#transcript
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6856029.ece
http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/10/peter-galbraith-on-afghan-election-fraud
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/05/galbraith-troops-afghanistan/
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/5/fired_un_official_peter_galbraith_accuses
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_It's Time for Us to Go_
by Christopher Buckley
"Get out of Afghanistan now, Mr. President. And here’s why."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-28/its-time-for-us-to-go/?cid=tag:all1
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or maybe i've been watching dune too much, lately?
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As the health care debates continue & the troops keep marching on... I wonder, is there middle way between the the unfortunately often absolute apathy of the vulgar form of gov't (by which i believe societies tend to operate, ultimately... please help create an alternative?) & the sometimes perhaps unrealistically idealistic ethos of kindness (that i wish to engender among our communities, by whatever means necessary)?
An old friend & I had spoken at length about this, and he asked me how I thought that people would continue to treat each other with such compassion without the influence of role models such as the philosopher king?
I have often contemplated the pros & cons of the creation and inevitable dissolution of cults of personality...
And another of my trusted counselors brought up the famous example of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
"His immediate resignation of his absolute authority with the end of the crisis has often been cited as an example of outstanding leadership, service to the greater good, civic virtue, and modesty..."
(In the Paradiso, Dante used Cincinnatus as an example of an ethical citizen.)
"...George Washington was often compared to Cincinnatus for his willingness to give up near-absolute power once the crisis of the American Revolution had passed and victory had been won"
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on that note, i started relating more to my paternal grandmother's side of the family...
in fact, i am related to Richard Montgomery
and here's an excellent exegesis of the story told by that painting!
whereas this political tract, attributed to Thomas Paine, uses an old allegorical method to inspire people to rise up and take arms in the rebellion through a phantasmagorical pep talk:
A dialogue between the ghost of General Montgomery, just arrived from the Elysian Fields; and an American delegate, in a wood near Philadelphia. Printed and sold by R. Bell, in Third-Street. 1776
and here's a poem about montgomery, written as a parody of the death of general wolfe... written by henry livingston, (a cousin of montgomery's wife janet... and who also served under montgomery in 1775) and published in the Country Journal and Poughkeepsie Advertiser, Aug 15, 1787
this sort of allusion to montgomery's ghost as a martyr'd omen was apparently quite common all the way through the War of 1812
looks like i am going to have to go to a physical library to read this article, though...
The Many Deaths of Montgomery: Audiences and Pamphlet Plays of the Revolution" Strand Am Lit Hist.1997; 9: 1-20
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Meanwhile, I'm going to have to reinterpret my concept of the bonobo methods of conflict resolution, according to some data that I recently discovered.
My first thought is that even the Orang Asli are hunters... they just don't hunt humans (although they have recently realized that they have to defend their territory from foreign aggressors, and at least the Islamic courts in Malaysia have defended them, as an example to the world for how indigenous people's sovereignty rights must be protected!)
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And although my last reference to enlightened absolutism does also remind me of the dark side of the philosopher king, I will also continue to support & encourage those rebels who contribute to The Great Work... in spite of the odds against them!
In this video, Terence McKenna points out the essential similarities between Alchemy & Shamanism, including synergetic reverence for Gaia:
The Alchemical Dream Rebirth of the Great Work
As a final note, I was looking for an Arabic reference for The Great Work, and besides references to Rumi & Sufism, I also found this transliteration: al-'amal al-a'zam!