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Comment by eumoria | Hacker News Reader

McNamara basically admits this himself in the documentary The Fog of War:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War

It's worth a watch but it's very soft on him and his role. Still a very good documentary.

Was looking for this comment. In McNamara's reflection, a tenant he called out was to understand the enemy. US didn't understand the Viet Congs motivation for fighting the war (freedom from colonizers) whereas the US viewed the war as a larger Cold War. This is the same as what happened in Afghanistan that we didn't learn.

I'd argue the US has not tried to understand the enemy since the Cuban missile crisis. There are more failures outside of Afghanistan, and I think the US is going to walk right into another one.

Great documentary. I felt it was a person trying to come clean and ease his conscious on his death bed.

Agreed. Great documentary. The part where Castro said he urged Russia to launch their nukes from Cuba to the US knowing it would destroy Cuba was chilling. Humans are not always logical. Don't assume somebody wont drag an entire country or the world to total destruction for some deranged cause.

I didn't get the death bed vibe from McNamara but I definitely felt that he was genuinely reflecting on the past.

The documentary on Rumsfeld was the polar opposite. I could also see Rumsfeld not wanting to give the enemy of an ongoing conflict any shred of material. It makes for a less interesting documentary.

Morris himself said something like he didnt really feel he got to know Rumsfeld and had no real idea what was in his mind compared to his previous interview with McNamara.

Guess Donald himself was one of the “unknown unknowns”

If that was him on his death bed he must have been seriously sharp in his prime.

I haven't live in that era, so maybe it's not my place for me to say whether Morris was particularly soft on him. I think the fact that he said that it was the president's responsibility, that revealed a lot about him.

On the other hand, given the Fog of War did play back a recording where Johnson had a much different view on Vietnam than JFK, I wouldn't put the burden solely on McNamara's shoulders either.

Regardless of what one might think of his role, it was still quite enlightening, and I think more people should watch it. I think the lessons outlined in it are useful, but too few have taken heed of it.

I haven't seen that one, but I've been watching the Ken Burns documentary recently. It seems suitably fair. Where maybe some of the proposed "McNamara Fallacy" breaks down from OP, according to archives that they go through in the documentary he knew his approach wasn't working for a long time, he just did not (or would not, or could not, depending on your perspective) say so publicly and didn't seem to have any other way to measure progress.

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