In 1970 my father met with Henry Kissinger and urged him to read the McNamara study, later known as the #PentagonPapers. “But do we really have anything to learn from this study?" #Kissinger asked. "After all, we make decisions very differently now.”
Conversation
My father said: "#Cambodia didn’t look all that different.” Kissinger replied: "Cambodia was undertaken for very complicated reasons.” My father: "Henry, there hasn't been a rotten decision in this area for 20 years which wasn't undertaken for very complicated reasons."
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Thinking about this story in light of the end of the war in #Afghanistan, spanning 20 yrs, 4 admins. “Do we really have anything to learn from history?” From the Russians in Afghanistan, the French in Indochina, our own war in #Vietnam? “We make decisions very differently now."
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Nope, and similar mistakes at much smaller scales are made when policy-makers have to struggle for some sense with politicians who are only concerned about their personal numbers in polls...
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Your Dad is a hero. There's much love and respect for him in Australia for his defence of Julian Assange.
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Kissinger forgot that a bomb dropped on Cambodia fell on Alabama, (a state whose boys suffered mightily). Bravado's cheap when you ain't got a flak jacket that fits.
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