Gordaleman wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:26 pm
I haven't read 'The fog of war' but I'm aware of it's contents and plenty of other dirty tricks by the American governments over the years. The Gulf of Tonkin incident for one that triggered the Vietnam war.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-hi ... out-tonkin
What a lot of people don't know was that Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour was the result of the US imposising draconian sanctions on Japan that almost starved the country. The Japanese knew that they would lose the war but even so, felt they were left with no choice.
There's a long. long list of American dirty tricks but most people only read the headlines put out by the right wing press and form their opinions that way.
My memory of the documentary film "The Fog of War" when in WW2 McNamara was part of US intelligence he was using his mathematical brain to device the most efficient ways of bombing the enemy, causing most disruption and in Japan - leading up to use of Nuclear bombs - the use of incendiary bombs to destroy Japanese cities by fire.
I haven't watched it for years but have it on DVD.
In regard to Vietnam - saying that the US should have used empathy - understanding how the common people of Vietnam were think about French colonialism...
I enjoyed watching Adam Curtis' " The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" again years ago so don't remember everything clearly.
You might not agree but very well put together archive footage.
Three Part series from 2004 on BBC
Synopsis for Part 1 (from Wikipedia)
Part 1. "Baby It's Cold Outside"
The first part of the series explains the origins of Islamism and neoconservatism. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thinking, visiting the U.S. to learn about its education system, then becoming disgusted at what he judged as the corruption of morals and virtues in western society through individualism. When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernisation under Gamal Abdel Nasser and becomes convinced that in order to save his own society, it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using western technology. He then becomes convinced that his vision can only be accomplished through use of an elite "vanguard" to lead a revolution against the established order. Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser's jails, comes to believe that western-influenced leaders can be justifiably killed to remove their corruption. Qutb is executed in 1966, but he influences Ayman al-Zawahiri, the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al-Sadat in 1981 in the hopes of starting their own revolution. However, the revolution does not materialise, and Zawahiri comes to believe that a majority of Muslims have been corrupted, not only by their western-inspired leaders, but Muslims themselves have been affected by jahilliyah and thus may be legitimate targets of violence if they refuse to join his cause. They continued to believe that a vanguard was necessary to rise up and overthrow the corrupt regime and replace it with a 'pure' Islamist state.
At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson's "Great Society". They conclude that an emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of Johnson's plans. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy. These factions, the neoconservatives, came to power during the 1980s under the Reagan administration, with their allies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They alleged that the Soviet Union was not following the terms of a disarmament treaty between the two countries, and together with the outcomes of "Team B", they built a case using dubious evidence and methods to prove it to Ronald Reagan.
