Lessons from the Fog of War Essay

The fight in Afghaniistan was launched on October 7, 2001 by the fall in States and the linked Kingdom in chemical reaction to the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks. It label the beginning of chairman George Bushs Great struggle against Terrorism. The Iraqi war refers to the join States-led invasion of Iraq which began on touch 20, 2003. The invasion was prompted by the common feel amongst the US-led coalition that ibn Talal Hussein Hussein had be intimated to happen upon nuclear and chemical warf ar susceptibility that could fall into the hands of terrorists.In twain(prenominal) the slips the United States and its associate puzzle got bogged heap in situations where it they locoweed neither succumb to pull out nor up the back and charge forward. Robert McNamara who was the Secretary of Defense on a lower floor hot seat John F Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson speaks intimately his experiences of war and the lessons he learnt from them during his live ly career in the award-winning nonsubjective The Fog of War.The really title of the docudrama is a statement on the spirit of war which McNamara says is so complex that it is beyond the capability of the human mind to in full comprehend it. In the documentary, McNamara basically speaks about his experiences of the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnamese War of the 1960s and 1970s. McNamara believes that the United States was fit to nullify a war that would probably have outlawed nuclear and could facilitate manage to realize the Soviet missiles off Cuban soil primarily because it could empathize with its opposition.The United States was able to appreciate the exact policy-making situation Nikita Khrushchev was in when the confrontation betwixt the Soviet Union and the United States came to a head. In the face of his party hardliners Khrushchev mandatory a face-saving excuse to get out of Cuba and avoid a attainable nuclear war. In the case of Vietnam, so farthermost, this was non possible as the United States did non know the Vietnamese tumesce adequate to be able to empathize with them.The situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are similarly similar to Vietnam. Did the United States and it allies care to know the Iraqis or the Afghans well enough to be able to empathize with them? In the case of Saddam Hussein, the United States failed to appreciate the political wad that guided the actions of the dictator and clubbed him together with the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. In doing so, they have created a situation which could have very well turned advantageous for the terrorists.The situation in Iraq is now quite the perfect fosterage grounds for terrorists who see the United States and its allies as the enemy that wants to destroy them and their religion. In Afghanistan too, despite all claims that the United States whitethorn make, for the Afghan the any American represents an enemy who has bombed their homes and killed their near and d ear matchlesss. Referring to his tenure in Ford, McNamara gives the example of their effort to analyze fortuity data to device ways and fashion to provide precaution to bulk in cars.Once they were able to get the ideal data, McNamara and his colleagues found that problems in packaging people in cars were the main cause of fatalities in accidents, and could come up with simple safety devices such as the seat fringe which resulted in the saving of much than 20,000 lives every year in the United States alone. The brilliance of getting the data, and the accurate data, is quite discernible in the case of Iraq and Saddam Hussein. some(prenominal) the United States and the United Kingdom failed to restrain accurate data in the case of Iraq and also in the case of Afghanistan to a certain extent.With accurate data not being available, things were bound to go wrong. The very next lesson that McNamara speaks of in the documentary becomes today applicable in the case of two Iraq and Afghanistan the fact that what we see believe in and see can often both be wrong. McNamara cites the example of the supposed accelerator attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats on the US destroyer Maddox on August 2, 1964 and again on the Maddox and its baby ships on August 4, 1964.The August 2 attack was real enough, further President Johnson and the United States did not believe it to be true and chose to ignore it the August 4 attacks were most probably conjured up by predisposed and stressed minds, but were taken to be real enough by the United States garbage disposal to launch attacks on North Vietnam. The passing comment that we see what we choose to believe in is exemplified in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States believed that Iraq had manufacture nuclear weapons and that both Afghanistan and Iraq supported Moslem terrorists, and literally saw what they believed in.These attitudes precipitated both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The visitation to find Saddam Husseins stockpile of nuclear arsenal turn up the belief long, albeit too late. The deteriorating conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the act resistance of the people have also made it clear that the populations under feign hate the occupation forces not because Iraqis and Afghans are terrorists but because they perceive the Americans as aggressors. And more and more of the occupied people turn towards the terrorists.Thousands of people have died from both sides of these wars. McNamara however feels proportionality should be a guidepost of war. That raises the question whether the destruction of the Iraqi and Afghan societies and deaths of the thousands of American soldiers on the battlefield can be justified proportionally by the objectives that these wars hope to achieve. The end of global act of terrorism would demand a heavy price, but is this the right price to pay?McNamara says that one has to engage in evil in order to do good, the deaths and destruction i n Iraq and Afghanistan could very well be the incumbent evil to achieve the good of ridding the sphere of terrorism and making it a far more safer and secure place for the incoming generations. Yet human nature go out never change, and McNamara admits that every general makes mistakes in wars. So are Afghanistan and Iraq mistakes, or they still shrouded in the fog of war?