What’s Up with Paul Oppenheim

I spent a good chunk of the night reading the transcript of The Fog of War which I got from a post on Ben Fry’s blog which I was reading because Zero informed me Ben Fry dropped some serious Glagolitic Capital Spidery Ha. It’s the wisdom of Robert McNamara from being involved in WWII, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War. If you believe that failure is the best chance to learn, this is a chance to read about insight gained from probably the biggest failures in the past century; the atomic bombing of Japan (after already essentially decimating them by firebombing their cities), the willingness to lose everything in atomic war, and the inability to understand the central motivations of what was essentially a civil war. McNamara gives the following lessons with amazing historic perspective:

• Lesson #1: Empathize with your enemy.
• Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us.
• Lesson #3: There’s something beyond one’s self.
• Lesson #4: Maximize Efficiency.
• Lesson #5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
• Lesson #6: Get the data.
• Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
• Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
• Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
• Lesson #10: Never say never.
• Lesson #11: You can’t change human nature.

Spidery Ha.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 1:25 am and is filed under History, Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.