MacNamara

Gość: mjr From Re: MacNamara IP: *.westln01.mi.comcast.net 18.06.04, 05:11

Tak, to byl inny shitty Mac. Tak, nie byl generalem.

Toys 'R' Us kid Robert McNamara got the United States military as his toy to
play with and show his brilliant behind with. He had no real military
experience. He was volunteered out of Harvard to teach simple statistical
methods to civilian and military personnel during World War Two. Upon reading
his book I am nagged by the conclusion that Dean Dornan of Harvard had
tolerated as much as he could of Robert McNamara and wanted to get him the hell
out of there. He found a clever way to do it that appealed to McNamara's ego.
McNamara might well have remained a civilian in his task. He connived, and/or
it was connived for him, to receive an army officer's commission at advanced
rank to sooth his ego and puff up his resume.

McNamara shamelessly tries to fabricate an aura of heroism and danger in his
military service by talking about how a plane similar to the one he was ferried
around in comfort crashed in Spain or someplace. The chances of that happening
to McNamara were approximately one over two to the 12th power. He was basically
riding around on the equivalent of a civilian airliner.

McNamara's book, In Retrospect, while filled with carefully arranged
braggadocio, is filled with holes that glare out to the astute and experienced
mind. There is name-dropping and lists of positions, pretension and social
climbing, but little specific substance.

McNamara was an unqualified blowhard who was able to bully and terrorize the
military. He was egged on in this by a foppish public that delighted in seeing
what they thought were pompous egotistical generals taken down a few notches
and humiliated. It was celebrated how McNamara would ask generals a question.
Upon getting an answer he would ask them how they knew. They would answer that
it was on the basis of their experience. McNamara would dismiss their answer
and demand statistical explanations or some other nonsense to the cheers of the
crowd.

However, the word experience is a shorthand for a lifetime of specific diffuse
learning which can't be conveyed to ridiculing challenges from the village
jackass in minutes, days, months, or even years, particularly if that jackass
has an investment in things other than learning. After having looked at Norman
Schwarzkopf's autobiography and seeing him crawling through minefields and
personally carrying wounded men off a battlefield, I can only barely imagine
what goes through his mind in seconds when appraising a military situation.

Many people, most people, are very naive and susceptible to posturing, costume,
and theatrics. McNamara was a very theatrical figure in constant costume. A
writer during the early McNamara period, whose name I have forgotten, said one
look at McNamara with his stern looks, his rimless glasses, his hair style, and
you kept your distance. McNamara had an actor's ability to imitate stern
intelligence or act intelligent without being intelligent in depth. His role,
including in the Viet Nam war, became one of egoistic showboating of a stern
superintelligent facade. His voracious ego was willing to believe his act. If
there was any one thing I gathered from his book, it was that it was an
argument as to how supposedly brilliant and centrally important he was.

When conning easily tricked novices and the naive it's easy to re-center the
dialogue into an arcane area of focus to dominate and/or intimidate them. It's
a little like the amateur chess player who could never come close to beating a
Morphy, Fischer, or Spassky, but who invents a novel three dimensional game in
which only he is familiar with the exact rules and combinations to sucker in
potential befuddled opponents. He proclaims it to be the only game worthy of
demonstrating superior intellect.

People can be overwhelmed with unfamiliar babble and pressure, to keep up with
it can mislead them into believing they are dealing with someone far over their
head. McNamara knew it and practiced it. With Kennedy and Johnson it wouldn't
take much to put them in over their heads. Johnson made his way in the world by
combining the aggressiveness of a pit bull with a Huey long type populism.
Beyond that, he was thoughtless. Kennedy was a C student taking guts courses
who received graduation honors due to his father manipulating in the background
and teams of people helping him. Rattling off numbers to verbose goofs who
could barely count was enough to make McNamara king of the hill.

McNamara was a student of what was then an arcane area, statistics, which
allowed him to cow those who were unacquainted with the field and who were
unable to question the relevance of his numbers. It was never questioned. Part
of his pattern contained a peculiar element of destructiveness which, when
adopted by other people, demonstrated his power and superiority over them as
well as validated his self-delusions about his self. Those around him,
including presidents, catered to his condition. Having lived through the period
I can remember when generals were doing push-ups in Pentagon hallways as much
as anything else as acts of frightened submission. One way or another,
McNamara, like Hitler, had the propensity for convincing people around him to
act like smitten fools.

Like Hitler, McNamara had great capacity to persuade and influence people,
combined with an attempt to overbelieve in his own capacities. The
word "attempt" is used here because there is serious question in my mind as to
whether McNamara, beneath his facade, was on an eternal quest to compensate for
and deny his own doubts and deficiencies. McNamara was obsessed by
determination to convince the world of his superior controlling intelligence in
a continual theater of the absurd. Personally, I have yet to be convinced.

McNamara was a complicated man in the sense of having complicated and perhaps
unresolved emotions and motivations. However, he didn't seem to have
complicated depth and diversity of knowledge. In the latter he seems simplistic
and undeveloped. Unresolved emotions and motivations create personal agendas
and distort perception of reality.

To quote a line from an old Jimmy Stewart movie, little men with their slide
rules will inherit the earth. My primary impression of McNamara was that
whatever else he was, beneath the surface he was a fraudulent, controlling,
manipulative, immature, subversive, evil small petty man — albeit a somewhat
clever and studied one. He would be perceived as such by anyone of stature. Men
of stature don't beat their own drum as loudly and long as Robert McNamara.
McNamara was at best a joke, but not a funny one to those attempting to survive
under his command. But my primary impression of McNamara was that he was also
peculiarly malicious.

Healthy intelligent people don't do what McNamara did. Warped, subversive,
stupid, or vindictive people do. Take your choice of various weighted
combinations of the above.

Upon his repeated failures in Viet Nam, some or many of which I suspect were
intentional on some level within the labyrinth of McNamara's twisted mind
games, McNamara was faced with two alternatives. He could admit he was too
inexperienced and incompetent for the job. (Like Burnside, he should have
declined the position and responsibility in the first place if he were honest
about the welfare of the nation. However, McNamara was not as honest, humble,
or big a man as Burnside. McNamara's ego wanted the position.) Admitting
deliberate calculated subversion or maliciousness was out of the question.
Or . . . like McClellan, he could externalize the problem of his creation away
from possibility of exposing his own disastrous deficiencies or intentions.
This presented complex difficulties for him. Unlike McClellan he could not
issue ste

Drzewko
Od najstarszego
Od najnowszego

Gość: miki Re: MacNamara IP: *.dip.t-dialin.net 17.06.04, 22:09

Kazda wladza deprawuje.Wladza absolutna deprawuje absolutnie.Jak wielka wladze
ma glownodowodzacy?
Gość: axx Re: MacNamara IP: *.prge.lib.md.us 17.06.04, 22:52

Takiego generala chyba nie bylo i cos ci sie pomieszalo.
Zatem czy chodzi ci o Roberta McNamare. Jezeli tak to byl on Secretary of
Defence od 1961 do 68 podczas kadencji Kennediego i Johnsona.
Byl takze presesem General Motors.Czy byl generalem? Chyba nie
bo to jest funkcja cywilna.
- Gość: mjr From Re: MacNamara IP: *.westln01.mi.comcast.net 18.06.04, 05:11
  
  Tak, to byl inny shitty Mac. Tak, nie byl generalem.
  
  Toys 'R' Us kid Robert McNamara got the United States military as his toy to
  play with and show his brilliant behind with. He had no real military
  experience. He was volunteered out of Harvard to teach simple statistical
  methods to civilian and military personnel during World War Two. Upon reading
  his book I am nagged by the conclusion that Dean Dornan of Harvard had
  tolerated as much as he could of Robert McNamara and wanted to get him the hell
  out of there. He found a clever way to do it that appealed to McNamara's ego.
  McNamara might well have remained a civilian in his task. He connived, and/or
  it was connived for him, to receive an army officer's commission at advanced
  rank to sooth his ego and puff up his resume.
  
  McNamara shamelessly tries to fabricate an aura of heroism and danger in his
  military service by talking about how a plane similar to the one he was ferried
  around in comfort crashed in Spain or someplace. The chances of that happening
  to McNamara were approximately one over two to the 12th power. He was basically
  riding around on the equivalent of a civilian airliner.
  
  McNamara's book, In Retrospect, while filled with carefully arranged
  braggadocio, is filled with holes that glare out to the astute and experienced
  mind. There is name-dropping and lists of positions, pretension and social
  climbing, but little specific substance.
  
  McNamara was an unqualified blowhard who was able to bully and terrorize the
  military. He was egged on in this by a foppish public that delighted in seeing
  what they thought were pompous egotistical generals taken down a few notches
  and humiliated. It was celebrated how McNamara would ask generals a question.
  Upon getting an answer he would ask them how they knew. They would answer that
  it was on the basis of their experience. McNamara would dismiss their answer
  and demand statistical explanations or some other nonsense to the cheers of the
  crowd.
  
  However, the word experience is a shorthand for a lifetime of specific diffuse
  learning which can't be conveyed to ridiculing challenges from the village
  jackass in minutes, days, months, or even years, particularly if that jackass
  has an investment in things other than learning. After having looked at Norman
  Schwarzkopf's autobiography and seeing him crawling through minefields and
  personally carrying wounded men off a battlefield, I can only barely imagine
  what goes through his mind in seconds when appraising a military situation.
  
  Many people, most people, are very naive and susceptible to posturing, costume,
  and theatrics. McNamara was a very theatrical figure in constant costume. A
  writer during the early McNamara period, whose name I have forgotten, said one
  look at McNamara with his stern looks, his rimless glasses, his hair style, and
  you kept your distance. McNamara had an actor's ability to imitate stern
  intelligence or act intelligent without being intelligent in depth. His role,
  including in the Viet Nam war, became one of egoistic showboating of a stern
  superintelligent facade. His voracious ego was willing to believe his act. If
  there was any one thing I gathered from his book, it was that it was an
  argument as to how supposedly brilliant and centrally important he was.
  
  When conning easily tricked novices and the naive it's easy to re-center the
  dialogue into an arcane area of focus to dominate and/or intimidate them. It's
  a little like the amateur chess player who could never come close to beating a
  Morphy, Fischer, or Spassky, but who invents a novel three dimensional game in
  which only he is familiar with the exact rules and combinations to sucker in
  potential befuddled opponents. He proclaims it to be the only game worthy of
  demonstrating superior intellect.
  
  People can be overwhelmed with unfamiliar babble and pressure, to keep up with
  it can mislead them into believing they are dealing with someone far over their
  head. McNamara knew it and practiced it. With Kennedy and Johnson it wouldn't
  take much to put them in over their heads. Johnson made his way in the world by
  combining the aggressiveness of a pit bull with a Huey long type populism.
  Beyond that, he was thoughtless. Kennedy was a C student taking guts courses
  who received graduation honors due to his father manipulating in the background
  and teams of people helping him. Rattling off numbers to verbose goofs who
  could barely count was enough to make McNamara king of the hill.
  
  McNamara was a student of what was then an arcane area, statistics, which
  allowed him to cow those who were unacquainted with the field and who were
  unable to question the relevance of his numbers. It was never questioned. Part
  of his pattern contained a peculiar element of destructiveness which, when
  adopted by other people, demonstrated his power and superiority over them as
  well as validated his self-delusions about his self. Those around him,
  including presidents, catered to his condition. Having lived through the period
  I can remember when generals were doing push-ups in Pentagon hallways as much
  as anything else as acts of frightened submission. One way or another,
  McNamara, like Hitler, had the propensity for convincing people around him to
  act like smitten fools.
  
  Like Hitler, McNamara had great capacity to persuade and influence people,
  combined with an attempt to overbelieve in his own capacities. The
  word "attempt" is used here because there is serious question in my mind as to
  whether McNamara, beneath his facade, was on an eternal quest to compensate for
  and deny his own doubts and deficiencies. McNamara was obsessed by
  determination to convince the world of his superior controlling intelligence in
  a continual theater of the absurd. Personally, I have yet to be convinced.
  
  McNamara was a complicated man in the sense of having complicated and perhaps
  unresolved emotions and motivations. However, he didn't seem to have
  complicated depth and diversity of knowledge. In the latter he seems simplistic
  and undeveloped. Unresolved emotions and motivations create personal agendas
  and distort perception of reality.
  
  To quote a line from an old Jimmy Stewart movie, little men with their slide
  rules will inherit the earth. My primary impression of McNamara was that
  whatever else he was, beneath the surface he was a fraudulent, controlling,
  manipulative, immature, subversive, evil small petty man — albeit a somewhat
  clever and studied one. He would be perceived as such by anyone of stature. Men
  of stature don't beat their own drum as loudly and long as Robert McNamara.
  McNamara was at best a joke, but not a funny one to those attempting to survive
  under his command. But my primary impression of McNamara was that he was also
  peculiarly malicious.
  
  Healthy intelligent people don't do what McNamara did. Warped, subversive,
  stupid, or vindictive people do. Take your choice of various weighted
  combinations of the above.
  
  Upon his repeated failures in Viet Nam, some or many of which I suspect were
  intentional on some level within the labyrinth of McNamara's twisted mind
  games, McNamara was faced with two alternatives. He could admit he was too
  inexperienced and incompetent for the job. (Like Burnside, he should have
  declined the position and responsibility in the first place if he were honest
  about the welfare of the nation. However, McNamara was not as honest, humble,
  or big a man as Burnside. McNamara's ego wanted the position.) Admitting
  deliberate calculated subversion or maliciousness was out of the question.
  Or . . . like McClellan, he could externalize the problem of his creation away
  from possibility of exposing his own disastrous deficiencies or intentions.
  This presented complex difficulties for him. Unlike McClellan he could not
  issue ste

Najnowsze z forum Militaria

Zaloguj się