Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara:
- Empathize with your enemy. Put ourselves inside the skin of our enemies and look at us through their eyes. Just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions. Cuban Missile Crisis: understanding what could be a good outcome for Khruschev, "I saved Cuba, I stopped the invasion".
- Rationality will not save us. The indefinite combination of human falability and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.
- There's something beyond oneself. Stress on values.
- Maximize efficiency. B-29. Incendiary bombs. Tokio.
- Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Nukes after an incendiary bomb campaign is disproportional.
- Get the data. Ford. Seat belts. DoD.
- Belief and seeing are both often wrong. We see what we want to believe. Attack on the Maddox.
- Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning. Failure to understand Vietnam.
- In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil. But minimize it.
- Never say never. Never answer in a hurry.
- You can't change human nature. The fog of war: war is so complex that is beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Elliot.
