The March of Folly, Continued

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By Norman Solomon

TO understand what's up with President Obama as he escalates the war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25 years ago. "The March of Folly," by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things -- how a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession -- and how we, with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names.

What happens among policymakers is a "process of self-hypnosis," Tuchman writes. After recounting examples from the Trojan War to the British moves against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing chapters of "The March of Folly" to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam.The parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are more than uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns.

With clarity facing backward, President Obama can make many wise comments about international affairs while proceeding with actual policies largely unfettered by the wisdom. From the outset of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Tuchman observes, vital lessons were "stated" but "not learned."

As with John Kennedy -- another young president whose administration "came into office equipped with brain power" and "more pragmatism than ideology" -- Obama's policy adrenalin is now surging to engorge something called counterinsurgency.

"Although the doctrine emphasized political measures, counterinsurgency in practice was military," Tuchman writes, an observation that applies all too well to the emerging Obama enthusiasm for counterinsurgency. And "counterinsurgency in operation did not live up to the high-minded zeal of the theory. All the talk was of 'winning the allegiance' of the people to their government, but a government for which allegiance had to be won by outsiders was not a good gamble."


read more: http://www.coastalpost.com/09/06/34.html

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1. .

[jonnyblitz]

2. k & r. nt

[scarletwoman]

3. k&r -- militarism is "normal", we can't imagine anything different. (nt)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Another failed war based on failed policies and tactics. And, both to prove "toughness".

JFK wanted to sport his anti-communist credentials and Obama wants to prove he's tough on "terror".

The first showed that America was far less than advertised as the Shining Light of Democracy and Iraq and Afghanistan have proven it.

[juno jones]

5. Tuchman was a very precient and insightful writer.

'March Of Folly' is a book which shakes the reader as they realize that governments have been institutionalizing unenlightened and self-defeating policy, what she calls 'folly', for quite some time. Even some of our most brilliant statesmen have been sucked into these finger-traps of thought.

May I also recommend 'The Sword and The Bible', a book that explores some of the causes of the current conflict in the middle east.