The Supreme Irony

There is a good deal of praise at the moment regarding Obama’s selection of a cabinet. The phrase “the best and the brightest” has surfaced once again as a description of those selected. You may recall that term as the title of a prize winning book by David Halberstam (1972) describing the Vietnam quagmire and those responsible.

Two of the best and brightest were Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy. McNamara was Secretary of Defense and Bundy was National Security Advisor. These were the “whiz kids”, men of overweening self-confidence, highly educated at the best eastern schools, top of their class, plutocratic ideologues and a paranoid fear of communism. They believed that communism was monolithic, that all the countries in Southeast Asia would adopt authoritarian communism (Stalinism) and would prevent western corporate investors from developing the natural resources of the areas. The potential loss of profit was an issue.

After all, the cold war was at its height and the best and brightest mistakenly assumed that the Soviets and China intended to control Southeast Asia. Another mistake was the failure to recognize that the Vietnam conflict was a civil war and we had no cause to interfere. Finally, McBundy in particular failed to comprehend the “endurance of the enemy” and that a guerrilla war could not be won by large numbers of mechanized combat troops. Does this sound familiar? (Iraq)

McNamara in his memoir and in the film “Fog of War” admitted that he was “wrong, terribly wrong” about every aspect of the war. And Bundy when questioned whether he agreed said that “it was very unlikely that we were right.”

Another blind spot on the part of our brilliant leaders was the inability to recognize that the communist ideology had split into totalitarian communism and democratic socialism. In the 60’s and 70’s there were a number of third world countries experimenting with social democracy because it was clear to them that socialism could not sustain itself without democracy. A good example in 1970 was Chile where Salvador Allende, a social democrat, not a Stalinist, ran for election to the office of President and won overwhelmingly. It was a mixed economy where major corporations were nationalized and privatization of smaller business continued to exist. The success of the government frightened the power elite, viz. Nixon and Kissinger. Kissinger informed Nixon that the spread of social democracy would endanger our control of the natural resources of these countries and potential world markets. So in order to kill Allende’s government, Kissinger labeled it a Marxist dictatorship, followed with a military coup aided by the CIA and placed Pinochet, a brutal fascist dictator, in Allende’s place. Allende tragically died in the takeover.

Today democratic socialism has once again surfaced particularly in Latin-America. It does not make Washington very happy but there really isn’t much the administration can do about it this time around. We can hardly invade every country now controlled by popular uprisings. And besides our problems at home are overwhelming.

It is ironical that the Obama advisors are claiming that the appointees are the “best and brightest” One observer wryly commented that obviously they “had not read the end of the book.” Can Obama get us out of the current quagmire?


References:

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine.
Truthdig. Blight, James.
Wikipedia