In preparation for meeting former President Clinton, I'm studying up by watching documentaries, like
The Fog of War that relays to the viewers all the eleven life lessons Robert McNamara learned in his 80 or so years. I'm only partway through lesson 4 and already, I found much to transcribe.
McNamara describes what he witnessed during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. As the film shows a teletype machine spelling out the message, McNamara quotes like he's done it a thousand times the first message Kruschev telegraphed to the Kennedy in the White House during those tense October days.
We and you ought not to pull on the ends of a rope. Would you have tied the knots of war? Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied, and then it will be necessary cut that knot. And what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles, and then mutual annihilation will commence.
After quoting Kruschev, McNamara goes on to give his own reactions, now that he's had 40 years to think about it what he witnessed and to hear what was going through the minds of his adversaries and collegues,
In the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war... Rational individuals -- Kennedy was rational, Kruschev was rational, Castro was rational -- rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.
I know what I am about to write has been written before and described more clearly by others, but listening to McNamara quote Kruschev, I could not help but think how conflict and war have changed, about how our feelings about it have changed.
First, our present administration does not seem to have rationality as its primary defining point. Next, there was not a civil exchange between the two leaders of the opposing sides before lives were lost. Osama bin Laden and George Bush will not send each other text messages that acknowledge destruction would be mutual and that the powers have equal weight in causing it.
By living so long with the threat of instant annihilation, we have grown callous to the pain of war on others and tired of fearing death. Have we become nonchalant about inflicting death and destruction? There is no greater military power on earth than the U.S., even though there are no fewer weapons than before. The struggle is no longer balanced. Osama bin Laden has no nation with set borders, no fax machine in his office wired to receive communiques from the White House. Bush has no empathy for bin Laden and bin Laden has no empathy for Bush.
Now, two powers -- an amorphous, irrational one and a structured irrational one -- are facing off again in Cuba: the all-powerful U.S. who have detained prisoners in Cuba for months versus the alarm and dismay of the rest of the world.
The knotted rope has frayed and snapped.