In Retrospect

i just finished reading In Retrospect by Robert MacNamara, who was the secretary of defense during the vietnam war. it took my quite a while to finish this tome, because i kept having to put it down out of anger. why? because i feel like if you had a copy of the book and performed a simple "find and replace" function, swapping the word Vietnam for the word Iraq, you'd have the story of our current adventure in the middle east. lack of planning, lack of understanding of the culture being invaded, lack of victory strategy. it's all there.

but here's the really galling part: the book was written in 1996. that means it was just sitting around, waiting to be learned from, for a full 7 years before the US invaded iraq. "hello," it called out from bookshelves and libraries, "garner some knowledge from my mistakes. i'm begging here!"