Hmm. You give interesting examples; especially McNamara (and, kind of by extension, Kissinger...) could indeed be said to be very smart and in some instances very wrong and biased. And it would certainly not be reasonable for a history book discussing their exploits (augmented by hindsight-bias) to say they were basically dumb for advocating or pursuing what they did.
Though one might question the wisdom of coming up with and sticking to a narrative like the fear of communist systems spreading the world over. Bombing every potential success story back into the stone age is hardly a measured response, especially for those being bombed. The belief that the spread of communism nations the world over is a Bad Thing isn’t necessarily correct, or excuse enough to then go and pre-emptively kill hundreds of thousands of people.
Hmm. You give interesting examples; especially McNamara (and, kind of by extension, Kissinger...) could indeed be said to be very smart and in some instances very wrong and biased. And it would certainly not be reasonable for a history book discussing their exploits (augmented by hindsight-bias) to say they were basically dumb for advocating or pursuing what they did.
Though one might question the wisdom of coming up with and sticking to a narrative like the fear of communist systems spreading the world over. Bombing every potential success story back into the stone age is hardly a measured response, especially for those being bombed. The belief that the spread of communism nations the world over is a Bad Thing isn’t necessarily correct, or excuse enough to then go and pre-emptively kill hundreds of thousands of people.