I think your question is just based on a wrong premise. I have read quite a bit of World War II history as well asSome history of the Vietnam war and the decisions of Hitler and McNamara in particular are often described as mistakes clearly based on their intellectual ability, cognitive bias, and misconceptions. People don’t necessarily say “this means Hitler was stupid” but the implication that he would’ve done things differently if he were smarter are obvious. Moreover Churchill is depicted as prescient in his assessment of Germany’s rearmament. The words unintelligent and the like are basically just left to the reader to infer.
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.
I think your question is just based on a wrong premise. I have read quite a bit of World War II history as well asSome history of the Vietnam war and the decisions of Hitler and McNamara in particular are often described as mistakes clearly based on their intellectual ability, cognitive bias, and misconceptions. People don’t necessarily say “this means Hitler was stupid” but the implication that he would’ve done things differently if he were smarter are obvious. Moreover Churchill is depicted as prescient in his assessment of Germany’s rearmament. The words unintelligent and the like are basically just left to the reader to infer.
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.