Robert McNamara,

[US Secretary for Defence

During the Vietnam War

Both pre & post JFK’s assassination,]

Bequeathed to the world,

History and the future

His personal, retrospective perspective,

Analysis and evaluation

Of how the most powerful nation

On the face of the Earth

Could get into what was an unwinnable war

And not get out of it

Without its sorry tail between its legs

And the loss of 58,220 American lives

[Not to mention the 1,100,000 North Vietnamese who died].

.

His book and documentary film lists 11 causes,

The vast majority of them

Fundamental cultural misunderstandings

Of the intentions and motivations

Of the ‘Other’:

The shifting sands upon which

Strategic decisions are repeatedly mis-taken

And life-loaded dice are rolled.

He called it: The Fog of War.

 .

 … Peace can be pretty foggy too ….

.

I think we’re in need of some scope-extension:

There is also the Pea-Souper

That obscures the descent towards war

And masks the many opportunities to avoid it.

I strongly suspect that is where we are now:

Interpreting Russia’s actions and intentions

Vis-à-vis Ukraine and Europe;

Decoding and responding to them

While wearing Western cultural ‘glasses’.

Then the ‘Other’ side does the same

In response to our response to their response to….

[coda – ad infinitum]

And in the end,

If we are not supremely careful

[And we’re not that good at that let’s face it]

As Walter Cronkite once put it:

“There goes the whole ball-game”.  

The End to End All Ends.

.

The ball-game didn’t quite ‘go’ in October ’62,

[Though we were but a whisker away]

But the current situations

With China and Russia

[Let alone Iran et.al.]

Are presenting myriad,

Fog-blinding opportunities

To get it all seriously, irrevocably

And very permanently wrong.

Let’s hope and pray the cultural Fog clears.

Or the root cause of the world’s demise

Will be cultural misunderstanding.

.

Of course there won’t be anybody left

To write our Epitaph,

But to borrow and bastardise a good bit

From a certain Galactic Hitchhiker,

Perhaps it might read something like:

.

Humanity: ‘Mostly Harmful’

[Esp. to itself and to anything and anyone else

Unfortunate enough to come into contact with it].

NB. The references to Douglas Adams are from his famous series of books and films ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.  It is a hysterical read!