jesusqert.blogg.se - The fog of war

The fog of war skin#

We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes, just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions. He would then think to himself, "My God, if I can get out of this with a deal that I can say to the Russian people: ' Kennedy was going to destroy Castro and I prevented it.'" Thompson, knowing Khrushchev as he did, thought Khrushchev will accept that.

In Thompson's mind was this thought: Khrushchev's gotten himself in a hell of a fix.

And General Curtis LeMay, whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying "Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba." I was trying to help him keep us out of war.

Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war.

My rule has been try to learn, try to understand what happened.

At my age, 85, I'm at age where I can look back and derive some conclusions about my actions.

You make one mistake and you're going to destroy nations. There will be no learning period with nuclear weapons. Maybe we make the same mistake three times, but hopefully not four or five.

And the conventional wisdom is don't make the same mistake twice, learn from your mistakes. A hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand. He's killed people unnecessarily - his own troops or other troops - through mistakes, through errors of judgment. Any military commander who is honest with himself, or with those he's speaking to, will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power.