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"The Doves Were Right"
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
Not all statesmen refuse to learn. Holbrooke: "[In 1995, McGeorge] Bundy began writing tortured notes
to himself, often in the margins of his old memos — a sort of private dialogue
with the man he had been 30 years earlier — something out of a Pirandello play.
Bundy would scribble notes: “the doves were right”; “a war we should not have
fought”; “I had a part in a great failure. I made mistakes of perception,
recommendation and execution.” “What are my worst mistakes?” For those of us
who had known the self-confident, arrogant Brahmin from Harvard, ...
Hope and Change!
Unqualified Offerings —
Richard Holbrooke wants a job ! The good news is, he seems to think that the way to get it is to identify “enduring faith in the value of military force” and lack of belief in negotiations as constituting a “tragic failure,” and to declare that “the lessons of Vietnam are still relevant.” My not merely sarcastic point: Holbrooke seems to think that praising reluctance to intervene militarily and keeping the staggering human costs of war in mind will help, or at least not hurt, his career prospects. That really is a good sign, if a small one.
