Fog of War

If you're into documentaries I'd throw this out as a must see. The whole movie is Robert McNamara talking about when he was Secretary of Defense, things that happened in WWII and Vietnam, getting along with presidents, etc. The movie is setup as Mr. McNamara talking about some lessons he's learned over his 85 years of existence. I can't really say much else other than it was awesome. Here's the lessons he presents us:

1. The human race will not eliminate war in this century, but we can reduce the brutality of war - the level of killing - by adhering to the principles of a "Just War," in particular to the principle of "proportionality."
2. The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear wapons will lead to the destruction of nations.
3. We are the most powerful nation in the world - economically, politically and militarily - and we are likely to remain so for decades ahead. But we are no omniscient. If we cannot persuade other nations with similar interests and similar values of the merits of our propesed use of that power, we should not proceed unilaterally except in the unlikely requirement to defend directly the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii.
4. Moral principals are often ambiguous guides to foreign policy and defense policy, but surely we can agree that we should establish as a mjor goal of U.S. foreign policy and, indeed, of foreign policies across the globe: the avoidance in this century of the carnage - 160 million dead - caused by conflict in the 20th century.
5. We, the richest nation in the world, have failed in our responsibility to our own poor and tothe disadvantaged across the world to help them advance their welfare in the most fundamental terms of nutrition, literacy, health and employment.
6. Corporate executives must recognize there is no contradiction between a soft heart and a hard head. Of course, they have responsibilities to stockholders, but they also have responsibilites to their employees, their customers and to society as a whole.
7. President Kennedy believed a primary responsibility of a president - indeed "the" primary responsibility of a president - is to keep the nation out of war, if at all possible.
8. War is a blunt instrument by which to settle disputes between or within nations, and economic sanctions are rarely effective. Therefore, we should build a system of jursprudence based on the International Court - that the U.S. has refused to support - which would hold individuals responsible for crimes against humanity.
9. If we are to deal effectively with terrorists across the globe, we must develop a sense of empahty - I don't mean "sympathy," but rather "understanding" - to counter their attacks on us and the Western World.
10. One of the greatest dangers we face today is the risk that terrorists will obtain access to weapons of mass destruction as a result of the breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Regime. We in the U.S. are contributing to that breakdown.