Please Read "The March of Folly"

I referenced Barbara Tuchman's brilliant 1984 book, The March of Folly, below. Please read this book. Please.

She defined "folly" as the KNOWING pursuit by governments of policies contrary to self-interest. It is not enough that governments made bad decisions--governments are made up of fallible humans who make mistakes and bad choices. Folly requires the knowledge that the course taken is wrong AT THE TIME and involves not only a failure, but a refusal, to learn from experience. She includes, from an American standpoint, the pigheadedness of George III and American independence, and her aptly-named chapter, "America Betrays Herself in Viet Nam."

I re-read this book this week. I began this post with the idea of writing how eerily her words about Viet Nam tracked the disaster in Iraq. She writes how the United States, in its domino theory claims, became "lodged in a trap of its own propaganda." She notes how "prophecies of exaggerated catastrophe if we lost Viet Nam served to increase the stakes." She concludes that "the American mentality counted on superior might, but a tank cannot disperse wasps."

I found these similarities telling and frightening, and I considered a long post on her observations. But--we know all that. What moved me to write was this huge difference she observed in a very few words:

"American reporters were probing the chinks and finding the shortfalls and falsehoods in the compulsive optimism of official briefings." Re-read that-----American journalists practicing ... journalism?????? QUESTIONING administration policies rather than Judith Miller's "Give me a W-A-R!!!" cheer? Asking for a rationale rather than "Wow--I'm embedded! Look--tanks!"

Amazing--and frightening.