Just watched "The Fog of War" for the first time in quite a while.
One thing that strikes me is the intentional interplay between numbers and emotion as supposed opposites, and this shouldn't be irreconcilable.
Numbers inform effective efforts at achieving moral action. Ineffective efforts towards moral ends produce less moral outcomes, and purity is problematic if it hinders moral progress.
Intentions may matter, but not as much as actual results stemming from good intentions (or even, arguably and sometimes... moral results from immoral intentions, for that matter).
The Vietnam war was a fool's errand, not because rationality is or should be subservient to morality, but because the exercise was irrational and counterproductive towards moral ends. Not because everyone with a hand in escalation didn't desire a better world.
Besides... attempts to make action effective in the promotion of a better world are good intentions strived at through what are believed to be rational means, which are better than good intentions sailing in the wind.
Obviously... I love the jabs at hubris divorced from accurately reading nonexistent market signals often held by those with power within institutions predicated on involvement in an organisation defined by an unjust monopoly on force, and all that. But rationality and morality aren't opposite, and they can inform and strengthen one another.
