Fated to Fail the March

Fated to Fail

The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam, proved to be a thoroughly fascinating read. It is not often that one is able to consume a piece of literature that is unflinchingly honest in its depictions of mankind in its most eminent aspect -- its ability to fail. In many ways, the propensity to err is what defines human beings, and the most tangible example of such failure, as author Barbara Tuchman repeatedly demonstrates, is through what is most frequently anthologized as its crowning achievement: government. The implications of Tuchman's work are manifold and leave readers wondering a variety of questions. If man's government has inherently failed throughout the course of time, is humanity as civilized as it likes to believe it is? Has it truly descended above the beast in its evolution? Although Tuchman's book is far from a general indictment of mankind's prowess, its most interesting aspect is that it casts a considerable amount of doubt about this fact which is generally taken for granted in works of non-fiction that deal with its governance.

One of the fairly compelling aspects about this manuscript was the author's lucid, intellectually stimulating style of writing. The way in which she depicted events that had transpired decades, and in some instances centuries before, was able to infuse a fresh sense of vitality in what otherwise are long gone and buried events. However, it seems that the author could have structured the manuscript differently in order to demonstrate her thesis with more conviction. By focusing on four primary instances of failure of governments, such as that incurred by the United States in the Vietnam War, the separation of the colonists from Britain during the Revolutionary War, the corruption throughout the Catholic church that led to the Protestant Reformation, and the downfall of Troy, the author missed many more prime examples of faulty governments that have existed throughout history. Although some of these governments were alluded to in the first chapter of the manuscript, it seems as though had the author chose to focus on, perhaps, the fall of Rome or the terrible German legacy throughout both World Wars, (some of this material she has detailed in other books that she has written) she could have been more convincing in her thesis that the magnitude of mankind's failure is greater in its history of government than in anything else.

To that extent, some of her examples to demonstrate this thesis were outright puzzling. The Trojan War, for instance, and numerous aspects of it including the Trojan Horse, is more suitable for a book of mythology rather than for one of the history of human folly depicted in governments. The historical evidence to validate the authenticity of these events is slim at best, which makes it all the more surprising that the author would devote as much time, and pages, that she did to this occurrence that must be considerably marginalized due to its largely fictional composition.

Despite some questionable choices in examples, however, Tuchman was able to supply an ample amount of evidence for her thesis in her information about the corruption plaguing the Catholic church prior to the Reformation. This fact, while certainly acknowledged in history books, rarely receives the importance it deserves. This example, and perhaps that of Vietnam, were the most convincing ones that leaders throughout history have displayed an inherent proclivity that is decidedly "contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests" (Tuchman 1985, 1). Her chronicles of America's imperialist appetites and the wanton destruction it achieved in a fruitless siege in Vietnam for years should be taught as much as, if not more, than certain other areas of U.S. history.