R.I.P. Robert McNamara, Former Secretary of Defense and Prime Architect of the Vietnam War
By Susie Madrak Monday Jul 06, 2009 1:00pmWhat a strange feeling it is for those of our era to hear that Robert McNamara is dead. Widely reviled for the Vietnam War, he later expressed great ambivalence in the documentary "The Fog of War." He was a liberal, but of that time - for instance, as Secretary of Defense, he signed a directive that forbade military men and women from patronizing segregated establishments in the communities surrounding a military base - but continued the war long after he knew it was a lost cause.
Mr. McNamara is best remembered — and in some quarters still reviled — for the seven years he spent at the Pentagon and the part he played in waging the Vietnam War. The controversy that erupted in 1995 when he published his memoir, “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” demonstrated the extent to which the scars he bore remained unhealed.
No one person can be assigned responsibility for escalating the US role in the conflict. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk: Each played his part. To many, though, it was “McNamara’s war,” as US Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon once put it.
“I don’t object to its being called McNamara’s war,” Mr. McNamara said during a 1964 press conference. “I think it is a very important war, and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it.”
Those words would come to haunt him.
[...] Kennedy reportedly wanted Mr. McNamara to replace Rusk as secretary of state in his second administration. And Robert Kennedy said he and his brother speculated about supporting Mr. McNamara for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968.
The Kennedys were not alone in falling under the spell of the McNamara mystique. Johnson offered him the vice-presidential nomination in 1964. “He’s the best man available,” LBJ told a friend. When Mr. McNamara declined, Johnson pronounced him “No. 1 executive vice president in charge of the Cabinet.” He later awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
US Senator Barry Goldwater, who would become a harsh critic, initially hailed Mr. McNamara as “one of the best secretaries ever, an IBM machine with legs.” David Halberstam, who would later assail Mr. McNamara in his book “The Best and the Brightest,” wrote in 1963 that “McNamara may well be this country’s most distinguished civil servant of the last decade.”
[...] Yet much of Mr. McNamara’s fascination sprang from how he could subvert that image. This supreme bean-counter also loved poetry. This avatar of detachment and abstract reasoning was prone to bouts of weeping
.
The bouts increased as the war dragged on. “He does it all the time now,” a secretary remarked shortly before Mr. McNamara left the Pentagon, in 1968. “He cries into the curtain.”The term “McNamara’s war” arose from his very public enthusiasm for a military solution to the conflict. As the statistics that crossed Mr. McNamara’s desk more and more indicated the improbability of victory, the term remained fitting. For no one waging the war endured such agonies of doubt: He mirrored the nation’s own consternation. “My sense of the war gradually shifted from concern to skepticism to frustration to anguish,” Mr. McNamara later wrote.
To arrive at some better understanding of how things could have gone so wrong, Mr. McNamara commissioned a study called “United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967.” The public would come to know it by another name: “The Pentagon Papers.”
A man of phenomenal abilities, Mr. McNamara discovered how few of them were suited to the demands of Vietnam. “I had always been confident that every problem could be solved,” he wrote in his memoir, “but now I found myself confronting one — involving national pride and human life — that could not.”
Mr. McNamara’s 13 years as president of the World Bank were widely seen as an act of atonement for what he had done in Vietnam, though he denied this. He increased tenfold the amount of money the bank had out on loans. In particular, he championed the Third World, tripling the bank’s loans to developing countries and shifting its emphasis from large-scale industrial projects to rural development and population control. He also began publication of an annual World Development Report.
After leaving the bank, Mr. McNamara emerged as an elder statesman in the field of nuclear affairs. He had played a leading part in bringing about a limited test-ban treaty in 1963, and his propounding the concept of mutual assured destruction, the cornerstone of the nuclear balance of power for much of the Cold War, may have been his single most important legacy as defense secretary. Such credentials gave weight to Mr. McNamara’s advocacy of a nuclear freeze and a US policy of no first use of nuclear weapons.
Elder statesman or no, Mr. McNamara remained a controversial figure, as the media firestorm that greeted “In Retrospect” made plain. Mr. McNamara’s growing doubts about the Vietnam War were widely known as early as his final months at the Pentagon, but he had never directly addressed the subject. Now he put them on the record. “Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong,” he wrote. “We owe it to future generations to explain why.”
The words were front-page news. “His regret cannot be huge enough to balance the books for our dead soldiers,” a New York Times editorial declared. “What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late.” The New Republic asked, “Has any single American of this century done more harm than Robert McNamara?”
Despite such withering criticism, Mr. McNamara remained a figure of public fascination. In 2003, the filmmaker Errol Morris released an Academy Award-winning documentary about him, “The Fog of War.”
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A true tool of the military industrial complex.
“Has any single American of this century done more harm than Robert McNamara?”
Yes. But not many. You know who I am talking about.
I like to think for every bad thing he did he also did something good. How many lives do you think have been saved because of seatbelts or even putting a lot of money into researching automobile safety? Or helping us avoid nuclear war with Cuba?
I think he is one of those historical figures that is less important to hate or love, but more important to remember and analyze to make better decisions in the future.
His work with the IMF and World Bank overshadows any good he did, not to mention his war making. Good point about future analysis. As for Cuba, that was his job. He was supposed to be effective given his background and position. I am not trying to simplify, but he was a tool of the system. He went to the right schools, belonged to the right organizations and made policy that killed working men and women to enrich the wealthy.
I understand that. The thing that I have been torn about lately with people like him, and to some extent Colin Powell in Bush's administration, is whether it or not being outspoken would have actually changed the course of anything? Looking at the people and men around them I don't know if war would have been avoided. But after accepting that that is the path that we are going on I really honestly that America has been better off having McNamara and Powell involved in the execution of it. Sure, war has not been the correct path to go, but once on that path you want people like McNamara and Powell to bring reason and balance to administrations that want to charge down that path.
With all due respect you seem to be taking a very mainstream approach to his career. That war was manufactured. It fulfilled the needs of a growing military industrial complex. McNamara was the head chef at an all you can eat buffet of defense spending, counterinsurgency experimentation, intelligence expansion, drug importation, and geo-political gamesmanship. All of which set the stage for conflict and repression we are still seeing today.
No offense taken, I'm just happy you're not flaming me. However I do find it hard to believe that "All of which set the stage for conflict and repression we are still seeing today." The stage was brooding before WW2 was over.
The problem I have with condemning him a criminal is that whether his intentions and motives were bad, or if it was the inaccurate data and understanding that resulted in poor decisions. The thing with McNamara, it seems to me, is that his line of reasoning was, for the most part, solid. The problem was that his reasoning was making decisions based on erroneous assumptions and data. Making decisions based on the data at hand was his job. With the Cuban missile crisis his decisions paid off and probably saved a lot of lives. With Vietnam his decisions yielded bad results and lots of lives were wasted. I do not believe that his rationale had a drastic change from good to evil between those two events. I think the only thing that changed drastically was the quality of intelligence and data given to him.
And again, that is why I think the best thing to do is not condemn him. He was professional and very capable for his job. And his own analysis of his errors is very insightful. I fail to see what condemning a dead man for his errors and ignoring his good deeds does for America? I find it ironic that some readers of this blog take this hyper critical stance yet call themselves members of the progressive left. Personally I like him more than I hate him, others can hate him more than the lake them. That's fine, but I thought the progressive agenda would be more focused on how we can learn from his errors and mistakes. Ironically McNamara has done a lot of that for us yet progressive readers on this blog ignore that fact and would rather call him a warmonger, criminal, and wish they could have seen him rot in jail. Sorry, jhunter, that last part was more for others, not you.
Don't you think that Nader is the one responsible for that?
I don't give credit to McNamara for anything.
You might as well say that Hitler made the trains run on time.
There is no excuse for what he did.
Millions killed - for an agenda.
These educated baboons are a menace.
Just because time has passed doesn't change what he did - like Bush, like Cheney he sent tens of thousands of people to their death. We may not be the ultimate judge, but I for one will never excuse his behavior.
I know. But the point is that he also did other things that have impacted a lot of American's other than Vietnam. And he, like most Americans, regrets Vietnam. The one thing I am arguing for his a holistic retrospective of his life and accomplishments, not a cross-sectional of his lowest marks.
After watching "The Fog of War" I got the distinct impression that his legacy was finally starting to catch up with him.
Unfortunately Rumsfeld shed off any resemblance of humanity and knowing the certainty that he won't lose any sleep over the misery he helped visit upon untold innocent victim makes me want to believe there has to be an after life for him and his buddies to be held accountable.
I guess they just get away with it. Oh well.
Just wow, man.
.
Not quite up there with forgiving Einstein, but awe inspiring.
http://www.timfanelli.com/images/no_idea.jpg
Rumsfeld and Cheney probably sleep well but I'm not so sure about Bushie. I sincerely hope his nightly sleep is stalked by the the dark ghosts from Katrina. There isn't enough booze in the world to silence those lambs.
Given that she is the one with actual blood on her hands, I am sure he coached him on how to sleep well at night.
Some people say...Laura and Dubya have a tidy arrangement. They don't actually live together. She got a house, payoff, and freedom. He gets her silence and occasional public appearances. The Crawford ranch will be sold. He's living somewhere near SMU.
Right?
There were talks about Bush the 1st getting plenty of tail on the side. Of course, he does not cross "the ultimate line" and only uses the missionary position. So he is A-OK in the eyes of the lord...
Bush 41 considered himself a swordsman but other women described him as "every woman's first husband". Many sources confirm he had a years long affair with his very own Jennifer.
When will be shipping Kissinger off to the Hague? There is no statute of limitations for murder and war crimes. Perhaps he will visit a country that remembers what he did and they won't allow him to leave?
demands for war crimes filed against him.
America really is the land of opportunity, where poor black children can grow up to be rich white men (M. Jackson) and where poor Jewish kids can come as refugees and leave as war criminals....
How did Dr. K. (he has a PhD you know) manage to sit through that men's final yesterday without his feet touching the ground?
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-wimbledon...
When his ugly mug came on the screen I wanted to barf.
There is the EU that includes Britain and then there is the rest of the EU.
The British loved the Vietnam war and they loved the war in Iraq. Solidarity.
Give's 'em a sense of the good old days of plunder and conquest.
The rest of the EU is composed of people for whom Kissinger and McNamara and Rummy and Bush and Cheney represent evil. I hope someone catches Henry and ships him up to The Haig.
In fact, I think there are also some private demands against him in the UK. Alas, I doubt the UK is willing to piss off the US by enforcing it.
RIP...Warmonger.
In the previous one thousand years of its history, there had never been a North and South Vietnam until the Geneva Accords of 1954 proposed a temporary partition to precede national elections.
US political leadership failed to observe or comment on that fact and after bankrolling the French in their failed colonial war, took it over.
Remember Eisenhower, the USA overturned the Geneva Accords of 1954 that would have held nationwide elections, the thinking probably was that Ho Chi Minh would have won:
---
Consider LBJ's treachery on the Gulf of Tonkin Hoax
Will you marry me?
I agree Alice. The seeds to direct American invovement in Viet Nam were planted when America didn't stand up for democrscy and allowed the Diem regime to crack down on the communists participating in elections. After disallowing the participation in elections of their chief rivals (the communists ), the Diem regime claimed victory and was recognized as legitimate by the U.S. It was shortly after this that the communists in the north decided to pursue a violent path to reunification of the country and began sending cadre who were formerly from the south ( they had fought the French then gone to the north side with the partition of the country ) back to their old provinces. This would become the NLF or Viet Cong. When the NLF was on the verge of victory in 1964-65 the U.S. escalated to more direct involvement as the only way to prevent the collapse of the S. Vietnamese government. First there was Rolling Thunder then when that wasn't enough U.S. Marines landed at Da Nang.
What I'm long windly saying is that the Isenhower (sp) administration is where the real blame should lay. If they would have stood up for the ideals they espouse, then Viet Nam would have transitioned peacefully to a communist system and who knows what would happen after but I bet there would never have been a Cambodian Holocaust.
The US poured over $1 billion dollars a year for five years into to trying to beat the Vietnamese patriots with the French. My father flew B26 missions into the area of Dien Bien Phu when the French finally failed.
Read Bernard Fall's "Street without Joy," my two best friends died running emergency munitions so Pleiku could hold just 14 years after Fall's book showed the total futility of the war.
The great secret about the rebellion in the south is not about the US denying free elections which is well known and documented by well respected historians, the secret is that the rebellion in the south was started by a bunch of market women who had gotten sick of Diem's thugs just strolling in and stealing what they wanted. Two shotguns started that rebellion, when all they wanted was Diem's thugs to leave them alone. The last market women were not released from the Tiger cages until 1985 to 1990, because it would have embarrassed the hell out of the Vietnamese Communist government to admit that they had nothing to do with the start of the rebellion. The opening of the Soviet diplomatic files reveals the Soviets screaming at the North Vietnamese "what the fuck do you idiots think you are doing?" With the Ho replying "we didn't start this the locals did, should we support them or not?"
Interesting info btw.
Thank you, I will look up the Bernard Fall book "Street without Joy" on Vietnam.
The wars for Vietnam, an overview here
This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions.
Oops.
And we wonder why the neocons feel they deserve immunity from accountability.
I do admit that the Republican Party had what they called Liberals in the 1960s. A Republican Liberal was not a real Liberal by the standards of the Democratic Party. McNamara was a Republican.
There was a strong hawkish element in the Democratic party back then.
Just listen to JFK's inaugural speech, it's plain to hear. Or his 1962 July 4th address, posted as an audio file on C&L 2 days ago.
There was a strong hawkish element in the Democratic party back then.
Um, there still is. How is that escalation in Afghanistan coming along, by the way?
Don't you know that the war in Iraq is over?
And that we have withdrawn our troops from Afghanistan?
Don't you realize that change has blossomed just as all of the carnival barkers said it would?
I hated the Vietnam war but was not tuned in to all the personalities involved. I do know one thing, there sure are a lot of well known people dying lately. I've lost count of just how many in the last two or three weeks.
Just a product of his time- May they all continue to RIP (should they?), eventually die off, and fade into our ever-changing demographic....
I hope there's a really nice warm place in hell for Mr. McNamara. He knew by 1968 that the war was lost; just imagine the lives that could have been saved if he had come out against the war when it mattered. But no, he kept his mouth shut, accepted the nice cushy gig with the World Bank, and let literally thousands of American boys (and god knows how many innocent Vietnamese) die or worse, come back as walking wounded. Fuck him! Fuck him six days a week and twice on Sunday. The Third Circle of Hell's going to get awfully crowded with him, Nixon, Kissinger, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, et al.
I'm in strong agreement. I believe there is a special part of hell for all dictators, warmongers, war architects, war cheerleaders, war presidents, etc., fucking etc. When will the human race ever stop killing itself?
Whatever criticisms that can be levelled at McNamara, he did face up to his errors and the tragic consequences of US involvement in Vietnam. Will Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ever do the same with regard to Iraq? Don't hold your breath.
BTW, "Fog of War" is an excellent film, for those who haven't seen it.
Whatever one can say about this man, and there's plenty negative ways you can go about it, at least he had the courage to say 'we were wrong'
Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc. all these idiots could never have the decency to do that.
That's something.
"Whatever criticisms that can be levelled at McNamara, he did face up to his errors and the tragic consequences of US involvement in Vietnam. "
Yeah, he sure did - 30 years later! That takes a lot of courage, you betcha!
I saw "The Fog of War" and you can add thousands of fire-bombed Japanese from WWII to the list of McNamara's victims.
.....but if Hell did exist, Curtis LeMay would have been one of the first to greet McNamara.
On September 29, 1972, a passenger on the ferry to Martha's Vineyard recognized McNamara on board and attempted to throw him into the ocean. McNamara declined to press charges. The man remained anonymous, but was interviewed years later by author Paul Hendrickson,[18] who quoted the attacker as saying, "I just wanted to confront (McNamara) on Vietnam."
McNamara is talked about quite a bit in the book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", and not in a particular good way.
this war criminal did not die in a dank jail cell somewhere.
One of the finest men I've ever known was GySgt Larry Zeigler, USMC. He was my best friend in the Marine Corps. Gunny Z was shot in the face in Quang Tri Province on May 15, 1968, at age 31. He left behind his wife and three small boys.
gave up their right to rest in peace.
to that.
Excellent documentary. McNamara had his faults, but he was no neocon.
I have the DVD and each time after watching my overwhelming feeling is that if he thought the Vietnam War was wrong or was misled he could have resigned.
Give me a break. 58,000 dead that they admit to, How many POW's MIA's and permanantly disabled? Agent Orange. Then...Oops, we make a mistake. May he not rest in peace.
is a far more chilling figure than the 60K American souls lost...
hope that worthless son of a bitch is burning in Hell. I have buddies on the Wall because that sorry ass sucking son of a mother fucking cock sucking bastard son of a bitch shit wiping fuck wad, was too goddamn proud to admit he was wrong and withdraw , but would rather sacrafice soldiers rather than admit his error. I pray to God please send me wherever he isn't because I will be with my friends.
Wow....!!!! (Heard That!!)
I stopped having friends after Vietnam. Friends die. Asshole buddies aren't a very good substitute for someone that saved your life and you would have given your life for them.
how many people would be alive now if we had gotten out. the result would have been the same as it is now. Many of my friends would be grandfathers now.
My former partner joined up in 1967 and returned from Vietnam a different man. I wish I knew the boy that he was but he could hardly remember life before Vietnam. I remember all the trips to the Presidio VA hospital across the bridge and back for all manner of physicals and psychiatric appointments. I remember the nightmares and episodes and I hate that war more than I did as a child watching caskets unloaded at Andrews AFB. But that was when we televised our returning dead soldiers. Before the truth became inconvenient.
More bad energy off the planet. Cheers. I'm worried about the global baby boom as I fear at least a couple of those little bastards will cause real trouble. I hope there's a Ghandi born somewhere in the litter..
had no qualms in convincing JFK to escalate the war and send hundreds of thousands of good American boys into one of the most hellish ground wars men have ever seen! It killed over 50,000 of my generation, and left many more than that number physically maimed and/or psychologically scarred for life. If I didn't have a college deferment during the late 60's, he may have sent me to an early death as well. So Bob, F.U. and Good Riddance!
Sometimes I wish that I still had faith in God and goodness which I lost in Vietnam while watching the first of three massacres.
I wish I could still believe that McNamara was Roasting Incredibly slowly over an open volcano right next to Kennedy, Johnson, Westmoreland, Nixon, Ford, and over 50 generals and all air force officers and every Navy pilot that ever took off with a load of napalm or white phosphorus while they wait for Kissinger to join them.
I agree with many of your sentiments that Mac, LBJ, Westmorland, Nixon, and many, many others deserved much worse than they received. However, in regards to JFK, Mac did announce back in '95 that JFK had indeed ordered that half of the "advisors" be withdrawn from Vietnam by end of '64. JFK could see the writing on the wall, and realized that the war was unwinnable.
While publicly making statements that the U.S. would continue to support South Vietnam, JFK was not sold on full-out war. In fact, there's a New York Times story dated October 5, 1963, in which it describes how JFK and Mac decided to start bringing the advisors home.
After JFK's death--which will forever be suspicious--Mac began to change his tune on the war. Perhaps with the change in bosses, Mac felt that he finally had a boss who would listen to his belief that the U.S. had to ratchet-up things in Vietnam.
How Mac changed his views on Vietnam within 18 months has always baffled me. George Ball and Clark Clifford were baffled. And when LBJ had completely bought into Mac's viewpoints to increase troop size in Southeast Asia, some of JFK's holdovers had begun to jump ship.
Interestingly, Maureen Dowd's latest column of Palin discussed how Dick Goodwin and Bill Moyers were so convinced that LBJ was in complete denial about the deteriorating situation in Vietnam, that they began reading books on mental health to determine if LBJ was suffering from some mental disease. Goodwin left LBJ's administration, convinced that LBJ chose a path to war that JFK was never going to travel.
So, while I agree with you that brilliant men like Mac, Nixon, and JFK foolishly bought into the flawed "Domino Theory." one must remember that was a prominent belief and fear back in those days. If someone runniing for the presidency would've publicly criticized that theory, he would've been tossed-out immediately.
JFK had his flaws, but one fact cannot be denied: He did not want to increase the U.S.'s involvement in Vietnam.
he was a rabid anti communist
-- is brilliant by any measure.
so rip
Maybe Rumsfled or Cheney will be visiting you soon. One can only hope.
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." —Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)
because I am only 27 and know him from history books. I think a variation on "the banality of evil" can best sum him up: perhaps "the evil of banality." He gave us the idea of viewing a war as a balance sheet of our dead vs. theirs, instead of a struggle between real men with families and hopes and dreams, no matter their national allegiance. He is the ultimate symbol of War viewed as an academic exercise. We forgot his legacy rather quickly and thus embraced Rumsfeld et al.
LBJ replaced him. Asked about the 58,000 dead Americans,Mac said the question is, what do we learn from it. Errol Morris told NPR today that McNamara opposed the Iraq War too, but never went public with his misgivings. Apparently the lessons of Viet Nam were lost on him.
http://www.liquiddaddy.blogspot.com/
Interesting bit of trivia most aren't aware of: A very young MaNamara's help was enlisted by none other than Curtis LeMay during WW 2. The 8th air force was suffering such major losses that LeMay asked a young McNamara to determine why many of the missions flown by B-17 air crews were turning back as soon as they lifted off from English air bases. His conclusions: The pilots of those B-17S were feeling tremendous guilt for losing so many of their air crews from the Luftwaffe and the dreaded 88S. The pilots were having more and more difficulty in carrying out their missions and would therefore turn back. LeMay when hearing this set an example and decided to lead the missions personally such as over Schweinfurt - LeMay was a fearless lunatic no doubt.
Great film. Recommended.
Support for the one who made Nam unwinnable.
Who called off air support to overthrow Castro.
But it's not like the Left supports Communists or Marxists.
No, not with Clinton and Aristide.
Or Obama and Zelaya.
It's hard to NOT look at the Communist and Marxist support of the Left as a plain piece of history which has proven disgusting.
Thanks to this SOB, my 19 year old cousin came home in pieces!
My cousin-in-law, who is a great guy, lost his only sibling in Viet Nam too! Age 20!
Rot in hell Robert McNamara!
then McNamara was truly despicable.
Oh my great magical being, you mean the gulf of Ton kin never happened? Why that would make it a "false flag" operation, which we know they would never do. You can't sugar coat what this prick did, Invincible ignorance is intentional and brands you a traitor,a fool and moral criminal. CEO,citizens,eyes,open
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