R.I.P. Robert McNamara

First, I don't understand the label "McNamara's War." He was a Secretary of Defense -- obviously an important position, but ultimately at the direction of the Presidents he served. It seems that McNamara might have taken the hit instead of Kennedy, who was developing cult-like status.

Also, his book "In Restrospect" was as honest a work as one can imagine about an event written by a major player in that event. More importantly, McNamara took what he learned from Vietnam and wrote lessons that ended up being directly applicable to the Iraq War.

It's true that McNamara's after-the-fact "lessons" couldn't change what happened in Vietnam. I'm not sure that he could have changed those events, anyway. But they can change how we approach events in the future, if we choose to learn from them.

He really was a great man.

to remember Viet Nam and McNamara's role in it. And I do have sympathy for your position. McNamara took on a task and he wasn't about to set it aside. He was loyal to the guy that brought him in, and he wasn't the kind of guy to toss loyalty aside just because the job turned into a dirty piece of work. These are admirable traits, in my view. And for the record, I oppposed the war. I thought it was dumb beyond belief.

He didn't see it as morally questionable, and few people his age did--they came up with the memory of WWII and setting themselves to opppose communism was widely seen as necessary. No one who would have done it differently could have gotten the job; they'd have been too far out of the mainstream.

But I don't have much sympathy for McNamara the man. We pay for the choices we make, and sometimes we pay dearly. He spent a very long time haunted by his actions and inactions.

I took my father--a 60s college student and grad student and anti-war activist--to a McNamara talk in the 90s.

My father got pretty mad at McNamara. McNamara made halfway apologies that never acknowledged that the anti-war movement was fundamentally correct.

In Fog of War, McNamara is pompous and self-serving.

The guy was talented and brilliant. He was a player in three (or more) major American phenomenons of the 20th Century (WWII bombing as a planner, Ford and Vietnam War).

But the apologies I heard, did ring hollow. It's not that I believe no apology could ring sincere. Although the admission he stayed SECDEF even after he was convinced the war couldn't be won pushes me in that direction. It's that McNamara's apologies always seemed part of an effort to gain attention for himself or to vindicate his conduct in implementing immoral policy.

Although I am not so close in personality to Robert McNamara, and I did participate in Vietnam protests in college, I agree with Kevin. Our society could do with fewer mistakes. But if mistakes are inevitable, a little repentance (or at least chagrined acknowledgment) is a healthy thing. Otherwise you become a moral monster like Nixon, Cheney or Kissinger.

That more broadly I hate a couple of sentiments expressed here, namely loyalty to authority and finishing what you start. If people didn't lionize these simple minded personality flaws the world would be a better place.

There's nothing inherently good about either.

I'm much younger than Kevin, and though my folks hated McNamara back in the day (though they've softened a bit), I feel the same sympathy. In college I wrote a final paper on the guy, and though he was an arrogant and self-serving bastard, I say that when his actions were viewed in context, he was much less of a monster than Rumsfeld and company.

Back in the 60s, the memories of WWII were still fresh--the vision of Hitler sweeping across Europe wasn't the tired conservative platitude it is now. The USSR didn't conjure images of broken factories and leaking nuclear reactors, it was the Red Army, beating Hitler basically alone. Vietnam, though a boneheaded idea, wasn't nearly the completely batshit fever dream that Iraq was.

And In Retrospect and The Fog of War, though both are way too late and pretty self-serving, are reasonably good portraits of what went wrong for McNamara. At least he said something--what other SecDef has done that?

"At least he said something..."
Not nearly effing good enough.
Reminds me of Bill Clinton, who bent over backwards to not notice the genocide in Rwanda, let alone do anything about it. But it's OK - because, golly, he just feels awful about it. Poor guy.
What utter bullshit. If you know that you actions are leading to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands, and you do nothing about it, you cannot be forgiven by Feeling Oh So Bad about it later in life. Especially the rather precious way that McNamara went about it. If you blame Bush for killing so many Iraqis, how does this guy get sympathy points just for doing the Full Oprah? Seriously?

Yes Mcnamara was a scumbag and is justly villified for his prosecution of the Vietnam war by a failed technocrat strategy. Unlike the leftists here I don't villify him for fighting the war, as anyone with any historical knowledge knows, we had a treaty that committed us to assist our ally when attacked. What I hate him (and Kennedy and Johnson) for was their failure to strive for victory, much as Ogabe is doing in Afghanistan, by tying the arms of our fighting forces behind their backs and giving sanctuary to our enemies.

McNamara is the epitome of Ogabe world view.

McNamara sucked and people died and then he was haunted by it.

Cheney sucked and people died and he's totally fine with it.

I prefer the former.

Good post

It was McNamara's disregard for the real lives of the people whose deaths he was organizing is what made the thing so contemptible.

--what was the term for it, trying to organize the world through charts and statistics that was the hip company man style of the time--? I have completely forgotten.

As if it were an engineering problem. Blow them up enough and they'll come round.

I'm going to differ from most of the comments here, and say that I feel similarly to you, Kevin. And I am quite a bit older than you are. McNamara and Vietnam were my generation; I was 18 in 1968. And I very much opposed that war.

McNamara's personality and mine are not all similar, but I think people can do terrible things and never feel or express a drop of regret or remorse; and people can do terrible things and then realize the enormity of what they are responsible for years later and regret it for the rest of their lives.

Edward Teller, the so-called "father of the hydrogen bomb," was of the first group. He, too, died in his 90s and to his very last dying breath defended the hydrogen bomb and the entire nuclear arms race.

Robert McNamara was in the second group. He spent many years bitterly regretting the wrongs he had done. He could not go back and change them, but he tried to make amends by speaking out in public (he wait far too long to do so, but he DID do so) and holding himself responsible.

Does it absolve him of blame or responsibility for what he did and what he participated in? Of course it doesn't. But it does make a difference to how I will remember him and think about him. And I think it also makes a difference just in a strict moral sense. It matters that his guilt haunted him.

Making distinctions is important. There IS a difference between an Edward Teller and a Robert McNamara. Repentence, regret, attempts at making amends DO matter.

That's how I feel, anyway. So, Kevin, you are not alone.

The title "McNamara's War" was a media creation. Sure, he was SecDef at the time but the idea that "he knew in real time that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was totally being misrepresented to Congress." isn't quite what he said in "The Fog of War" since there had been an incident that was before the 2 that became the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

The canard that somehow the strategy of containment "was their failure to strive for victory," is ahistorical crap. Have you so easily forgotten Korea? The people around Johnson hadn't. They knew if they went north with ground troops, they'd be fighting China again.

I agree with Kevin on this one. Besides, being in the service from 69-72 was a real character builder. Met a lot of Southerners, a lot, and a bunch of other crazy people.

McNamara was caught in the circumstances of a situation where the fault lies chiefly with Winston Churchill. At Tehran, Roosevelt wanted Viet-Nam to have a UN protectorate. Winnie didn't want the example for fear of losing India and the other colonies, so he quashed the idea, Uncle Joe didn't care so Roosevelt dropped it.

French went back and the US sent bombers and maintenance which morphed through the Treaty of Paris into about 1800 advisors. Then in 1959 the VC came out of the shadows and the US sent more and then LBJ, the real culprit escalated from there. The Pentagon Papers have the details.

At least he felt the pangs of remorse and you can't know how deeply he felt that. I give him the benefit of the doubt.

WoooWheeeee, bro, I'm a little older than you and I remember McN in all his glory. Another ~ 40K kids died and K's & K's more were wounded AFTER McN had already realized the war couldn't be won, and yet didn't stand up to try to end it.

I pray that if I ever get hauled into a courtroom, you're on the jury.

Yes. I remember Robert McNamara, when he was fresh in the news. I remember the body counts, the air strikes, the napalm, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I remember Tet of 1968, and the epiphany that we would have to destroy a country to save it. Like it was yesterday, I remember the ugly endless burden. But, for some time I had supported the war and I admired the intelligence and the competence of McNamara. We were in good in hands. So I thought, till Tet 1968, January 1968. Then it was over. There were no dominoes to fall but our own.

The man was of such character, that when he saw the futility and immorality of his actions, he reconsidered what he was doing, and in February of 1968, resigned.

No, to be like Mr. McNamara is a compliment to your character. His life should be a lesson to those of us who struggle to find the right and act in the right. Rest ever after in peace, Robert.