Robert McNamara

The problem, of course, is that we don’t know what would have happened had we (a) never intervened or (b) had continued the fight. It is somewhat clear that had we done (b), millions of Khmer would not have been killed.
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We should also not forget just how evil North Vietnam was. Despite the bleatings of John F. Kerry (who should have known better, given Hue), millions of South Vietnamese were persecuted by that horrible regime. Communism was and still is evil to the core.

Highly recommend “The Fog of War” for those interested in a fuller story about McNamara during that period.

I was about to recommend The Fog of War.

He will be missed.

McNamara, RIP

And clearly the neocons have still not learned the lesson. Cheney claims we’re planning to leave too soon, but the truth is any return to violence will be the continuation of the civil dispute between the Kurds, Shia and Sunni’s. For all the talk about the surge working that the media helped drive, the civil agreements were never made and as an outside force there is nothing we can do about this brewing civil unrest.

Even more than “Fog of War,” I’d recommend “Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy” by Robert D. Dean. The late 90′s and early 2000′s have brought a welcome introduction of gender (particularly masculinity) into foreign policy history that I imagine most commenters weren’t fortunate enough to get in their high school/college history courses.

Have often wondered how someone in McNamara’s position, who believes he made mistakes that cost a great many lives, can get to sleep at night. I mean this genuinely. It must have taken a great deal of emotional energy to keep pushing this knowledge to the back of the mind. Yet this is a remarkable interview (thanks for including the transcript), and for all his mistakes I think it took genuine courage to explore the decisions the way he did. The interview reads like he’s a person from a different generation, as we was.
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We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values…Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why… we made mistakes and the nation paid a terrible price…I go on to say, “I want Americans to understand why we made the mistakes we did and to learn from them,” and I hope we will.

Thanks, KT. Transferring skills can be tricky, as McNamara tried from Ford to DD. Even Peter Drucker praised his management efforts in his books…before the war’s revelations. Real life’s not so easily covered by six sigma, etc., alas.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/lessons-of-robert-mcnamara-by-dday.html

Will Cheney (Wolfowitz, Bolton) ever have the humility and integrity to admit to being the architect of a failed strategy in Iraq?

pintortwo:

No. Those disciples of priapism as foreign policy lack the character McNamara displayed in exercising his tragic hindsight

“Tragic hindsight”, good call, Flown. McNamara was the Satan of my 60s youth, but he had the wisdom and humility to recognize and admit his mistakes. Wonder if any of our recent warmongers will ever see the light?

McNamara on mass slaughter as a test of concept:
” .. (McNamara) did not think the bombing of North Vietnam — the biggest bombing campaign in history up to that time — would work but he went along with it “because we had to try to prove it would not work, number one, and (because) other people thought it would work.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obit_mcnamara/print

Wow. Everyone must read Paul Dirks’ link.
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Doomed to repeat it.
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McNamera had a business background– he eventually was honest enough to recognize what he’d done wrong. But the architects of the Iraq occupation are all products of the conservative bubble– political correctness is the only virtue there, so cutting taxes and invading countries, regardless of context, is always the response. Reality simply isn’t part of their calculus. They will not have a moment of honestly as McNamera did.

Seems like McNamara and LBJ’s great flaw was running scared of the conservatives. They were so worried about being perceived as soft on Communism, that they forgot that their first job was to be strong on America.
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They knew Vietnam was unwinnable, yet they pursued the war because they were worried what Richard Nixon and William F Buckley Jr would say. Nixon and Kissinger fell into the same trap. They knew the war couldn’t be won regardless of the number or type of bombs we dropped, yet they were worried about what the right wing would say.
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The Dems are making the same mistake today. They are more concerned about what William Kristol and Mitch McConnell (who have never been right about anything) will say rather than taking a stand and doing what is right.

Thanks for the oracle vision, Elvis.

McNamara: ” .. I want Americans to understand why we made the mistakes we did and to learn from them,” and I hope we will. ..”

And have we? Fallujah, Mosul, My Lai, Kirkuk, Abu Ghraib, Auschwitz, Guantanamo, …. “bomb them back to stone age”, “shock and awe”, …

Consider the current open-ended war on islam and the troop surges – with predictions of an ill-defined ‘win’:
“McNamara visited Vietnam — the first of many trips — and returned predicting that American intervention would enable the South Vietnamese, despite internal feuds, to stand by themselves “by the end of 1965.”
That was an early forerunner of a seemingly endless string of official “light at the end of the tunnel” predictions of American success. Each was followed by more warfare, more American troops, more American casualties, more American bombing, more North Vietnamese infiltration — and more predictions of an early end to America’s commitment.”

Like the many who died in that war in Vietnam, McNamara is no more …
Life is a tale told by …

RIP.
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I’d recommend “Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy” by Robert D. Dean.
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I second that.
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I was thinking recently about the irony of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all forming their Vietnam policy with the goal of not “losing” Vietnam like Truman “lost” China: no one blames Truman for China anymore but those four Presidents are all blamed to varying extents for Vietnam.

Blamed by whom Rose? Blamed by unrepentant imperialists for losing a nation? How does one country lose another sovereign nation, right? Or blamed by lefties like me for ever getting involved in the first place, let alone the slaughter that followed. Not to mention the 2001 US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement. Communism, the scourge of the planet, unless, of course, it’s in our economic interest. Autocratic regimes, yet another scourge, yet the Kingdom is our BFF.
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Unfortunately, for every repentant figure like McNamara, we have countless others in high office who feel the need to reshape the world in their own twisted image, merely to maintain our privileged position in the world. “Doomed to repeat” is a lovely concept, but for the cabal running state/the pentagon “doom” is a wholly inaccurate term. That implies that their are consequences to geopolitical hubris, that lessons were learned in SE Asia, and have been applied since. This, we can all agree (to this day, Af-Pak Obama, anyone?) is a ludicrous notion. These folks know the history perfectly but warp it to strive after the same ends.

I also liked “Fog of War”

I feel a bit left out of this discussion, having only come into this mortal coil long after McNamara had departed the Johnson Administration. Nevertheless I know the name and will have to watch “Fog of War” now.

As I recall, McNamara’s son was a soldier in Viet Nam and later died of cancer that was attributed to his son’s exposure to Agent Orange. After watching “The Fog of War” I realized that his personal loss was never mentioned. He had the strength to admit being wrong and the classiness to not obtain sympathy via his own child’s death.
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On the news tonight they mentioned his family had hosted war protesters in their home during the war – including one of his own children.
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Imagine Cheney or Rumsfeld doing any of these things…can’t, because they’re not even fit to kiss this man’s boots.
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RIP

Not to put too fine a point on it, but McNamara “died peacefully in his bed,” as did Dick Nixon, and as will in all likelihood one day Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.
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There’s a lesson here that’s not too hard to figure out.
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BTW: for those of you too young to have been around, McNamara was DESPISED by anti-war Americans during Vietnam. Magnify by 1000 the vitriol directed at GWB/Cheney/Rummy during the last 9 years and you still don’t even get close to how people felt about McNamara.

Yes, Slowp, how’s that for karma!? The other day a student was explaining to me her belief in that nebulous force, and it took all my resistance not to shatter her faith.

“Seems like McNamara and LBJ’s great flaw was running scared of the conservatives. They were so worried about being perceived as soft on Communism, that they forgot that their first job was to be strong on America.”
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Just think for how long and what cost this country has endured for that one, idiotic, political parlor game. We pay it still.

Agree with slowp too. I get tired of wars being described as battles between non combatants. Bush Vs Osama for example. Both of them (as far as I know) still breathing, while many “disposable” people on both sides have perished.
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We still seem to have this attitude in this country that the lives of the powerful are more important than others. We get wall to wall coverage of the death of Michael Jackson, other deaths get mentioned in the back pages, or not at all.
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The person who invented a cure for cancer, or created cold fusion, or designed an affordable self sustaining radical new agricultural system might be one of the men or women who died in one of these conflicts. We should despair of them all.
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McNamara felt guilty. That is great. Truly. The amount of pain that he helped create can never be washed away by his guilt. Millions died in that war of folly. Millions of families lost lovers, fathers, mothers, children.
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But, he after two decades of reflection felt bad about it.

Also(if I may be Palinesque)…
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Think of the millions who “survived” the Vietnam war missing limbs, poisoned by Agent Orange, psychologically damaged for life, who then impact those around them.
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McNamara was sorry though. All is forgiven.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but McNamara “died peacefully in his bed,” as did Dick Nixon, and as will in all likelihood one day Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.
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Yes, but I’d like to believe that one of these men did not sleep peacefully while he lived.
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I was around during the Viet Nam era and remember that era very well. ‘Rummy’ and ‘Dick’ will never feel regret. A body count over 45,000 affected everyone because most people knew at least one person who had died or had been terribly affected. If the personnel count was higher in Iraq (and thanks to modern medicine many more are surviving than did 30 years ago) then I think you would have found many more people protesting the stupidity we have recently experienced.
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Again, the difference is the ability to admit ‘a horrible mistake.’ I’m sorry, I just don’t see it happening with the neo’s.

trifecta55, I’m sorry for being pollyannish but I still believe there is a difference. My brother who was in the military at the time probably disagrees with me.

Nevertheless I know the name and will have to watch “Fog of War” now.
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I’ve seen parts of it, I need to watch the rest. It woke me up to some of the realities of modern war, and snapped me out of “Saving Private Ryan” mode.

To answer my own question: Will Cheney (Wolfowitz, Bolton) ever have the humility and integrity to admit to being the architect of a failed strategy in Iraq? @4:34
No. That would require admitting ulterior motives, and thus jeopardize the Long War movement. Once these cretins admit that they lied and sent thousands of our sons and daughters to die and to kill possibly over one million others, and that they capitalized on the anguish we felt after 911, based on the theory of a perpetual unipolar world… then the other well-positioned (in media, defense and intelligence) faithful, dogmatic Long Warriors won’t have the necessary cover to prove themselves right all-along.

I’m mixed on McNamara. I’ve seen him speak, read his apologia & seen Fog of War, and he seemed a man who’d spent decades rethinking everything he’d done and was truly contrite. However, given the death and destruction he was personally (and smugly, I might add) responsible for, it’s had to imagine that he’s not residing w/ Satan tonight.
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I guess it’s for better people than I to be forgiving, although as many commenters here note, I think it’s safe to say that you’ll never get a second’s introspection out of GWB, Cheney, Rummy, Wolfie, etc. Men were bigger in McNamara’s day.
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One thing that’s still the same though is America at War: The men who start wars will be hailed as statesmen and realists and protectors, and slavishly admired, especially by the mainstream press. The people who oppose these wars will be called traitors and wimps and “not-real-Americans,” and will be villified, especially by the mainstream press. The men who start wars will die peacefully in their sleep and be feted with huge funerals and fawning tributes. The men/women who fight these wars will die alone in agony, and be buried among a small handful of weeping family who wonder what it was all about.
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Nonetheless, the evil that McN did was in small part atoned for by his participation in Fog of War. It should be — and I’d be surprised if it isn’t — required viewing in every classroom, large and small, where US officers are instructed in war and warfare.

KT: To bring the current state of the auto industry into this discussion, I read today that during McNamara’s tenure at Ford, he was credited with increasing sales of the Ford T-bird 4-fold by changing it from a sports car to a 4-door sedan.(!) This, apparently, was the birth of the kind of thinking that led to the Vega, Volare, 1.8L Mustang, J-cars (inc. Cimmaron), Sunbirds, SUVs, and Hummers. Looking at the short-term buck instead of the bigger automotive picture.
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slowp: re: Dying peacefully. I’ve read that the Civil War was called a “Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Fight” by the troops. The more things change…

trifecta55 Says: ” .. McNamara was sorry though. All is forgiven. .. “

Hell, NO!
Just Rewards.
Karma and Re-incarnation.

[...] This seems like the perfect infrastructure project.Robert McNamara – Karen Tumulty, Swampland [...]

A MOMENT IN HISTORY

Have we learned from history?

The moral world nonchalantly watches the gratuitous carnage in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – even as new future killing fields are primed in Iran, North Korea and Africa.

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“By late 1967 America’s military presence in Vietnam numbered nearly half a million men. Six thousand miles away from the USA mainland,more than forty ice cream plants were constructed “to provide ice cream as far forward as possible” A million tons of supplies were being delivered every month – an average of 100 pounds a day for every American in the country.”
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“The world watched the richest and the most powerful nation on earth turn the most advanced weapons in history on an enemy which, with the important exception of bicycles, had hardly a single wheeled or tracked vehicle in the whole of South Vietnam. … The marines mounted 1,200 patrols every day. During one operation, Ranch Hand, 4 million gallons of herbicide and defoliant were spilled over the countryside – this was said to be more than four times the annual capacity of all American chemical companies put together. ..”

“And Charlie Company – a particular group of young Americans operating in a particular place (in My Lai, Vietnam) at a particular time – came to believe that it was their task to wipe out an entire village of its unarmed old men, women and children.”

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Hours-Lai-Michael-Bilton/dp/0140177094