And, even more specifically, he is most well known for his admission, published in his memoirs in 1995, that he felt -- essentially from the beginning of our country's involvement in Vietnam -- that the United States would be unable to win the war.
Yes, that's right.
The architect of the war, one of Kennedy's "best and brightest," the brilliant CEO of Ford Motor Company, felt from the beginning that the edifice he constructed was not durable like the cars his previous employer built. Rather, it better resembled a house of cards. (More like a cemetery of cards, actually.)
Why didn't he broach his concerns to President Johnson? Because he felt that he was simply a vehicle for LBJ's intentions and desires, and that he owed his loyalty to the president.
This is a pathetic, tired refrain that continues to this day. A recent example includes Colin Powell being a bagman for the Bush Administration, convincing the United Nations (and, by extension, the rest of the world) that Iraq was, indeed, developing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, he was informed beforehand that George Tenet's "slam dunk" was a total fabrication. (Not, of course, that Colin Powell was a novice at being a tool of the Republican Party. He did his best to portray the My Lai massacre as a picnic.)
Alan Greenspan, also, waited until he was out of the government -- and, consequently, much less empowered to effect any change -- to inform everyone that one of the Bush Administration's major errors was abandoning fiscal restraint. (Meanwhile, Greenspan bears absolute responsibility for the Internet and real-estate bubbles, though he'd never admit it.)
Okay, I realize I'm getting sidetracked. Enough of Powell and Greenspan -- back to the ultimate government shill, Mr. McNamara.
I recognize that the pressures of politics are immense, and that standing up to the president would be an intimidating task. However, McNamara was strong enough to lead Ford, and I would think his forbidding intelligence could have crafted a way to communicate his doubts to LBJ. Guess not.
Apparently, he took his failure to make a stand quite hard, and "[o]n many occasions when confessing his errors regarding Vietnam, his voice shook or cracked and tears came to his eyes."
I find myself having a vanishingly small amount of sympathy -- or empathy -- for him. My father was drafted to Vietnam while his wife -- my mom -- was pregnant with me. Fortunately, my father returned safely, but over 58,000 sons, brothers, and fathers never did -- and McNamara bears a great deal of responsibility for THAT body count.
So McNamara felt himself a little weepy on occasion because of his inaction? He did live to be 93, so he might have had quite a few tears spill down his face. I doubt, however, that they outnumbered the tears shed by the mothers, wives, and children of those dead 58,000 soldiers. I hope the image of a different soldier visited him every day, and continues to do so. Wherever he is.
Posts
Well said. That was a horrible year, and I will never forget it. Yes, Scott's Dad did come home, we were among the lucky ones. Can't say he hadn't changed. And McNamara's tears never comforted me -
ReplyDeletepersonally found him and his remorse unsettling and pitiful.
Scott's Mom
I can't speak as an expert on R. McNamara, however I did see the movie/documentary on him - The Fog of War: The Eleven Lessons from the life of Robert S. McNamara.
ReplyDeleteHe, along with the movie struck me as a charming, educated and witty fellow. However, after reading a brief history of the man, it seems that the actual manufacturing of the film was an attempt to excuse his strategy (or lack thereof) for the failure of American victory during the Viet Nam conflict. (IMO, I don't believe any particular SecDef and his generals could have executed a plan to "win" the conflict).
Regardless, he, along with the rest of the minions of the Johnson administration failed to make the most of their talents and efforts. The Viet Nam conflict was supported by some hair brained notion that "the dominos of Asian countries would fall under communism". Yeah, sure.
McNamara was just one of the many in a long line of cronies providing the political support necessary for American businesses to profit in war making. Strangely enough, this continues to this very day.
Lou
McNamara was brought to government to professionalize the Defense Department and add modern business theory and practices to the government. The significance of his tenure was the introduction of business reform to the acquisition process, centralization, attempts to create more rationale production models for weapon systems, to name a few.
ReplyDeleteHe was ultimately fired and sent to the World Bank as a scape goat for the failed war. That he was any part of the intellectual or policy force behind the arguments for the war is grossly overstated. He was an implementer - not a policy thinker.
If one wants to blame someone for the war, you would have to go through a long list of people who were more culpable before you got to McNamara. The war was really driven by foreign policy types not military types.
That many in the military felt the war could not be "won" is an oversimplification and really a mischaracterization. Militarily the war was very winnable - just not with the political constraints placed on the military of not invading North Viet Nam. This policy itself reflected a profound misunderstanding of the relationship between North Viet Nam, China, and the Soviet Union. In actuality, the North Vietnamese were supported primarily by the Soviets, not the Chinese. The Chinese are long historical rivals in the region with Viet Nam and their greatest fear was that a united Viet Nam would pose risks to Chinese influence in SE Asia. This is born out by the fact that shortly after the communists united Viet Nam, the Chinese went to war against them and basically has their asses handed to them by the battle tested Vietnamese.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteThe notion that the war couldn't be "won" runs contrary to the fact that the Vietnamization policy implemented by Nixon that allowed for the US to withdraw all of our forces actually worked. The South Vietnamese actually were able to hold the North to a basic status quo deadlock until Congress completely cut off all funding for the S Vietnamese 2 years after US forces had left. We had actually won the war, then lost it by pulling the rug out from under the feet of the S Vietnamese.
No offense Lou, but it's easy to say that the Dominoe theory was crap with 45 years hindsight. I suppose the Berlin Airlift was pointless and stupid as well given that the Iron Curtain came down anyway 30+ years later. Cold War theories don't make that much sense anymore 20 years after the Cold War ended but that doesn't mean that there wasn't intellectual validity of some sort to those theories at the time.
Scott. I think that you are right that McNamara weepily blamed himself for the war. That doesn't mean that he was right. In his much after the fact memories, I believe he largely overestimated the impact he had or could have had on the war. Now Cheney and Rumsfeld and the Iraq war - that's a different matter.