July 6, 2009
Robert McNamara, Ex-Pentagon Chief, Dies
Served As Secretary Of Defense For Presidents Kennedy, Johnson During Vietnam War; Dies At 93
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Play CBS Video Video Robert McNamara's Life Robert McNamara, JFK's former Defense Secretary, passed way this weekend. David Martin reflects on his life.
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In a Nov. 17, 1961 file photo, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara holds a news conference at the Pentagon. Former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara died Monday, according to his wife. He was 93. (AP Photo/Harvey Georges)
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Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara seen in this May 9, 2000 photo. (AP Photo/Harvey Georges)
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McNamara died at 5:30 a.m. at his home, his wife Diana told The Associated Press. She said he had been in failing health for some time.
For all his healing efforts, McNamara was fundamentally associated with the Vietnam War, "McNamara's war," the country's most disastrous foreign venture, the only American war to end in abject withdrawal rather than victory.
Known as a policymaker with a fixation for statistical analysis, McNamara was recruited to run the Pentagon by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 from the presidency of the Ford Motor Co. He stayed seven years, longer than anyone since the job's creation in 1947.
His association with Vietnam became intensely personal. Even his son, as a Stanford University student, protested against the war while his father was running it. At Harvard, McNamara once had to flee a student mob through underground utility tunnels. Critics mocked McNamara mercilessly; they made much of the fact that his middle name was "Strange."
After leaving the Pentagon on the verge of a nervous breakdown, McNamara became president of the World Bank and devoted evangelical energies to the belief that improving life in rural communities in developing countries was a more promising path to peace than the buildup of arms and armies.
A private person, McNamara for many years declined to write his memoirs, to lay out his view of the war and his side in his quarrels with his generals. In the early 1990s he began to open up. He told Time magazine in 1991 that he 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."
Finally, in 1993, after the Cold War ended, he undertook to write his memoirs because some of the lessons of Vietnam were applicable to the post-Cold War period "odd as though it may seem."
"In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" appeared in 1995. McNamara disclosed that by 1967 he had deep misgivings about Vietnam - by then he had lost faith in America's capacity to prevail over a guerrilla insurgency that had driven the French from the same jungled countryside.
Despite those doubts, he had continued to express public confidence that the application of enough American firepower would cause the Communists to make peace. In that period, the number of U.S. casualties - dead, missing and wounded - went from 7,466 to over 100,000.
"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of our country. But we were wrong. We were terribly wrong," McNamara, then 78, told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of the book's release.
The best-selling mea culpa renewed the national debate about the war and prompted bitter criticism against its author.
"Where was he when we needed him?" a Boston Globe editorial asked. A New York Times editorial referred to McNamara as offering the war's dead only a "prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late."
McNamara wrote that he and others had not asked the five most basic questions: Was it true that the fall of South Vietnam would trigger the fall of all Southeast Asia? Would that constitute a grave threat to the West's security? What kind of war - conventional or guerrilla - might develop? Could we win it with U.S. troops fighting alongside the South Vietnamese? Should we not know the answers to all these questions before deciding whether to commit troops?
He discussed similar themes in the 2003 documentary "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara." With the U.S. in the first year of the war in Iraq, it became a popular and timely art-house attraction and won the Oscar for best documentary feature.
The Iraq war, with its similarities to Vietnam, at times brought up McNamara's name, in many cases in comparison with another unpopular defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld. McNamara was among former secretaries of defense and state who met twice with President George W. Bush in 2006 to discuss Iraq war policies.
In the Kennedy administration, McNamara was a key figure in both the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis 18 months later. The crisis was the closest the world came to a nuclear confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.
McNamara served as the World Bank president for 12 years. He tripled its loans to developing countries and changed its emphasis from grandiose industrial projects to rural development.
After retiring in 1981, he championed the causes of nuclear disarmament and aid by the richest nation for the world's poorest. He became a global elder statesman.
McNamara's trademarks were his rimless glasses and slicked down hair and his reliance on quantitative analysis to reach conclusions, calmly promulgated in a husky voice.
As a professor at the Harvard Business School when World War II started, he helped train Army Air Corps officers in cost-effective statistical control. In 1943, he was commissioned an Army officer and joined a team of young officers who developed a new field of statistical control of supplies.
McNamara and his colleagues sold themselves to the Ford organization as a package and revitalized the company. The group became known as the "whiz kids," and McNamara was named the first Ford president who was not a descendant of Henry Ford.
A month later, the newly elected Kennedy, a Democrat, invited McNamara, a registered Republican, him to join his Cabinet. Taking the $25,000-a-year job cost McNamara $3 million in profit from Ford stocks and options.
As defense chief, McNamara reshaped America's armed forces for "flexible response" and away from the nuclear "massive retaliation" doctrine espoused by former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. He asserted civilian control of the Pentagon and applied cost-accounting techniques and computerized systems analysis to defense spending.
Early on, Kennedy regarded South Vietnam as an area threatened by Communist aggression and a providing ground for his new emphasis on counterinsurgency forces. A believer in the domino theory, which held that countries could fall to communism like a row of dominoes, Kennedy dispatched U.S. "advisers" to bolster the Saigon government. Their numbers surpassed 16,000 by the time of the president's assassination.
President Lyndon Johnson replaced Kennedy and retained McNamara as "the best in the lot" of Kennedy Cabinet members and the man to keep Vietnam from falling to the Communists.
When U.S. naval vessels allegedly were attacked off the North Vietnamese coast in 1964, McNamara lobbied Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which Johnson used as the equivalent of a congressional declaration of war.
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.
© MMIX The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
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See all 56 CommentsBut the obvious facts are that many Americans are poorly educated, easily deceived, and make the wrong choices when electing officials. As that changes, less scoundrels will get elected!
I disagree with you when you attempt to get the public to be responsible for the war! This war CAN be traced to a hand-full of politicians and appointees! THEY had the power and authority to act in matters regarding the war---NOT the public! THAT, WAS their job! And, they did it poorly at best! THEY should be held accountable for their actions!
We elect the politicians to do the work of government, if they can't or won't do it, all we can do is replacement them. But, the PUBLIC is NOT responsible for THEIR MISTAKES!
......that's not true, these colors ran in Korea, there was no victory there neither. In Beirut we also ran out after terrorists killed hundreds of marines. In Somalia we ran also ever short of victory. In Iraq we failed to find weapons of mass destruction, and now we leave a devastated country that celebrates us leaving and an insurgency we never really stopped.
Regarding the passage you quote, I think the author was speaking in terms of the overall lengthy nature of that war, the heavy manpower and material commitment to it, and the resulting failure to achieve the desired result---compared to some of the other wars you note in your
summary!
WE ALSO HAD THE DRAFT WHICH MEANT THAT OUR YOUNG MEN COULD BE TAKEN INVOLUNTARY AND SENT TO DEATH OR A LIFETIME OF TRAUMA!!!
by HGOODGUY July 6, 2009 2:07 PM PDT
Yep, many of us lost good buddies and relatives in that tragic war called Vietnam.
That is....unless your name was AWOL George W. Bush, or five-time deferment Dick Cheney....and these two "brave" (snicker) men got to send another generation of brave young people to their possible death or physical and/or mental trauma....this time to an illegal war. You are right though, at least this time our young people were not drafted...they were just lied to.
IT REALLY IS SO TRAGIC THAT SO MANY LIVES WERE LOST BECAUSE THEIR MISSION WAS POLITICAL AND UNCLEAR. SUCH WERE THE TIMES THEN.
WE ALSO HAD THE DRAFT WHICH MEANT THAT OUR YOUNG MEN COULD BE TAKEN INVOLUNTARY AND SENT TO DEATH OR A LIFETIME OF TRAUMA!!!
AT LEAST NOW MILITARY SERVICE IS VOLUNTARY AND, AS A RESULT, SOLDIERS KNOW WHAT THEY ARE BEING TRAINED FOR AND HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM.
MCNAMARA DIRECTED THE VIET NAM WAR ON "INTELECT AND THEORY" AND NEVER REALIZED THE HUMAN TOLL.
DEAD IS NOT THEORY--DEAD IS JUST DEAD!!!!
He sent a lot of good,young men to their deaths,for no reason,and then had the balz to say it might have been a mistake.
My brother Pat,one of those good young men was killed in Nam in July 1966,and this worthless a$$wipe lives to be 93.
May Robert Strange McNamara rot in hell.
I'm sorry about your brother Pat, that's why these clowns need to be
held accountable for their actions! So, men like your brother aren't
needlessly killed! That's why Bush & Co. ought to be prosecuted for
what they've done regarding the Iraq War! For the good men & women
who were senselessly killed during this war, too!
Everyone, from draft age kids to the relatives of those same kids, to returning Vietnam vets HATED McNamara and were all glad when LBJ finally let him go!
Since then, the hypocrite had been crying that he was "misunderstood" that he really hated the Vietnam War and was a critic of the war. He tried to convince everyone that he was just doing his job even though he had differences of opinion with LBJ.
Well, with all that blood on his hands, he can now try to convince a HIGHER POWER of that! No one here believed a word of it!!!
HAIL OBAMA???????
But, the point is: he brought it upon himself!
McNamara's service was considered honorable at the time and forced many dissidents in the USA to raise the conscience of the nation with protests for better priorities and better conflict resolution processes.
McNamara was part of a larger group that once had the majority in this nation. Many in that generation had counterparts in the Soviet Union who were equally tenacious and never backed down, until political leaders on both side started talking.
I do beleive that McNamara was good at his job, and that many Americans and Russians simply didn't like the task he had, and neither knew what they realy wanted. It was that dislike which fueled dissention and protests and took the country to a new direction. If he had been poor at his job, neither the USA or Soviet Union might have had enough time to decide what they really wanted.
The Cold War was a robotic fight without conscience that eventually resulted in both sides acquiring one. Many feel that it was more of a rebound war left over from unresolved issues in WWII.
Today, the NSA struggles for a valid mission. It was created to fight the cold war, and re-organized government serious enough to start the collection of Federal Income Taxes, but today, it lives the nightmare predicted by Eisenhaur of becoming the Defense Industrial Complex that dominates the priorities of the nation.
Robet McNamara was a good warrior, but had bad leaders to follow.
Robet McNamara was a good warrior, but had bad leaders to follow.
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You're usually more perceptive than your conclusion on Mr. McNamara shows!
Does a good warrior prevent the troops from winning by establishing 'rules of engagement'?
Does a good warrior risk the lives of the troops by trying to save a few dollars here and their---that is, 'fighting it cheap'?
Does a good warrior 'tell his boss what he wants to hear' when he knows it's not the truth? Does he do this for YEARS!?
Does a good warrior 'cut'n run'---quit his job because the stress of what he did is playing heavily upon his conscience?
Does a good warrior after supporting the war for years, say toward the end that it might be a 'mistake'---to begin the process of extricating himself---when he knew it WAS?
And, does a good warrior spend forty PLUS years alibiing, misstating, and spinning his own involvement in that war?!
The answer to these questions---my answer, is NO!
Robert McNamara was not a warrior, he was a successful auto exec, his
skill(s) were not transferable as Secretary of Defense, and consequently, he gave bad advice to his superiors regarding the war.
The way to make the sacrifices in Iraq and Afghanistan count is to realize that they were not sacrifices for country, but sacrifices for multinational corporations who use them as a free mercenary service, and profiteers, who use the war budget as a source of corporate welfare.
Then bring them home, make those who sent them there pay, and use that realization to make sure such cannot happen again.
Otherwise the sacrifice is for nothing.
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