Robert McNamara, defense chief during Vietnam War, dies

[lou2099]

While not technically a celebrity, yet another public figure loses the fight to the Grim Reaper:

McNamara, defense chief during Vietnam War, dies
By PETE YOST and MIKE FEINSILBER – 2 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert S. McNamara, the cerebral secretary of defense who was vilified for carrying out the Vietnam War, then devoted himself to helping the world's poorest nations, died Monday. He was 93.

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 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.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

 

[StorminNorman]

McNamara was a brilliant man.

 

[Nivek]

I wonder if Cheney and Rumsfeld will be "as respected" when they pass.

 

[lou2099]

I wonder if Cheney and Rumsfeld will be "as respected" when they pass.

Well, lets put things in perspective, when NIxon died, he wasn't exactly slathered in praise. But he did get enough respect as a former President. Those two you mentioned will get respect, but not an iota of praise or compliments.

 

[ChrisBaleBatman]

I think they'll be respected.

People might not say good things. I would not expect everyone to start badmouthing them when they die. Just badmouth them while they're alive, get your kicks in while they're still clean.

 

[Hobodeluxe]

I don't know how brilliant he was when he needed to be. Time sure seemed to be a teacher though as he did seem to be remorseful ,not apologetic mind you,but it troubled his soul. you could tell if you ever watched The Fog of War doc.
Highly recommend it.

 

[Addendum]

I think they'll be respected.

People might not say good things. I would not expect everyone to start badmouthing them when they die. Just badmouth them while they're alive, get your kicks in while they're still clean.

If Cheney or Rumsfeld die, then I'll save my comments until after their families have had some time to mourn. But I certainly won't give them any respect just because they died.

 

[Kelly]

I'm pretty surprised that this guy is getting much praise....he himself said that his policy in Vietnam was the wrong way to go...but his work later in life was definitely praise worthy IMO.

 

[Cosmic]

There's a great NYT article on this from Bob Herbert.

 

[StorminNorman]

I'm pretty surprised that this guy is getting much praise....he himself said that his policy in Vietnam was the wrong way to go...but his work later in life was definitely praise worthy IMO.

The biggest problem with his Vietnam policy was the President he served under.

Johnson had no idea how to win a war, just one of several major faults.

 

[Hobodeluxe]

The biggest problem with his Vietnam policy was the President he served under.

Johnson had no idea how to win a war, just one of several major faults.

The biggest problem was ever getting involved in the war in the first place.
Kennedy started it as "a group of advisors" sent over to train the south Vietnamese. Then they started sending troops as a "police action".

Rumor was JFK wanted to end it. Johnson otoh threw fire on it.
I'm not sure if the war had anything to do with Johnson coming to power but I suspect the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned about wasn't about to let some liberal put the kibosh on their war .

 

[ChrisBaleBatman]

Well...okay, I guess I take that back. Since, atleast someone out there still and will forever hate McNamara's guts:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/71328.html?storylink=omni_popular

Commentary: Galloway on McNamara: Reading an obit with great pleasure

Written By Joseph L. Galloway, who I hear was a Vietnam war correspondent...so he feels strongly about it I would imagine. So, he's got harsh words on the late McNamara:

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." —Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.
McNamara was the original bean-counter — a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.


Back in 1990 I had a series of strange phone conversations with McNamara while doing research for my book We Were Soldiers Once And Young. McNamara prefaced every conversation with this: "I do not want to comment on the record for fear that I might distort history in the process." Then he would proceed to talk for an hour, doing precisely that with answers that were disingenuous in the extreme — when they were not bald-faced lies.

Upon hanging up I would call Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam and run McNamara's comments past them for deconstruction and the addition of the truth.

The only disagreement i ever had with Dave Halberstam was over the question of which of us hated him the most. In retrospect, it was Halberstam.

When McNamara published his first book — filled with those distortions of history — Halberstam, at his own expense, set out on a journey following McNamara on his book tour around America as a one-man truth squad.

McNamara abandoned the tour.

The most bizarre incident involving McNamara occurred when he was president of the World Bank and, off on his summer holiday, he caught the Martha's Vineyard ferry. It was a night crossing in bad weather. McNamara was in the salon, drink in hand, schmoozing with fellow passengers. On the deck outside a vineyard local, a hippie artist, glanced through the window and did a double-take. The artist was outraged to see McNamara, whom he viewed as a war criminal, so enjoying himself.

He immediately opened the door and told McNamara there was a radiophone call for him on the bridge. McNamara set down his drink and stepped outside. The artist immediately grabbed him, wrestled him to the railing and pushed him over the side. McNamara managed to get his fingers through the holes in the metal plate that ran from the top of the railing to the scuppers.

McNamara was screaming bloody murder; the artist was prying his fingers loose one at a time. Someone heard the racket and raced out and pulled the artist off.

By the time the ferry docked in the vineyard McNamara had decided against filing charges against the artist, and he was freed and walked away.

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