July 6, 2009
Robert McNamara, Killer of 58,000 Americans, & +/- 6 Million Vietnamese, Cambodians & Loatians, Dead at 93
Hey, that was the nicest headline I could come up with. He was not a good guy — even if he did figure out later that he screwed up, big-time… Radio City Music Hall big-time. No amount of hindsight or regret brings millions of men, women, and children back from the dead, or begins to compensate for the way the “national social fabric” of the United States was, indeed, “torn asunder.” We haven’t recovered from Vietnam yet (and we may never), we haven’t learned a damned thing from it (and we may never), and there are still kids stumbling over old mines and getting their legs blown off.
Yeah, no forgiveness from this quarter. And no quarter from this quarter.
Robert McNamara,
Architect of Vietnam War,
Dies at 93Robert S. McNamara, the former secretary of defense whose record as a leading executive of industry and a chieftain of foreign financial aid was all but erased from public memory by his reputation as the primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, died early this morning at age 93. …
McNamara was secretary of defense during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In that capacity he directed a U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia during the critical early years of a Vietnamese conflict that escalated into one of the most divisive and bitter wars in U.S. history. When the war was over, 58,000 Americans were dead and the national social fabric had been torn asunder. …
[M]ore than 40 years after the fact, he was remembered almost exclusively for his orchestration of U.S. prosecution of the war in Vietnam, a failed effort by the world’s greatest superpower to prevent a communist takeover of a weak and corrupt ally. For his role in the war, McNamara was vilified by harsh and unforgiving critics, and his entire record was unalterably clouded. For the rest of his life, he would be haunted by the Vietnam ghosts.
In his 1995 memoir of the war, “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” McNamara said he and his senior colleagues were “wrong, terribly wrong” to pursue the war as they did. He acknowledged that he failed to force the military to produce a rigorous justification for its strategy and tactics, misunderstood Asia in general and Vietnam in particular, and kept the war going long after he realized it was futile because he lacked the courage or the ability to turn Johnson around. …
Tons more, including a photo gallery and related articles, at the link. Note how the tone of this lengthy obit in WaPo (which is on our short list of sources to stop referencing if it continues its downward spiral into right-wing irrelevance and shocking — even for the MSM — abandonment of any ethics whatsoever) is actually sympathetic to McNamara.
I’m with the late, great David Halberstam:
In Halberstam’s judgment, McNamara “did not serve himself or his country well. He was, there is no kinder or gentler word for it, a fool.”
Actually, “fool” is the kindest and gentlest word anyone could use to describe Robert McNamara.
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Filed Under: Asia, R.I.P.
