McNamara Never Stopped Looking Down On War Critics

Everyone else is using the occasion of the death of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to exhume this bit of ancient punditry from Mickey Kaus, so why can't I?

I met McNamara once, at a conference. He was self-effacing, and breathtakingly concise. I understand the charm. But there is something wrong with a culture in which a McNamara is feted for his "guts" while George McGovern and Gene McCarthy, who opposed McNamara's mistakes, are regarded as nobodies. In one of the uglier passages of In Retrospect, McNamara sneers at the antiwar protesters who marched on the Pentagon in 1967. If they had been more "disciplined" and "Gandhi-like," he says, "they could have achieved their objective of shutting us down." Instead they were "troublemakers" who "threw mud balls" and "even unzipped [soldiers'] flies." This is contrition? Shouldn't McNamara be admitting that the mudball-throwers, after all, had been right?

That was back in 1995. Flash forward to today, and not much has changed. It is, simply put, very difficult to get taken seriously in the media today, unless you were strongly beating a drum in favor of the Iraq misadventure. Getting it right still comes with consequences: a diminished share of the pundit-hole. Getting it wrong still comes with rewards.

I don't know if you've watched the way the typical Sunday morning political show addresses the current drawdown from Iraq, in which the United States is doing nothing controversial -- simply following the agreed-upon plan enshrined in the Status of Force Agreement. Yet, whenever a question is posed on the subject of the ongoing withdrawal, they are all premised the same way: isn't withdrawing from Iraq an insane thing to do? Then the host usually stares in goggle-eyed dumbfoundment as the Mike Mullens of the world patiently explain the SoFA for the ninetieth time. To me, it's getting old, but the overall message has taken root: Withdrawing from Iraq is not a "serious" strategy.

With this in mind, when you really think about it, why should death be an impediment to McNamara? Surely Fred Hiatt could run random bursts of electricity through his corpse, and encode the resultant twitchings for the Washington Post editorial page. At least then he'd be getting more bang for his buck.

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Comments

[NicoloM]

The superiority myth drives the acquiescence to secrecy. Secrecy is the cornerstone of colossal blunders and malfeasance. It is antithetical to an open society and democracy.
When we idealize politicians it creates an aura of superiority which in turn justifies their belief that reality has to be kept from us for our own good.
Cheney’s energy pow wow, McNamara’s realization that Viet Nam was pointless, Obama’s assertion we can’t know the crimes of BushCo, all of which are enabled by feelings of superiority hammered home by the certainty of simplistic and under-informed citizens.
It is a hallmark of many of the comments on blogs, and in media pundits.
I haven’t been able to find where McNamara every acknowledged or apologized for deception, only for not succeeding despite the information he concealed.

[garynoel]

Of course the people who actually attended and organized the protests were not really the "troublemakers." Many of us who attended and organized protests were very aware that a roving band of Young Americans for Freedom, led by Tony Blakely, one of TV's talking heads, were the actual agents provocateurs. They very successfully discredited our message through their unruly actions. I don't believe that McNamara, or any of the war criminals were unaware of this, but it provided great propaganda and justification for the war, apparently even years later.

[getoffmedz]

The advice of Robert McNamara killed over 58,000 U.S. soldiers many were draftees some were my friends and school chums. The Vietnamese killed is uncountable and their country is just now recovering.

It is hoped that McNamara joins Nixon and LBJ in some particularly nasty part of #ell.

[VinceTeeter]

And so to make it up to Mr. McNamara we did it all over again in Iraq! How about reserving some of that hell for Bush/Chene­y/Rove/Ric­e etc.

[lwaxanatroi]

I was one of those 1967 war protestors, having gotten on a church-sponsored bus in Toledo, Ohio. It was my first trip to our nation's capital, and let me tell you, there may be no better way to see those majestic buildings for the first time than from the middle of a 100,000-strong peace march. It was the first amendment in action, free speech pouring into the streets. Paul Simon wrote "peace like a river ran through the city" (although that might have been about the 1969 march, which I also attended). I felt such pride for America and her citizens, and I still had the naive (I was 19) hope that we could change the world with our peaceful intentions. That some people threw mudballs is actually news to me, though not a surprise. There are blankholes in any large group. I saw no soldier's flies being unzipped, but I did see the iconic flowers being put into rifle barrels. I smelled tear gas, even though the press uniformly reported that there had been no tear gas used. Got back on bus proud to be American, proud to be antiwar, ashamed of Johnson and Macnamara and, yes, Kennedy. Do admit.

[satyriasis]

McNamara has apologized for his crimes. While he is still a criminal he deserves some appreciation for fessing up. Hardly anyone else in the Vietnam era ever has, nor has anyone from the Reagan terrorism of the 80's or the Iraq war.

[gorideabike]

"Our business is death, and business is good."
Gardens of Stone

[SACVET]

McNamara was part of the plutocratic elite who always gain monetarily when they promote wars. The very less affluent are then persuaded that their going to fight in such wars is somehow their obligation and rarely do they stop to consider who is profitting while they give up much. Those who start the wars are never placed in harm's way. Yeah, sure they might visit the front for a photo-op which is, if you think about it, so hypocritical. The Robert McNamaras of the world know how to profit from the wars they start while the rest of us have been conditioned to silently pay with our economic resources and lives.

[ssb752]

It's always all about the Benjamins, especially in optional wars like Viet Nam & Iraq. The Bush Administration was all about acquiring and/or maintaining generational wealth for the upper 1%. Who's the elitists here? Rovian Rule #1: always accuse your opponent of the very thing you do or really are yourself. That Sotomayor is one elite racist, right?

[josephXY]

As for the failed pundits and media - and not to forget the media / newspaper crisis:
that's why it is so relaxing, soothing to visit the site "newspaper­deathwatch­". It is so peaceful
and free of certain pains or stress. All the stress one is supposed to consume, carry on with,
totally useless.

[Dredd]

One wonders if he is looking up at us yet?

He helped set us back a couple of hundred years.

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/07/independence-from-what.html

[furey]

"It is, simply put, very difficult to get taken seriously in the media today, unless you were strongly beating a drum in favor of the Iraq misadventure. Getting it right still comes with consequences: a diminished share of the pundit-hole. Getting it wrong still comes with rewards."

Why is that, Jason? Is it simply that the MIC controls the corporate news media even more profoundly than it did during Vietnam?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/talking-head-like-a-hole/

[Acleacius]

MaNamra does say the protesters were right, not only that he tell us their mistakes and there for tell us how to do better next time, just as he tried to do in Fog of War.

For example opposition to Iraq invasion and war was remarkably nonviolent, though we who opposed Iraq didn't succeed in the short term, there has been remarkable achievement in the medium, with work still to do in the long run.

[rjhuntington]

War critics never stopped looking down on McNamara.

[protagonia]

Because of his current location, we all can do that now.

[WillKC]

You're missing the point: He was wrong, they were right, and for all of his vague apologies, he didn't even do anything to protest the Iraq War. McNamara was an interesting man, but deserved all of the criticism he got, and much more.

[CYW]

It is a good day to revisit--or discover Dylan's 'Masters of War'. I'm sure that many of you will find it as cathartic as I did...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muQRIUVd6Aw

[hunt49]

Truth never ages.

[Beantownbadboy]

To anyone with a conscience it's both awesome and chilling. Thanks

[CYW]

This is a very good day to revisit--or to discover the Dylan recording of 'Masters of War'. I am quite sure many of you would find the listen as cathartic as I do...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muQRIUVd6Aw

[pfc1369]

And "With God on Our Side"....

.With that final line..."If God's on Our Side, He'll Stop the Next War," that stopped me in my tracks, so many years, and not a few wars, ago...

[kassandrasduplex]

See the UNEDITED and complete "Fog of War" documentary. Particularly the part where McNamara reveals his belief that JFK would have pulled us out of Vietnam had he had the chance. McNamara was ordered to increase the war by LBJ.