Robert McNamara died today at age 93. As Secretary of Defense for Presidents John F. Kennedy and more notably Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s, it was McNamara who oversaw America's tragic military buildup in Vietnam. That made McNamara -- right up until today's news -- a vivid anti-icon to those Baby Boomers who opposed the war -- and I think you can make the case that his death is that of the most historical significance of the slew of recent "celebrity" passings, no matter how many millions of people are gathering outside the Staples Center to remember the Gloved One.
Bob McNamara was not a great man. He was a man with great intelligence that didn't prevent him from executing a plan that led to the unnecessary slaughter -- for reasons that remain hard to fully comprehend -- of tens of thousands of Americans and many more Vietnamese. He spent next four decades trying to come to terms with the banality of evil, with the horror of what he and those around him had done, but even his unusually candid apologies never seemed to go far enough:
The secretary of defense was a key figure in decisions to escalate the war between 1961 and 1965, and he readily concedes that the assumptions upon which he and his colleagues acted were badly flawed. They approached Vietnam, he recalls, with "sparse knowledge, scant experience and simplistic assumptions." Victims of their own "innocence and confidence," they foolishly viewed communism as monolithic, knew nothing about Indochina, and were "simple-minded" regarding the historical relationship between China and Vietnam. They badly misjudged Ho Chi Minh's nationalism and consistently overestimated South Vietnam's ability to survive. Regarding the key decisions of 1965, he admits he should have anticipated that bombing North Vietnam would lead to requests for ground troops. He concedes there should have been a public debate on the July 1965 decision for war. Over and over he acknowledges that he should have examined the unexamined assumptions, asked the unasked questions, and explored the readily dismissed alternatives.
The life of Robert McNamara was a personal tragedy, but it was also an American tragedy, our tragedy -- because even after McNamara spelled out everything that went so horribly wrong in Vietnam, he lived long enough to see a new generation of the self-appointed "best and brightest" in Washington pay absolutely no mind to the lessons of our recent past.
In Iraq, as in Vietnam, our policy-makers knew nothing or cared little about the long history and convoluted ethnic and religious politics of Mesopotamia's Fertile Crescent. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, there was no plan for the proper military follow-up to a period of "shock and awe" bombing. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we totally misjudged the "nationalism" of the people who lived there and how they would react to a long American occupation. And perhaps most importantly, In Iraq, as in Vietnam, there was no real "public debate" as we marched headlong and foolishly into 2003 -- with way too many "unexamined assumptions," "unasked questions," and "readily dismissed alternatives."
I actually spoke, very briefly, on the phone with McNamara in early 2003 in an effort to interview him for the Philadelphia Daily News, where I am a reporter. Like a few other journalists in that critical hour, I was hoping some of his tragically acquired wisdom might infuse the tepid pre-war discussions, and like all other reporters in those pre-war months, he told me he was holding off on commenting (as noted in the link above, he had a lot to say in 2006...when it was too late). That was a damned shame -- even though I can't imagine it would have tipped the rigged scales.
Regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, it's hard not to imagine there wasn't some higher purpose to McNamara's longevity. You could argue that it was a cosmic punishment, of sorts, to live so many years with the searing memories of so many who died so horrifically because of his misguided decisions from the comforts of his big desk at the Pentagon. Or you argue that he was still here in the early 2000s as a kind of a warped prophet, a flesh-and-blood monument to the folly of militarism. If that is true, then the fact that America refused to pay any attention is Robert McNamara's greatest tragedy of all.
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Because it makes moolah for the people who profit from war.
Back then it was Bell Helicopters, General Dynamics, etc
This time around Haliburton
And the kicker is that it's partly our fault. When public pressure led them to repeal the draft, we took that crumb as a sign we were headed in a better direction, when actually what they were saying is "We will still have wars for profit, you just don't have to go if you don't want to"
Lame. Wars will keep happening as long as there's money to be made. The major lesson we have to learn from the last forty years is that what the corporations want the corporations get. Wars, a nation of fat, lazy people, stuffing their faces with crap food, people running up massive debt just to buy junk, an education system so broken no one realizes they're being exploited, etc etc, all of it is what big business wanted.
They are Enemies of the People
Historical amnesia plagues us. How? The mythology!
Antebellum Iraq, many whine that it's not American to invade on false pretenses. HA! Ask any of the tribes that we didn't manage to wipe out as a matter of public policy during the era of Manifest Destiny.
Or Chileans under our dictator Pinochet, Iraqis today, etc.
"The War Prayer" was a vivid commentary [by Mark Twain] on the misappropriation of religion on behalf of nationalistic causes. It begins with a church service in which the pastor calls down the blessings of God upon American military forces and concludes with, "Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!"
A frail old man makes his way into the church and, waving the pastor aside, explains that he has spoken with God Himself, who wishes to hear the other half of that prayer — the half that was only in their hearts and uttered but implicitly.
http://mises.org/story/2408
Journalists and bloggers bust malignant myths (America's Innocence and Exceptionalism, our mythical right to rule the world http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2009/07/pilger-obama-america-world ); propagandists deploy them.
What's a myth?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/the-myth-of-how-the-media_b_226136.html?show_comment_id=26664325#comment_26664325
Are you saying that Ho Chi Minh was a sweet heart?
How about Saddam Hussein?
Would you put these two "leaders" in the same class as JFK?
How about Fidel Castro?
Should we lose a lot of sleep over how he's been treated over the years?
What do you think he did to the Cubans who helped us out in the Bay of Pigs disaster? Who cries for them?
Oh yeah, how about all of those hundreds of thousands of people who fled in open boats trying to GET AWAY from the North Vietnamese? Remember, these were Vietnamese as well. Vietnamese who were running for their very lives from the same people YOU apologize for.
I noticed you did not mention the viet cong
I suspect you do not even know who the viet cong were
tragic war and we did not learn from it
the iraqis dance in the streets as we leave their cities and one trillion spent
we are hated in the world for our imperialism and you defend our imperialism
oh we have so much to learn in america so much
self righteousness we are to a fault
Or don't you know?
while your at it, why don't you look up the definition of the word "imperialism."
And once again, you fail to address ANY of my questions...
What a surprise.
Actually, many of them were simply held for a period of time and then released. Just ask Gloria Estefan's father.
What was I thinking?
In charge at every level of our society from Wall Street to schools to public works projects...
And look at the mess we are in.
I blame your generation for everything. Our lackadaisical attitude towards drugs, sex and the almost total destruction of the nuclear family.
Your generation has totally screwed up everything we ever valued.
When will you answer for that?
The irony was the Vietnam analogy was discarded because Gulf War I had been so 'easy'. But some years later the Lancette published their finding that Gulf War Syndrome was dues to trace nerve agents. In effect, the Gulf War allied casualties went from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands.
they lost in viet nam ------they won in gulf 1
they thought then had shed the image the american forces could not win a war--didnt last too long
I also vividly remember asking myself what would happen if I went up to him and called him a murderous S.O.B.and spit in his face.
Well I didn't do it !Not because I was afraid of being arrested,or it would ruin my ski trip,but because I thought I might start a riot and disrupt the lives of the numerous people there who were innocent bystanders.
All I can say is,it's a good thing I was never was in close proximity to any other architects of the Viet Nam Tragedy during those years,because I don't think my temper could tollerate it!
Iraq is a war of conflicted volunteerism.
The reasons Bush went to war in Iraq are:
(1) He needed an easy identifiable scapegoat to deflect from his "He can run but he cannot hide" inability to track down Bin Laden. Hence the paranoid attempts to create a non-existant link between Saddam Hussain and Al Qaeda.
(2) He was advised that a "quick easy war" would ensure massive popularity and ensure his reelection in 2004. (Example: Maggie Thatcher and the Falklands war in UK politics)
(3) Daddy told him he regretted not taking out Sadam Hussain when he had the chance. So he decided he had to finish Daddy's business for him.
Oil? It was a welcome by product. As proof look how much we have benefited (not!) from Iraqi oil since the invasion!
The US people have been had, and the middle east is being ransacked by a bunch of redneck dough boys from the east coast while the rest of the world quibbles about democracy, enhanced interrogations, and bogus WMDs etc.