I think Anarchangel pretty much sums up how I feel about it. “Perhaps god will forgive you. History won’t.” RTWT.
3 thoughts on “Robert McNamara’s Dead”
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The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
I think Anarchangel pretty much sums up how I feel about it. “Perhaps god will forgive you. History won’t.” RTWT.
Comments are closed.
Yeah, pretty much. No good tactical decision has ever been made from an arm chair.
It’s interesting the opinions that surround McNamara; IMHO, he was a competent figure that got stuck in an administration that didn’t share his beliefs. Watch Erol Morris’ “The Fog of War”. No direct conclusions are drawn by the documentary; but, what I took from the the taped conversations between McNamara and Kennedy and McNamara and Johnson, is that he and Kennedy knew Vietnam was a losing proposition and tried to end it, whereas under Johnson, McNamara was forced to put into action a plan he didn’t agree with. It seemed to me he was doing his best to work within the constraints he was placed, and his differences with Johnson were ultimately why he resigned.
Give the man some credit; without him and Kennedy successfully navigating the Cuban Missile Crisis, everything after could have been a LOT different.
I think that Robert McNamara has become the catch all scapegoat for all of the bad decisions made by Kennedy and Johnson, of which there were legion. Kennedy was an incompetent boob who’s heart was in the right place, and Johnson was a cunning, corrupt, conniving, Kleptocrat who did more damage to future generations of Americans then he was able to do to the then current generation, which was just short of total destruction. McNamara did the best he could with what he was given.
He didn’t aspire to be Secretary of Defense, he was tapped. He didn’t think we should get involved with the happenings in Indochina, but it was thrust upon him. Yes, he should have listened to General Westmoreland, who knew what he was talking about. But having served under less competent generals in WWII, his faith in military leaders was understandably shaken.
I think it’s terribly unfair and inaccurate to attribute our failure to maintain victory in Vietnam solely to Robert McNamara, when the people responsible for turning a likely victory into a total defeat were the Leftist Mainstream Media who cheered our enemies and the Democrats in Congress who cut all funding to the South Vietnamese defense forces in 1973. The Communists didn’t succeed until 1975, and McNamara had been gone for seven years at that point.