Truthdig - Ear to the Ground - Robert McNamara Dies

			November 29, 2009 Log in / Register
			Text Size

Fred Branfman on 'The Making of an Elder Culture'

India May Hold the Whip Hand in Dubai Power Game

Purloined E-Mails Don't Change the Facts

U.S. Still Running Secret Jails

'Left, Right & Center': America the Ungovernable?

India May Hold the Whip Hand in Dubai Power Game
By Robert Fisk

Purloined E-Mails Don’t Change the Facts
By Eugene Robinson

Understanding Our Hollow ‘Centrists’
By Joe Conason

Obama’s Thankless Thanksgiving
By E.J. Dionne

Polls Show Conservative Ahead as Honduras Vote Nears

U.S. Still Running Secret Jails

Halt! Who Grows There?

Bloomberg Dug Deep Into His Own Pockets to Win Third Term

Global Markets Hit by Dubai’s Debt Crisis

Report: Irish Catholic Church Kept Child Abuse Secret

‘Left, Right & Center’: America the Ungovernable?

U.N. Combats Violence Against Women, With Help From Men

Palin Still Gets Huckabee’s Vote (Against Obama)

Home Sales Jump 10.1% in October

‘Call of Duty’ Game Franchise Busts Sales Records

Fred Branfman on ‘The Making of an Elder Culture’
By Fred Branfman

Swiss Court Accepts Polanski’s $4.5M Bail Request

Sarkozy’s Bid to Move Camus’ Ashes Stirs Controversy

Financial Meltdown 101

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

Vetting Sarah Palin

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

Who Moved My Soap?: The CEO’s Guide to Surviving in Prison

By Andy Borowitz
$28.70

Robert McNamara Dies

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara died Monday at the age of 93. McNamara was considered to be the leading architect of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, sometimes referred to as “McNamara’s War,” which left more than 58,000 U.S. troops and 3 million Vietnamese military and civilians dead.

Time Magazine:

At the beginning of his professional career, he made a name for himself as the wunderkind who reformed the ailing Ford Motor Co. At the end, he tried to rehabilitate his reputation, as a do-gooder striving to save the globe’s poorer nations as head of the World Bank. But Robert McNamara, who died early Monday morning in his sleep at home at the age of 93 (his wife Diana told the Associated Press he had been in failing health for some time), will always be best known for his role as the architect of Washington’s failed Vietnam policy in the 1960s.

McNamara waited 30 years before conceding in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, that he had waged the war in error. “My voice would have had no impact at all at that point,” he told TIME when the book came out, explaining why he hadn’t revealed his doubts when he stepped down as Secretary of Defense in early 1968. “My voice would have had no impact whatsoever.”

Read More

Check out this article by Robert Scheer, written in 2000, on the U.S. refusal to try McNamara as a war criminal.

The Nation:

What’s wrong with this picture?: Slobodan Milosevic will be dragged before an international war crimes tribunal while Robert McNamara tours American college campuses touting his latest book on how to achieve world peace, and Henry Kissinger advises corporations, for a fat fee, on how to do business with dictators.

Clearly, when it comes to war crimes, this nation is above the law.

The United States has supported, nay imposed, a standard of official morality on the world while blithely insisting that no American leader ever could be held accountable to that same standard.

Read More

Also, read about Scheer’s brief but tumultuous encounter with McNamara in 1966 at Harvard University:

Time Magazine:

[...] Defense Secretary Robert McNamara went to Cambridge to deliver the first lecture at Harvard’s new Kennedy Institute of Politics. The 350 members of the Harvard S.D.S. decided that this would be an ideal time for a debate between McNamara and an eloquent spokesman they had brought to the campus, Robert Scheer, an editor of Ramparts magazine and an unsuccessful anti-war congressional candidate.

Read More

More Below the Ad

Advertisement

TAGS: mcnamara's war robert mcnamara robert scheer vietnam war

Related Entries

November 27, 2009 ‘Left, Right & Center’: America the Ungovernable?
November 19, 2009 Throw the Money Changers Out of the Temple
November 18, 2009 Who Are You and What Have You Done With the Community Organizer We Elected President?
November 13, 2009 ‘Left, Right & Center’: 9/11 Trial; Obama’s Afghani-Standoff
November 11, 2009 Gorbachev’s Sermon on the Mount

Email to a friend

Get truth delivered to
your inbox every week.

Previous item: Robert McNamara Dies

Next item: Robert McNamara Dies

Elsewhere: .

Comments

Are you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.

By Peter Smith, July 7 at 2:10 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

chomsky savaged mcnamara back in 95:

http://www.chomsky.info/books/warfare01.htm

n extremely narrow technocrat, a small-time engineer who was given a particular job to do and just tried to do that job efficiently, didn’t understand anything that was going on, including what he himself was doing.

and
He is a dull, narrow technocrat who questioned nothing.

i love it.

Report this

By faith, July 7 at 1:37 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Mcnamara’s obit included a comment that he had made that he knew, “he knew” that the Viet Nam war was wrongful and unsustainable. Yet, Mcnamara continued to support and push forward on the Viet Nam war while knowing thousands were dying, and more than thousands were returning from the war with injuries so serious,that some were mere trunks - no legs and no arms. The military hospitals were filled beyond capacity with these wounded 19-20 year olds. I will never forget the Pentagon answering my father’s phone call and referring to Viet Nam as a “mere containment”. They did this to correct my dad’s having called it a war. My dad, a WWII vet. Mcnamara and the pentagon officials all referred to Viet Nam as a containment in order to make it more palatable.
Forgiveness is for God to do. Why we we allow the Mcnamara’s, the Bush’s, and the Rumsfelds to engage and diminish the value of the human lives of young men and women by sending them to fight in illicit, unjustifiable wars is just beyond my understanding. We need to follow the old anthem, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me..”

Report this

By PSmith, July 7 at 1:21 am #

ATONE? I DON’T THINK PSCYHOPATHS DON’T DO ‘ATONE’

@ Mary Ann McNeely, July 6 at 2:27 pm #
> When Mcnamara reached his late eighties, it was obvious to me he was scared of dying and tried to atone for his crimes.

I didn’t see that at all. The Fog of War did not show it, imo. Rather it showed a man who was willing to admit that his WW2 commander (was it Le May) had said that they would all have been hanged as war criminals, had they lost WW2. But also a man who showed absolutely zero regret for Vietnam and the _three_million_ deaths that resulted. One or two deaths perhaps. But three million? It only takes five to termed a serial killer for heaven’s sake.

Most important, imo, was history’s verdict on him - “he’s a psychopath.” From Howard Zinn, or Noam Chomsky I think. Someone whom I had never heard ever make that kind of harsh, unforgiving judgement. I heard the interview, but can’t recall who it was.

It was a complete stunner at the time.

Report this

By Emmanuel Roldan, July 6 at 10:14 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Robert McNamara could have avoided the carnage of millions of Vietnamese and orphaned thousands of American families if he was truthful enough to say the war was wrong. His lifestory is like that of the prodigal son in the Bible who asked forgiveness to his father after squandering the wealth he got. Bob only said I’m sorry after everything is dead and gone including his pride. I hope he said I’m sorry to the Father before he took his last breath.

Report this

By Chris, July 6 at 3:19 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

I was born in 1977 so I didn’t experience all the chaos associated with the Vietnam War. I watched the Fog of War DVD which featured McNamara. To some extent, he seemed sorry for the Vietnam War and the misery it brought so many Americans. However, he pushed the Vietnam War forward when he was in charge and seemed indifferent to what the American public thought at that time despite massive protests. I doubt many Americans (Baby boomers) are sad about his passing.

Report this

By Mary Ann McNeely, July 6 at 2:27 pm #

When Mcnamara reached his late eighties, it was obvious to me he was scared of dying and tried to atone for his crimes. There is no atonement, however, for a criminal like him. In his time, he truly represented the banality of evil. Obama reminds me of him. May Mcnamara suffer the worst that infinity and the universe have to offer.

Report this

By Jon, July 6 at 1:57 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

McNamara was as nuts as Rumsfeld. Egotistical, shrewd, intimidating, and: wrong. Read about McNamara and the Gulf of Tonkin event.

Report this