Death of the Best and Brightest
Robert S. McNamara, who died today at 93, was the exemplar of American know-how gone awry in a world too complicated for the practical mindset that built the most powerful nation on earth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
As one of JFK’s “whiz kids” who went on to become LBJ’s architect of the disastrous war in Vietnam, McNamara exemplified the limits of intellectual brilliance in a subtle and savage world.
“What went wrong was a basic misunderstanding or misevaluation of the threat to our security represented by the North Vietnamese,” he said, looking back in an oral history. “It led President Eisenhower in 1954 to say that if Vietnam were lost, or if Laos and Vietnam were lost, the dominoes would fall…
“I am certain we exaggerated the threat. Had we never intervened, I now doubt that the dominoes would have fallen; I doubt that all of Asia would have fallen under communist control…
“We didn’t know our opposition. We didn’t understand the Chinese, we didn’t understand the Vietnamese, particularly the North Vietnamese. So the first lesson is know your opponents.”
A Harvard professor who left to become president of Ford after the financial devastation of his wife’s illness, McNamara successfully brought his systems-analysis approach to running the Pentagon but became the main figure described in David Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” Kennedy’s crew of academic and industry brainiacs who pushed “brilliant policies that defied common sense” in Vietnam.
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The lessons of his life are a critical reminder for the Obama Administration of the hubris that can blindside brilliance without accompanying insight into the realities of human behavior. Robert S. McNamara learned them too late, but they can help guide American policy today.
It's a pity it took McNamara so long to go public with his real feelings about Vietnam. Had he done so sooner he could have helped alleviate much of the painful rift which occurred (and is still ongoing for some) between those who protested that war and those who supported it. Instead McNamara let decades go by before “sharing” his true beliefs about that war.
Dresden fire bombing planned by McNamara.
Tokyo and a hundred innocent towns in Japan fire bombed under McNamara planning.
Hiroshima bombed under his personal control.
Nagasaki bombed under his personal control.
Personally chose Westmoreland (more kills means we win even if we wiped out villages of 100 and recovered one broken shotgun) to command in Vietnam.
Die Kissinger, die, the devil needs you to baste McNamara as he toasts in napalm and white phosphorus.
Number 5 war criminal in 20th century for murdering unarmed innocents. Stalin, Hitler, Chiang Kaishek, Mao, McNamara, then Pol Pot. I am sure that he was deeply troubled in his declining years for not being number one. All but Hitler died happily in bed of old age. Human race? Cheney is a choirboy compared to this super evil semihuman thug.
So much of the anti-war sentiment arose after radicalism of US liberalism. That opposition merits contempt.
A more timely lesson that comes from this is less McNamarian specifically, but shouldn't be overlooked — what about elitism for pet lefty causes such as we see with idealistic as well as elitist people in Washington now? At least the decision to prosecute war made sense, unlike the recent climate bill and all behind it, or the rushing for health care “reforms” and other things done without foresight or forethought, and likely exploiting the current political condition much worse than Vietnam was exploited.