McNamara and Rumsfeld: Many Similarities, One Crucial Difference

First, full disclosure:

Although I have had a change of heart in recent years, as a young military officer during the 1960s, I was a gung-ho supporter of the Vietnam War and I respected the then Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, in spite of the horrendous human toll we and the Vietnamese were paying for that war—in the end, more than 58,000 American and some 2 to 3 million Vietnamese deaths.

As a senior veteran today, I have consistently opposed the under-false-pretenses invasion and occupation of Iraq, and I loathe the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld because of the unnecessary, horrendous human toll we and the Iraqis continue to pay for that war—to date, more than 4,000 American and probably more than 100,000 Iraqi deaths.

If this seems inconsistent, contradictory, or whatever, so be it.

Secretary McNamara’s death yesterday at 93 has prompted numerous comparisons between two unpopular wars, the Iraq war and the Vietnam War, and between two unpopular defense secretaries, Donald H. Rumsfeld and Robert S. McNamara.

And there are many similarities.

Perhaps the best comparison between the two men, in my opinion, was not written today or yesterday, but almost three years ago in poppolitics.com, on the occasion of Rumsfeld’s firing from the Bush administration in November 2006.

This insightful article, by Richard C. Crepeau “Rumsfeld & McNamara: Macho Tendencies of American Foreign Policy” can be read in full at poppolitics.com.

After blasting Rumsfeld for comparing himself to Winston Churchill, Crepeau starts his comparison as follows:

There are strange echoes in Donald Rumsfeld of Robert McNamara. Both so willing to manipulate, both so willing to dissemble, both paragons of arrogance.

And continues:

McNamara like Rumsfeld became the advocate of force as a means of spreading democracy to the world of dictators — one fighting communists, the other fighting terrorists. Like Rumsfeld, McNamara was certain that Americans were liberators and not imperialists. He too found himself steeped in corruption in the name of freedom. He too was able to fool himself and ignore the realities, because he knew better than all the rest of us, who couldn’t comprehend the complexities and didn’t understand the real threat facing America.

As Secretary of Defense, both men came to dominate their presidents and feed on their weaknesses. Both dominated the national security debate, silencing critics within the administration and ignoring generals in the field. Both undercut and ultimately silenced the Secretary of State, whom they dismissed as not tough enough for the difficult decisions ahead, unable to take the military options over the soft diplomatic positions.

In the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson and Bush 43, the macho tendencies of American foreign policy so central during the Cold War asserted themselves through these two Secretaries of Defense. Both McNamara and Rumsfeld were described repeatedly by their contemporaries as brilliant. Both men possessed an ability to control bureaucracies, and both deftly molded and shaped the “facts” to suit their visions.

With Rumsfeld’s exit this past week, given a push by the American people, he, like McNamara, survived long enough to see dreams of the American imperium go up in smoke. Too clever by half, in the end they fooled only themselves. Whether Rumsfeld will ever find humility remains to be seen, but for the present his smug arrogance continues to buoy him as he made so clear while presiding over his own exit.

Crepeau concludes: “Once again, the cost to the nation of the hubris and arrogance of mere mortals has been high, and for those who paid with their lives it could not have been higher.”

In my opinion, there is one huge difference between Rumsfeld and McNamara.

McNamara was big enough of a man to eventually admit and document his mistakes, hoping that future generations would learn from them.

On the other hand, to this day, Rumsfeld has not displayed one iota of doubt about any of his actions or decisions, or regret for his monumental mistakes that have cost our country so much.

Some praise Rumsfeld for such arrogance and obstinacy as in a couple of articles I came across:

“Concede that you made mistakes? Why, that merely positions you as a vain and irresponsible know-nothing.”

And

On the other hand Rumsfeld, who has probably not read any of McNamara’s books, has never had any doubt about anything he did, and it is unlikely we will be seeing any books of mea culpas from him. It is perhaps this quality that puts him a notch above McNamara and makes him the greatest Secretary of Defense we have ever had.

Perhaps implicit in a column by Tim Weiner in yesterday’s New York Times, we find the most salient difference between McNamara and Rumsfeld:

Unlike any other secretary of defense, Mr. McNamara struggled in public with the morality of war and the uses of American power.

“We are the strongest nation in the world today,” Mr. McNamara said in “The Fog of War,” released at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political, and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better re-examine our reasoning.”

“War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend,” he concluded. “Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.”

Apparently, Rumsfeld has not (yet) had such moral or intellectual qualms about committing our nation and our troops to war.

The cartoon by Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com, is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.