President
John F. Kennedy is shown with Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, right, in the White House Oval Office in Washington, D.C. in this Jan 23, 1961, photo. (AP Photo/Cecil Stoughton, White House via John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston)
There comes a moment in each of our lives when we make a decision that could ultimately shape the headlines of our future obituaries. For former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, this moment came in 1964, when Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) called the Vietnam War ''McNamara's War.''
McNamara responded, ''I am pleased to be identified with it, and do whatever I can to win it.''
McNamara died Monday and The New York Times published his obituary with the headline ''Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War, Dies at 93,'' while the Washington Post went with ''Robert McNamara, Vietnam War Architect, dies at 93.''
McNamara's legacy is inextricably tied to Vietnam, a war that haunted him until his death. Even after he left the Pentagon, animosity toward McNamara swelled as images of the grisly war increasingly filled U.S. newspapers and television sets. In 1972, on a ferry to Martha's Vineyard, a man even attempted to throw McNamara into the Atlantic Ocean. Years later, when asked why he did it, he said simply ''I just wanted to confront him on Vietnam.'' That same anger is palpable in the coverage of McNamara's death, and even the kindest journalists have described him as a deeply haunted and tragic figure.
Before joining the Pentagon, McNamara's brilliance was undeniable. At Ford Motor Company, where he ultimately served as president, he was one of the so-called "whiz kids" at the helm of the car manufacturer. Prior to that he was an assistant professor of accounting at the Harvard business school, where he earned a master's degree in 1939.
In 1995, McNamara went public about Vietnam with the publication of his memoirs, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." For the first time, McNamara revealed that he had privately held doubts about the war, and that he had shared these doubts with President Lyndon B. Johnson. In November 1967, he presented Johnson with a memo that said: "The course we're on is totally wrong. We've got to change it. Cut back at what we're doing in Vietnam. We've got to reduce the casualties."
Reactions to this revelation were widely critical, accusing McNamara of trying to deflect blame and salvage his legacy. Why did McNamara choose to hide these beliefs? Why didn't he resign in protest when LBJ refused to heed his advice? His critics contended that McNamara could have stopped the war and saved tens of thousands of American lives.
In the United States, there is no tradition of resignation in protest. When Cabinet secretaries resign in opposition to the administration, they are dismissed as malcontents and quickly fade away. One has to wonder, however, how McNamara could have justified staying quiet, a decision that clearly haunted him until his final days. Indeed, it is a decision that will permanently mar his legacy.
The question of how to remember McNamara is a difficult one. He is a deeply controversial figure, but one that is so compellingly human. In the 2003 Errol Morris documentary ''The Fog of War,'' McNamara comes to the verge of tears on numerous occasions in a way that makes it impossible to see him as the arrogant, calculating man that he was so often reported to be.
Ultimately, McNamara's redemption comes from his efforts to prevent the repetition of his mistakes. His willingness to recognize and acknowledge his own flaws in his later years was a wonderfully refreshing change of pace, and his commitment to spreading the lessons of his failures was as noble as it was self serving. McNamara wanted to atone for his mistakes and escape the condemnation of the American people, but is impossible to see the pain in his eyes and not believe that he had a genuine desire to prevent those mistakes from happening again.
In his final message to his wife, McNamara wrote ''others [continue] to pursue the objectives which I have sought (very imperfectly at times) to move the world toward peace among people and nations and to accelerate economic and social progress for the least advantaged among us.'' His life, save for one haunting and tragic mistake, exemplified those values. That is how we should remember Robert McNamara, as a brilliant and well-intentioned man who recognized too late in life the limits of his reason.
-- Christopher Handel, Clear365.com
Comments