The Last Great SecDef

Via my other blog:
Donald Rumsfeld wishes he had a shred of this man's integrity.

Robert McNamara died overnight at the age of 93.

I always liked McNamara. He was one of those Washington figures that almost everyone respected, and some liked him more than President Johnson. It's rare that a man serves in the same position for two consecutive administrations, but McNamara was Secretary of Defense for Kennedy, and then Johnson when he assumed the office, and his full term in 1964. Vietnam War policy didn't change all that much until Richard Nixon, and it was McNamara who came up with the plan of attack against North Vietnam. What sets him apart from most war hawks, especially Vietnam-era war hawks, is that McNamara recognized in 1967 that the war was going to end badly, and pushed for a troop freeze and an end to bombing North Vietnam. Johnson hated this, as did the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and McNamara resigned that November.

The most terrifying thing that haunted McNamara, and could have caused him to rethink the war was this: he witnessed one morning a man who would later be identified as a Mormon farmer that had driven all the way to Washington, standing on a ledge outside McNamara's office window...and he doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire while holding his infant child, and threw the child to screaming onlookers as he died.

McNamara was haunted by Vietnam, and he tried to exercise his demons, but he never fully escaped the guilt he felt by inflicting so much destruction on a country that just wanted what America had once fought for themselves.

In 2003 this documentary won an Academy Award, and deservedly, because Robert McNamara had 2 hours to explain to America why he failed, and the tears in his eyes throughout the film are indication that he never quite wanted the political life that had been thrust upon him.



The connection to the state of Michigan is fitting for McNamara's middle name (Strange). He became the President of Ford Motor Company in 1960, and was actually good at the job. He lived in Ann Arbor, and appreciated the University of Michigan community (oh if only he had become a guest professor)...but shortly thereafter President Kennedy came calling...