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Unsolicited Advice
07/06/09

In reply to Robert McNamara: 1916-2009
Aren't we all amoral functionaries? I haven't heard a single statement of moral truth from America's leadership since I was born.
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allyzay
07/06/09

@Unsolicited Advice: yeah, man, exactly, right on, etc.
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The Lone Scout
07/06/09

In reply to Robert McNamara: 1916-2009
At one time, Howell Raines wrote on the editorial page of the New York Times, "Mr. McNamara must not escape the lasting moral condemnation of his countrymen." So, how do we apply this same judgment upon JFK for hiring McNamara, and even assuring him that he needed no prior defense expertise for the job? Odd, how JFK's campaign platform included the specter of a dangerous missile gap between the US and the then USSR; yet it was McNamara who, in his early days in office, proved that the gap was dangerous only for the Soviets. Maybe the presidents during the Viet Nam War were responsible for its length and damaging results?
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The Lone Scout
07/06/09

@The Lone Scout: Pareene, you yourself wisely wrote, "[McNamara] was a narrow-minded number-crunching company man, exactly the sort of amoral little functionary we should never, ever allow to make decisions of life and death." So, why did JFK and LBJ allow him to do so?
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The Lone Scout
07/06/09

@The Lone Scout: Just getting into the lengthy obit in the Times... Reached the part where McNamara saves the world from nuclear holocaust by providing JFK with the strategy of trading the removal of our missiles from Turkey for the removal of those in Cuba. If Mac hadn't made that happen, would we be here today to flog him for the mistakes of his bosses?
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allyzay
07/06/09

@The Lone Scout: because they weren't very bright. pillorying mcnamera doesn't absolve the men who hired him and it's unwise (and off-topic?) to assume it does.
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DoctorNine
07/06/09

@The Lone Scout: JFK, despite his proletarian and incredibly inspirational speeches, was just as wedded to the idea that a privileged few patricians should be making all the decisions as was McNamara. When we are presented the image of Camelot, in all its splendor and hope, what we are really seeing, is a public fiction, meant to prod the masses into those actions deemed necessary by our native patrician elites during Cold War.

McNamara was a well-groomed representative of those Grey Men; perhaps the best example. And like all the others, we see why those who gravitate to the sources of political power are so dangerous when given their head.
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The Lone Scout
07/06/09

@allyzay: Of course, my clumsy attempt at irony was meant to point out what you have written, namely that Mac didn't just appear--somebody hired him. I am not sure how that would be off-topic; this post and most of the comments opened the door by laying a host of ills solely at McNamara's feet. (And, the obit in the Times suggests that, despite his errors regarding Viet Nam, he may have saved millions of lives in other ways.)
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The Lone Scout
07/06/09

@DoctorNine's Tin Foil Hat: Exactly.
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gawkimo
07/06/09

@The Lone Scout: Yes. When you place MacNamara next to JFK's Joint Chiefs of Staff (who were behaving like character in Dr. Strangelove) then MacNamara looks pretty good.

Khrushchev didn't want to start a war. He wanted the US to stop pointing nukes at Russia form Turkey. MacNamara knew that. I didn't say MacNamara was stupid; I said he was evil, perhaps morally ambivalent to the killing of innocent civilians to meet US foreign policy objectives based on ideological grounds. He later went on to become an economic hitman against the poor as head of the World Bank, which plunders emerging economies with for-profit "humanitarian" infrastructure development, like useless hydroelectric projects in Ecuador that displace communities and drives the country into deep dependence on the IMF, forcing them to cut social spending with exacerbated misery. (Kinda like how Gov. Bobby Jindal told part time workers to go fuck themselves on unemployment benefits, only about 2,000 times worse.)

To be frank, I'm actually more pissed off at MacNamara's economic policies than I am with his moral ambivalence to collateral damage.

Unfortunately Errol Morris never got to delve into what MacNamara did at the World Bank.
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The Lone Scout
07/06/09

@gawkimo: If he had, he might have mentioned that, as you pointed out, in McNamara's early years at the World Bank, the institution's megaprojects did considerable harm to local ecologies and populations. (I wonder if Mac was naively ignorant to the skimming of project funds by local stakeholders, or a willing participant in corruption.) However, in his later (less arrogant?) years, he understood those effects and shifted to smaller, more beneficial projects.
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skahammer
07/06/09

In reply to Robert McNamara: 1916-2009
His eventual, late-in-life apology was both too broad and too narrow.

I'll leave that for others to decide -- but let me point out that as a memoir incorporating rigorous self-examination and not-entirely-self-serving conclusions, In Retrospect is pretty amazing.

That is, it's amazing as a book -- a work of writing and analysis. I'm talking about the book.
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CaptainFantastic
07/06/09

@skahammer: I can't believe that you just called McNamara "amazing." Jeez, you're probably a Nazi sympathizer too.
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skahammer
07/06/09

@CaptainFantastic: No, actually I think you're just OK. Is that "sympathizing"?
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dola
07/06/09

In reply to Robert McNamara: 1916-2009
When he was being interviewed in that documentary that touched you so, he wasn't really 'functioning' in any critical capacity anymore. If Rumsfeld has an attack of conscience in the next 10-20 years I won't think that he was anything but a scumbag war criminal when it actually mattered.
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Rhymenocerous
07/06/09

@dola: I wouldn't call it touching, but very honest and revealing, without being self-serving. Admitting you would have been prosecuted as a war criminal if your side had lost can't be an easy thing to deal with. I don't think he was ever trying to absolve himself. Instead I think he was sharing what he learned in a effort to prevent this country from repeating its mistakes - which, even during Vietnam, he was not exclusively responsible for.
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allyzay
07/06/09

@czecher: what do you call what his side did do? win?
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Rhymenocerous
07/06/09

In reply to Robert McNamara: 1916-2009
Ummm... this seems a little harsh. Of course his late apology doesn't make up for the lives lost in Vietnam, but it is a hell of a lot more than most people in his position ever muster. How you could watch "The Fog of War" and still call him an "amoral little functionary" is really beyond me.
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gawkimo
07/06/09

@czecher: Because he went on to head the World Bank like the icy little numbers man he always was, funding useless for-profit "humanitarian" energy projects based on usury aimed wholly at winning contracts for Western companies and plundering economies in the emerging world.

Oh, and being contrite after most everyone else figures out you were wrong is not good enough.
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snugbug
07/06/09

@czecher: I was not around during the Vietnam era, so I'm not as emotionally connected to it, but Donny Rumsfeld strikes me as a bigger bastard than McNamara. And that doc was wonderful filmmaking. I saw him as a human being, and because of that, I can sympathize with him. RIP.
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gawkimo
07/06/09

@snugbug: The saddest thing about all of this is we haven't learned anything from the man who made "collateral damage" a morally acceptable modern tactical strategy of the United States. We're doing the same thing with Iran -- with evil shitbags saying that best way to bring "freedom" to Iran is to bomb it first (this is when most innocent non-combatants are killed) then occupy it for a few years until the American public either forgets why we were there in the first place, or gets fed-up with the trickle of dead US soldiers, then pulls out and call it a victory for democracy.
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pitchperfect
07/06/09

In reply to Robert McNamara: 1916-2009
"And McNamera's [sic] dispassionate, analytical approach helpfully separated the messy details of death from the business of war, allowing everyone in Washington to accept burned villages, dead children, and wholesale destruction as a series of encouraging charts and graphs, showing progress in terms of thousands of dead enemies."

typical smart-ass, superficial comment from a third-rate blogger who masks his ignorance of military history with snide platitudes. jackass.

have i passed my audition yet?
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Richard Lawson
07/06/09

@pitchperfect: No. And stop asking. Because you never will.
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allyzay
07/06/09

@Richard Lawson:

i dunno for some reason that one-two reminded me of this
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The Lone Scout
07/06/09

@pitchperfect: For those who are interested, the Old Gray Lady, who herself condemned Mac in earlier days, printed a long obit of more than one dimension.
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gawkimo
07/06/09

In reply to Robert McNamara: 1916-2009
"amoral little functionary we should never, ever allow to make decisions of life and death"

Absolutely, though if I could I'd put Geroge Bush in a chair, Clockwork Orange style, and force him to watch Fog Of War over and over again until he begs Jesus for mercy.
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scarletmenace
07/06/09

In reply to Robert McNamara: 1916-2009
See, the good DO die young.
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NinaHagen
07/06/09

In reply to Robert McNamara: 1916-2009
Bastards always seem to live a long time.
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