Tomasky has the money quotation from the late, and undeniably complicated, Robert McNamara. (Much more complicated than Henry Kissinger, who supposedly said Bill Clinton “does not possess the strength of character to be a war criminal.”) McNamara was talking about his role in this and that sort of thing, but of course he’s better known for his role in inspiring this sort of thing.
The Miller Center has an online McNamara exhibit which includes his case for a withdrawal from Vietnam in October, 1963.
UPDATED to add, on McNamara’s memoir:
… there is something wrong with a culture in which a McNamara is feted for his “guts” while George McGovern and Gene McCarthy, who opposed McNamara’s mistakes, are regarded as nobodies. In one of the uglier passages of In Retrospect, McNamara sneers at the antiwar protesters who marched on the Pentagon in 1967. If they had been more “disciplined” and “Gandhi-like,” he says, “they could have achieved their objective of shutting us down.” Instead they were “troublemakers” who “threw mud balls” and “even unzipped [soldiers’] flies.” This is contrition? Shouldn’t McNamara be admitting that the mudball-throwers, after all, had been right?
Which, wow. Whatever happened to Mickey Kaus?
UPDATED again to add, Fog of War transcript.
The Edge of the American West 
42 comments
July 6, 2009 at 10:43 am
erubin
Reading about McNamara’s death today made me think that perhaps you were right about over-coverage of Michael Jackson’s demise (and I think everyone can agree MJ’s coverage has gone on long enough by now).
I don’t have much to say about McNamara since I know so comparatively little about him in this forum of giants. Most poignant for me is his speech (was it a commencement address?) at UC Berkeley about five years ago where he was met with applause. My mother told me that thirty years ago, students there would have thrown rocks.
It feels like one more bridge to history has been burned today.
July 6, 2009 at 11:42 am
eric
this forum of giants
?
July 6, 2009 at 11:43 am
sero
Your mother most likely referred to the 2004 Interrotron of McNamara by Mark Danner and Errol Morris (Fog of War). Zellerbach was packed for the event, which also served as an interactive forum for Morris’s Fog of War. For most of the Interrotron, McNamara simply listed and discussed his “mistakes,” including sneers. The applause in question came on the heels of McNamara deftly avoiding questions concerning Iraq. When Danner pulled out a Canadian newspaper reporting an ostensible critique by McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense sustained his meaningful silence. Danner, however, informed McNamara that he applauded his efforts. Given the general antipathy torwards the Bush Administration in 2004 Berkeley, the applause did not seem out of the ordinary.
July 6, 2009 at 12:03 pm
kid bitzer
giants? forum?
hell no; i’m agin’ um.
July 6, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Ralph Hitchens
Yeah, the “money quote.” I commented about the LeMay statement to MacNamara over on Duck of Minerva, and won’t repeat it here except to paraphrase that waging total war against 20th century industrialized countries might make war criminals out of anyone. Where do you draw the line between what is and is not a military target? I don’t think it’s quite as easy as most of us now think.
Of course that has nothing to do with MacNamara’s other sources of guilt, such as getting the US into wars it has no need to fight, and waging it without much regard for truly collateral damage.
July 6, 2009 at 12:20 pm
erubin
Eric, regarding your question: I follow your blog enthusiastically and I’m consistently amazed by the depths you delve into current events. I take your recent post on disfranchisement of prisoners in New York as a perfect example. While the mainstream media– hell, even some fine outlets– are focused on petty questions like is Sonya Sotomayor racist or does she want to give prisoners the right to vote, you came forward and said what the disfranchisement case was REALLY about. How do you find this stuff? I try to keep myself abreast of the news, but somehow you can look past all the noise and find the real story where the gray area is.
I also read the comments section regularly and I am equally impressed. Discussion is always civil and insightful and I’ve almost never had anything to add to the conversation because there’s nothing more to be said from my angle. Are you guys ALL professors?
Oh there are giants here.
July 6, 2009 at 12:29 pm
eric
Gosh. Thanks.
July 6, 2009 at 12:30 pm
eric
waging total war against 20th century industrialized countries might make war criminals out of anyone
Yes, I think this is more or less the position I took in the original posts I linked on the subject—but it’s a tough position to have to take.
July 6, 2009 at 12:42 pm
SEK
Someone obviously hasn’t been reading my posts and comments sections.
July 6, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Charlieford
OK, I’m feeling sick.
July 6, 2009 at 1:08 pm
kathy a.
i have a particular interest in project 100,000, an effort to boost miltary enlistment at the height of the VN war by lowering the standards. this was sold by mcnamara as an anti-poverty and job training program, to lift the poor from their circumstances. the program was a disaster and abandoned after a couple of years; enlistees admitted under the lowered mental and physical standards suffered twice the casualties, and were far more likely to suffer [what was later identified as] PTSD.
the real reason for the program was to avoid the need to cancel deferrments for the more fortunate. these enlistees were derisively called “mcnamara’s moron corps.” they frequently were given very dangerous “cannon fodder” jobs, such as helicopter door gunners; few received any job training that would translate to civilian work.
when mcnamara published in retrospect, i was hoping he would acknowledge that this program was a grave error. but he didn’t.
July 6, 2009 at 1:17 pm
eric
OK, I’m feeling sick.
Which part, Charlie?
July 6, 2009 at 1:20 pm
eric
the real reason for the program was to avoid the need to cancel deferrments for the more fortunate
I’m not sure about this, kathy a. — like a lot of government initiatives, this one had many originating motives. One of them was the idea — Moynihan’s, as I recall — that getting more black kids into the army would simultaneously increase the intake of troops and solve the problems documented in the Moynihan report. (This according to Baskir and Strauss.)
Which is, if possible, even more awful.
July 6, 2009 at 1:53 pm
foeb
I have long regarded Eric as a giant among fish.
July 6, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Charlieford
The part that concludes, “Oh there are giants here.” But, yeah, I grew up during McNamara’s day, and drank hatred for him like mother’s milk. It came as a shock when “Fog” came out to see him, this frail old man, likeable, obviously agonized but also defensive, manipulating. As you say, a complex man. Hard to know how to feel about him, exactly.
July 6, 2009 at 2:22 pm
eric
The part that concludes, “Oh there are giants here.”
Aw, Charlie, it made it easier to read that when I thought of it referring to you.
July 6, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Jason B.
Discussion is always civil and insightful . . .
Must be blocking out my input. Ha!
July 6, 2009 at 2:38 pm
kathy a.
eric, i don’t disagree that part of the intent of project 100,000 was to enlist more young black men. and if i recall, the military was often miles ahead of civilian life, in terms of integration — but not so much in terms of eliminating racism, back then.
the problem i have is that project 100,000 took people who previously would have failed [and some did fail] to meet the not-terribly-difficult qualifications for induction, and let them join up; and then, in the press of war, the military did not [or could not] train them for complex jobs or those with civilian counterparts. there was a lot of fanfare at the beginning, but the project faded quietly away because the outcomes were so dismal.
i knew two men who were admitted to the military around 1967 under the lowered standards. they would not have been counted as among the many casualties toted up by a governmental survey or two that i saw years ago, but their lives and the lives of others were destroyed by their service. these guys and their cohort were simply expendable. lots of layers of awful here.
July 6, 2009 at 2:52 pm
human
One of them was the idea — Moynihan’s, as I recall — that getting more black kids into the army would simultaneously increase the intake of troops and solve the problems documented in the Moynihan report.
Wait, what? That doesn’t even make sense, since the Moynihan report claimed that the main problem black families faced was being led by female heads of household. So how was getting a bunch of young black men killed in Vietnam going to help with that? Even if you accept the premise.
July 6, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Maurice Isserman
I read that line in McNamara’s memoir about the Pentagon demonstrators a little differently than Mickey Kaus. The image of McNamara gazing down on the anti-war hordes and wishing they were more “Gandhi-like” is striking evidence of his feelings of guilt over his own policies in Vietnam (which also reflected the deep divisions the war had brought to his own family — his son Craig, heading for college in the next year or so, would soon be joining the protests against the war.) I don’t think this was simply a case of McNamara “sneering” at the opposition — I think he secretly wished they were more effective (i.e., stop me before I kill again…) Of course McNamara’s remorse about the Vietnam war, about which he kept silent for so many years, does not redeem his memory.
July 6, 2009 at 3:03 pm
eric
Wait, what? That doesn’t even make sense, since the Moynihan report claimed that the main problem black families faced was being led by female heads of household.
But if you put them in the military, they would have male leadership and discipline to substitute for the matrifocal household. Plus, they’d get job skills.
… that’s, as you say, if you accept the premise. And if you don’t think about the increased likelihood of project 100k inductees getting killed. Which they did, disproportionately, if I remember the figures correctly.
July 6, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Anderson
I don’t think this was simply a case of McNamara “sneering” at the opposition — I think he secretly wished they were more effective
Interesting — he was surely right that they *would* have been more effective that way.
Question: how many lives did McNamara save in his World Bank tenure? I suppose a utilitarian, or a McNamara, might add up his net moral value that way ….
July 6, 2009 at 4:02 pm
peter ramus
project 100,000 took people who previously would have failed [and some did fail] to meet the not-terribly-difficult qualifications for induction, and let them join up.
The vast majority of these guys “joined up” by being drafted, and because of low scores on their induction tests, didn’t qualify for any of the safer MOS’s: they went infantry instead of AG.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they did die in disproportionate numbers. None of us processing their paperwork at the time saw the program as anything more than a grab for cannon fodder.
July 6, 2009 at 4:04 pm
eric
I think I’m going to have to write a post on project 100k. Also, now that Maurice Isserman has commented, Charlie, are you going to accept “forum of giants”?
July 6, 2009 at 5:12 pm
kathy a.
peter, how awful that must have been. yes, they died and were injured at about twice the “normal” rate, and many who were not casualties in that sense were damaged badly as well, in less visible ways.
eric, i’d be very interested in a project 100,000 post.
July 6, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Charlieford
I’ll grant it’s a place for, um, a giant, now and again.
July 6, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Ben Alpers
Eric pretty much nails Moynihan’s argument about why military service would solve what he saw as the pathologies of the black community:
The very essence of the male animal, from the bantam rooster to the four-star general, is to strut. Indeed, in 19th century America, a particular type of exaggerated male boastfulness became almost a national style. Not for the Negro male. The “sassy nigger[sic]” was lynched. . . . .
Military service is disruptive in some respects. For those comparatively few who are killed or wounded in combat, or otherwise, the personal sacrifice is inestimable. But on balance service in the Armed Forces over the past quarter-century has worked greatly to the advantage of those involved. The training and experience of military duty itself is unique, the advantages that have generally followed in the form of the G.I. Bill, mortgage guarantees, Federal life insurance, Civil Service preference, veterans hospitals, and veterans pensions are singular, to say the least.
Although service in the Armed Forces is at least nominally a duty of all male citizens coming of age, it is clear that the present system does not enable Negroes to serve in anything like their proportionate numbers. This is not a question of discrimination. Induction into the Armed Forces is based on a variety of objective tests and standards, but these tests nonetheless have the effect of keeping the number of Negroes disproportionately small.
In 1963 the United States Commission on Civil Rights reported that “A decade ago, Negroes constituted 8 percent of the Armed Forces. Today… they continue to constitute 8 percent of the Armed Forces.”
In 1964 Negroes constituted 11.8 percent of the population, but probably remain at 8 percent of the Armed Forces.
The significance of Negro under-representation in the Armed Forces is greater than might at first be supposed. If Negroes were represented in the same proportions in the military as they are in the population, they would number 300,000 plus. This would be over 100,000 more than at present (using 1964 strength figures). If the more than 100,000 unemployed Negro men were to have gone into the military the Negro male unemployment rate would have been 7.0 percent in 1964 instead of 9.1 percent.
In 1963 the Civil Rights Commission commented on the occupational aspect of military service for Negroes. “Negro enlisted men enjoy relatively better opportunities in the Armed Forces than in the civilian economy in every clerical, technical, and skilled field for which the data permit comparison.”
There is, however, an even more important issue involved in military service for Negroes. Service in the United States Armed Forces is the only experience open to the Negro American in which he is truly treated as an equal: not as a Negro equal to a white, but as one man equal to any other man in a world where the category “Negro” and “white” do not exist. If this is a statement of the ideal rather than reality, it is an ideal that is close to realization. In food, dress, housing, pay, work — the Negro in the Armed Forces is equal and is treated that way.
There is another special quality about military service for Negro men: it is an utterly masculine world. Given the strains of the disorganized and matrifocal family life in which so many Negro youth come of age, the Armed Forces are a dramatic and desperately needed change: a world away from women, a world run by strong men of unquestioned authority, where discipline, if harsh, is nonetheless orderly and predictable, and where rewards, if limited, are granted on the basis of performance.
The theme of a current Army recruiting message states it as clearly as can be: “In the U.S. Army you get to know what it means to feel like a man.”
At the recent Civil Rights Commission hearings in Mississippi a witness testified that his Army service was in fact “the only time I ever felt like a man.”
July 6, 2009 at 5:31 pm
PorJ
I want to thank erubin for pointing out what a great blog this is. We all engage in a lot of discussion here – some of it quite heated – but I think there is tremendous respect for the bloggers and commentators that doesn’t exist in most other places around the blogosphere (for instance: TPM, which I greatly respect and is about to make Josh Marshall very wealthy*, has discussion threads that often just go off the cliff into bizarro-world). So thanks to Eric, Ari, SEK, Silbey for maintaining a first class place. Maybe you’ll get rich, too.
About McNamara: Some old grizzled journalists detest the guy as much or worse than the protestors did. They thought they had a lot of inside dope during the war – McNamara was a numbers man, afterall. That’s why they took a while to come around (longer than they should have). And McNamara made them look like idiots. They never forgave him. One I know, who had a very high-ranking position and is relatively well-known refused to see Morris’s film. Said it would make him nauseous to watch the a**hole lie for two hours.
*- “very wealthy” in that the article doesn’t say how much of the company Andressen’s investment will be worth. I’m speculating the $500,000 – $1 million is probably for only a tiny part.
July 6, 2009 at 5:41 pm
kathy a.
ben: holy shit. yet, it fits perfectly with mcnamara’s pitch to give the “subterranean poor” all the opportunities that military service had to offer during a highly dangerous ground war, in which loads of our men were blasted to bits.
July 6, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Ahistoricality
How can you tell there are giants here? Ask Stephen Sondheim:
As the musical says, be careful what you wish for….
July 6, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Doctor Science
There an interesting discussion going on at balloon juice about McNamara vs. Rumsfeld. What is amazing to me is how Rumsfeld has succeeded in making McNamara look *good*. Well, better — McNamara was not merely more intelligent than Rumsfeld, but much more competant — more able to do a job, not just be a courtier.
July 6, 2009 at 10:27 pm
eric
And then there’s this:
July 7, 2009 at 5:40 am
Mike
Professor Isserman’s comment is a useful reminder and raises an interesting question (at least for me) about presidential power: the tendency to emphasize the anti-war movement often obscures the fact that the war in Viet Nam was actually a popular one for quite some time. While we now know that both Johnson and McNamara had privately decided that the war was a disaster early on, both men were trapped not merely by the mess they had made, but also by Cold War domestic politics. Like Professor Isserman, I read McNamara’s comment as a lament that the anti-war protests were not giving him the cover he needed to change course. Obviously, this doesn’t absolve the Best and the Brightest for their failures, but it does point to an interesting set of historical precedents. It seems as if presidents who might wish to act against public opinion often require the cover of some related domestic crisis. Lincoln needed the Contrabands, FDR needed strikes to pass the Wagner Act, LBJ needed Birmingham and Freedom Summer for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. It’s something I keep thinking about while I watch reforms like EFCA and the “public option” slowly die away.
July 7, 2009 at 7:00 am
Jackmormon
I know McNamara only as an historical figure and was intrigued by him in The Fog of War, but last night Terry Gross replayed her interview with him from when his memoir was first published (1995, I think), and even though the subject was all about reflection and reappraisal and mistakes, he was still interrupting her every minute and a half and implicitly belittling everyone outside the government. I could understand why people who lived through his tenure are reluctant to forgive him. And yes, there was something in his tone and posture that made me think of Rumsfeld, even though I’m convinced that McNamara is the more complicated character.
July 7, 2009 at 9:41 am
grackle
I realize that American anti-intellectualism precedes McNamara’s tenure in government by a great deal, but there is a study waiting to be done on the effects JFK’s “Harvard brain trust” have had on its more recent flowering. Weren’t many of Kennedy’s coterie of experts kept on by LBJ? IIRC, they were widely held to blame for the Vietnam morass, especially in its theoretical constructs.
…I’m convinced that McNamara is the more complicated character.
I couldn’t pick one way or the other; Rumsfeld’s folksy shtick always seemed to me to be masking a great opacity.
July 7, 2009 at 11:50 am
jacob
Like Jackmormon, I know McNamara only as a historical figure, albeit one whom I was raised to hate unambiguously. As someone who has been trained to see ambiguity even in the most hated of historical figures, I was struck, reading the Times obituary, at the tragedy of someone whom everyone believed was brilliant, whom Kennedy described as the smartest person he’d met, failing in nearly everything as Secretary of Defense. Failing to overthrow Cuba, failing in Vietnam, failing to stop Vietnam. I didn’t hear Terry Gross’s interview, but on the CBC’s As It Happens last night, they replayed 5 or 10 minutes worth of the interview Michael Enright did with McNamara at the time of the memoir. Like Jackmormon, I was struck at McNamara’s continued combativeness. He even argued with Enright about whether in his book he “admitted” or “identified” mistakes (McNamara was vehement that he identified them; Enright was a bit puzzled about the distinction McNamara was attempting to draw).
July 7, 2009 at 12:13 pm
kathy a.
he was a conflicted character, realizing mistakes were made but unable to take real responsibility for them. and the latter part is pretty human, but the scope of the damage is enormous.
i give him credit for admitting mistakes were made. it takes both thought and courage to get that far.
that doesn’t mean a pass on responsibility for the outcomes of those mistakes.
July 7, 2009 at 12:17 pm
kathy a.
well, and he was not the only one responsible. maybe that accounts for the combativeness. but his name was at the top of various ventures.
July 8, 2009 at 8:41 am
Richard
“Question: how many lives did McNamara save in his World Bank tenure? I suppose a utilitarian, or a McNamara, might add up his net moral value that way ….”
I’m not sure how to take this question. Since his World Bank tenure surely only added to his toll of death and immiseration. Or are we not clear on what the World Bank does?
July 10, 2009 at 12:10 pm
sero
I think you should ask McNamara what the World Bank does. I’m sure he would deftly avoid your question by simply stating that he has no opinions or further information on its net moral value. From what I’ve seen, this method precludes suspicions that he evades questions.
July 10, 2009 at 2:03 pm
eric
I’m sure he would deftly avoid your question
… by being dead, right?
July 10, 2009 at 2:47 pm
sero
By being facetious.