McNamara's Ghost

[WilliamPitt]

Robert S. McNamara, secretary of defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, passed away on Monday. (Photo: "Fog Of War")

McNamara's Ghost
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Tuesday 07 July 2009

Any military commander who is honest with himself, or with those he's speaking to, will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power. He's killed people unnecessarily - his own troops or other troops - through mistakes, through errors of judgment. A hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand. But, he hasn't destroyed nations. And the conventional wisdom is don't make the same mistake twice, learn from your mistakes. And we all do. Maybe we make the same mistake three times, but hopefully not four or five.

- Robert S. McNamara

One of the last knights of Camelot, of the New Frontier, is gone. Robert S. McNamara, secretary of defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, former president of Ford Motor Co. and the World Bank, husband, father and chief architect of America's catastrophic war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, passed away at home after years of declining health. He was 93.

"Mr. McNamara is best remembered and in some quarters still reviled for the seven years he spent at the Pentagon and the part he played in waging the Vietnam War," read McNamara's obituary in the Boston Globe. "In 1995, he published his memoir, 'In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,' in which he wrote that he and other top officials were 'terribly wrong' to pursue the war. The controversy that erupted demonstrated the extent to which the nation's scars remained unhealed. Others can also be assigned responsibility for escalating the US role in the conflict during that time: Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. To many, though, it was 'McNamara's war,' as US Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon once put it."

The timing of his passing saw McNamara join a motley crew of notables and celebrities who have shuffled loose the mortal coil in the last two weeks. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Steve McNair; each of these luminaries got a share of media coverage - some more than others, of course - and McNamara was no different. Every major newspaper in America treated the death of McNamara as front-page news, and the only reason his passing was not part of the rotation on the cable networks on Tuesday was because they were very slowly burying Michael Jackson in Los Angeles.

Some other people also died in the last two weeks. Two International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on July 1. Three members of a family were killed by rocket fire on the same day. Two British soldiers and one American soldier were killed in Afghanistan on July 2. Another American soldier was captured. A Canadian soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on July 3. Two American soldiers were killed on the Fourth of July. A US Marine and three UK troops were killed in Afghanistan on July 5. Seven US troops were killed in Afghanistan on July 6. In the last two days, five Iraqi policemen and two Iraqi soldiers were killed in Baghdad. Five more policemen were killed in Mosul. Thirty-eight Coalition troops were killed in June in Afghanistan, and 19 have been killed in the first week of July. In Afghanistan, 1,220 Coalition troops have died since 2001. Fifteen US troops were killed in June in Iraq, and 4,321 have died since 2003.

None of these people got the same kind of ink as McMahon, Fawcett, Jackson, Mays, McNair or McNamara, but they are just as dead. The passing of McNamara and the deaths of all those soldiers belong in the same column, because they are all part of the same long, sad, blood-soaked story.

Vietnam was an exercise in hubris, deception and profiteering that McNamara spent the latter half of his life trying to justify, live down and explain away. The soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan would recognize Robert McNamara, for they were consigned to the grave by McNamara's modern replacements. Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rove, Libby and the other Bush administration officials who ginned up two wars and made abject debacles of both are the modern inheritors of McNamara's curse. As are the soldiers and civilians who have been chewed up and annihilated. As are we all.

Robert McNamara taught us all we needed to know about the folly of war, about aftermath and about regret. Nobody listened, nobody learned, except for the dead.

http://www.truthout.org/070709R

[annabanana]

1. Why is the human race so damnably averse to learning?

How can we "fall for it" over and over and over?

[FiveGoodMen]

6. Too many groups would prefer that we stop thinking and obey them instead.

Many of them influence school boards.

Many of them have their own television empires.

Many of them hide behind free speech and faith.

Not enough of us make it through childhood with enough working gray matter to tell those groups to go fuck themselves.

We're stupid because that's how are parents and leaders want it.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. Afghan deaths, troop casualties soar in first days of new US offensive

Overall, at least 18 NATO troops have been killed in the first week of July. In all likelihood, 2009 will see the highest rate of deaths in the war. So far this year, 174 soldiers have lost their lives, compared with 294 in all 2008 and 232 in 2007. Hundreds of Afghan government troops and police have also been killed.

Figures within the US military are questioning whether Obama’s increase of US troop numbers in Afghanistan to 68,000 by the end of the year will be enough in the face of an entrenched anti-occupation insurgency. Even with the reinforcements and the NATO contingents, the total occupation force is barely 100,000. The surge in Iraq, by contrast, ultimately involved close to 200,000 American, British and other western troops.

Public opinion is already being conditioned for a further escalation of the Afghan war. Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward reported last week that the view of one unnamed senior US officer was that at least 100,000 American troops were needed—i.e., around 30,000 more.

General McChrystal is scheduled to report to the administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a matter of weeks regarding troop numbers. If his request is to increase them, Obama will bend over backwards to meet it. The dispatch of more and more troops follows inexorably from the determination in the White House to consolidate Afghanistan as a neo-colonial client state in Central Asia.

www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/afgh-j07.shtml

[ThirdWorldJohn]

3. McNamara loved him some agent orange, right.? Why Yes - Yes he did. And Dow Profits.

[mmonk]

4. Excellent work. Recommended.

[nichomachus]

5. Best story about McNamara -- ever

I never heard this story until today. God, I wish I had been there:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003991119

[WilliamPitt]

7. Evening Kick

[Diane R]

8. The media needs to be talking about the deaths this man was responsible for. 'Regret' isn't enough.

[checks-n-balances]

9. What can you say about a man who can be compared to GWB

in terms of warrentless deaths of people from the U.S. and elsewhere for the cause of empire, arrogance and profit?

You said it very well.

I wish the powers that be would dwell on this for awhile, and decide to put and end to these tragedies begun by those with sociopathic minds.

[cornfedyank]

10. fog of war.. ..a good movie..nt

[WilliamPitt]

11. One last kick

[2manycats8]

12. no forgiveness

i saw "fog of war" and this man deserves no forgiveness. i hope his sins follow him in the after life. when he made the decision to lower the rank for draftees to the uneducated and not fit because the "war" needed them but he would kill 2 birds with one stone. he said after all these new draftees would most likely die very quickly and then this country would not have to support them and their offspring through welfare and other socials programs if they managed to live and come home. 2 birds, one, to throw bodies at the enemy and two, eliminate our social off casts. this man sickened me ever since i saw that. this is hitler gang thinking. i wonder how much of this thinking was in the bush gang's minds.

[WI_DEM]

13. McNamara operated a two way street.

At Georgetown cocktail parties with his liberal chums he "privately" would say he was troubled by the war, yet the next day in the oval office he would egg on LBJ who, as WH tapes indicate, truly did harbor doubts about Vietnam. It was only after LBJ got rid of McNamara in early '68 and brought in Clark Clifford as Defense Secretary that Johnson really did begin to try to get out of Vietnam. The 3/31/68 speech is remembered for his withdrawal from the presidential race, but most of it was about Vietnam and a bombing halt. It was Clifford not McNamra who was privately pushing Johnson in that direction.

[HOLOS]

14. STORY OF A MAJOR WAR CRIMINAL