Robert McNamara, RIP: Memories of Vietnam should speed Obama's exit plans for Iraq and Afghanistan

[laststeamtrain]

Robert McNamara, RIP
Memories of Vietnam should speed Obama's exit plans for Iraq and Afghanistan
By EDITORIAL | July 8, 2009

As secretary of defense under President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara prosecuted the Vietnam War on a day-to-day basis, just as Donald Rumsfeld orchestrated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for George W. Bush. The details may appear strikingly different — a Communist threat in the jungle as opposed to an Islamist menace in the desert — but the rotten policy core has a painful consistency: miscalculation fortified by rampant arrogance.

McNamara's death on Monday at age 93 should serve as a prompt, a trigger, for President Barack Obama and his foreign-policy team. It presents an unspoken invitation to consider the common denominators of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam.

Analogizing people is tricky business, as is drawing parallels between unpopular wars. But in terms of serving their respective presidents, Rumsfeld was an instigator; McNamara an enabler.

This sort of distinction matters to historians and journalists and government officials; it is of little use to the public, and is of no matter to the soldiers, sailors, aviators, and Marines who died under the commands of W. and LBJ.

<snip>

At the moment, there is a huge disconnect between what the military command is doing and what the public perceives. Obama, in effect, has adopted the Pentagon's "long war" view that sees substantial numbers of troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.

<snip>

Modern war seems to break more presidents than it ennobles. If Obama is to avoid the fates of Johnson, Nixon, and Bush II, he must reconnect with political reality and bring the troops home.

<more>

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/86238-Robert-McNamara-RIP/

[Guero]

1. ... Reading an obit with great pleasure

Commentary: Galloway on McNamara: Reading an obit with great
pleasure.

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many
obituaries with great pleasure." —Clarence Darrow
(1857–1938) 

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally
shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of
Hell.

McNamara was the original bean-counter — a man who knew the
cost of everything but the worth of nothing. 

Back in 1990 I had a series of strange phone conversations
with McNamara while doing research for my book We Were
Soldiers Once And Young. McNamara prefaced every conversation
with this: "I do not want to comment on the record for
fear that I might distort history in the process." Then
he would proceed to talk for an hour, doing precisely that
with answers that were disingenuous in the extreme — when they
were not bald-faced lies.

........

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/71328.html

[timeforpeace]

2. True. Unless he "wins", his legacy will be forever tarnished by this mis-adventure.