The death of a strange pop star overshadowed the death of Robert Strange McNamara, but the July 6 passing of the Vietnam-era secretary of defense was certainly greater cause for reflection, not for celebrity’s sake, but for national direction.
The Cold War may be a stale history class lesson for many youth today, but the decades-long showdown with the Soviet Union shaped so much of our national history and collective conscience that its importance can’t be overstated.
And McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War, was a pivotal American Cold War figure.
Of course, had the Harvard graduate never taken public office, he still would have made a mark. The World War II lieutenant colonel left the military and became the first president of Ford Motor Company outside of the Ford family. He was known as a “Whiz Kid” with a great analytical mind. He opposed the ill-fated Edsel and pushed the popular Ford Falcon and Lincoln Continental, while placing an emphasis on improved vehicle safety standards, such as the dished steering wheel that reduced the chances of a driver being impaled by the steering column.
John F. Kennedy was impressed with the bookish-looking man and asked McNamara to serve as his Secretary of Treasury. He refused, but took the position of Secretary of Defense.
The nuclear question loomed. With two powers stockpiling arms, educators ordered children under school desks, a sadly futile preparation for the possibility of mutually assured destruction.
In dealing with the Soviets, the Kennedy Administration rejected the more hawkish approach pushed by some military leaders, such as Curtis LeMay, who favored direct attack. And during the Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara soberly recognized that “once you’ve started a shooting war, there’s little you can do to stop it.” He could have gone the other way in that moment and perhaps pushed something that would have altered the world for good.
“The military are mad,” said Kennedy after the Cuban crisis. “They wanted to do this [invade]. It’s lucky for us that we have McNamara over there [in the Department of Defense].”
McNamara may have helped the world avert WW III, but he still led the U.S. into war, firmly believing in “the domino theory,” the idea that if you give the Soviets an inch, they’ll take the world. Though direct war could kill us all, a proxy war could help us avoid defeat at the hands of the Soviets.
The Vietnam War was thus born.
While the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 proved a flawed pretext for war, McNamara pushed it forward anyway, a move echoed in 2003 as Colin Powell presented flawed intelligence as rationale for the Iraq War.
If McNamara could have removed 1964-68 from his 93-year life, he may have been remembered as a great American figure. He was a lieutenant colonel. He led Ford Motor Company. He was later president of the World Bank.
But the systems analyst gradually recognized that war is terribly complex. Flow charts and data analysis may have helped him succeed in the car industry, but war can be as hard to quantify as love — also being a matter of heart.
There’s no way to calculate on paper what it means when armed foreigners are on your land. Imagine the Chinese coming here. Would they face a fierce resistance? Absolutely. But it seems war planners repeatedly minimize the fundamental fuel in “get off my property.”
Years after the war, McNamara is still the source of bitter, bitter feelings. Many see the 58,195 American names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall and think of McNamara’s orders, his failures, his responsibility for the shedding of blood.
A true example of the tragic “best and the brightest,” the once certain McNamara came to question his own actions, his own reasoning in going to war.
“We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of our country,” said McNamara. “But we were wrong. We were terribly wrong.”
As the nation entered into another foreign conflict in 2003 that would drag on for years, the former secretary of defense recalled his legacy in the documentary “Fog of War.” His anguish was hard to stomach for some Vietnam proponents, but it came as welcome soul searching for those opposed to the invasion of Iraq.
Was McNamara truly tortured by his role in so many deaths? Does Donald Rumsfeld, who orchestrated the early days of our current war, stay awake at night with the same reflections on war?
Ultimately, how should we view McNamara, who helped guide America in the darkest days of the Cold War, leading us away from nuclear horror but into a bloody decade?
It makes for some good debate. Shoot, it’s too bad he didn’t write “Beat it.”
Zach Mitcham is editor of The Madison County Journal.
