Somewhat lost in the spate of passages that this county has experienced of late was the death of Robert McNamara.
McNamara's death at 93 was probably one of the lowest profiles of all the recent deaths but it's likely that no one individual had more of an effect on baby boomers' lives than he did. At least that's mostly true for the male boomers. That's because he was the chief architect of the Vietnam war. Even if one didn't actually go to Vietnam, as I didn't, you still were likely to be affected. I was drafted into the Army because of the amount of troops required to fight the Vietnam war.
I never cared for the man but not because of being drafted. McNamara was one of the so-called "Whiz Kids" which was the name given to a group of young, supposedly highly intelligent, highly educated guys who knew all and could manage anything. McNamara was a graduate of Harvard business school and became president of Ford Motor and soon thereafter Secretary of Defense at the young age of 44. Of course, that small group turned out to be just as capable of making mistakes as anyone else and maybe more so given their nickname.
While I think McNamara did some good things, controlling military spending in particular, he was absolutely terrible in trying to apply the business principles he had learned to war. In that he was a disaster. He and his minions tried to conduct the Vietnam war like they managed a business with no regard to the human element. It didn't work and very much later, too late for me, he seemed to realize it. But by that time we were so entwined as a country with Vietnam it wasn't easy to back out. Ultimately that war cost 58,000 soldiers their life. And for basically nothing. The Communists took control immediately when we finally bailed.
I find it interesting that the people we seem to build up because of their intellect or skills more often than not can't live up to the image. Robert McNamara seemed to realize his mistakes as time went by but never really admitted to them except in broad terms. Maybe that 58,000 number had something to do with it. That horror might have weighed heavily on even a purely systematic and rational man as he.
July 9, 2009 in
Politics |
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