McNamara Dies: 58,000 Deaths Too Late

I normally subscribe to the notion that you do not speak ill of the dead. In the case of Robert Strange McNamara, former Secretary of Defense, I will make an exception. If one person had to be singled out as being responsible for the turbulent 1960′s it would have to be Robert McNamara. Close behind would be Lyndon B. Johnson. These two fanned the flames of an impossible war while giving the false impression back home in this country that things were going well in the Southeast Asian country of Vietnam.

The epitome of a pencil-neck geek with zero combat experience McNamara tried to wage a war in which he knew nothing about. He set about controlling the war in a Washington back room with computers, statistics, and analyses while young Americans were fed into a meat grinder of hot, steamy jungles on the other side of the world resulting in over 58,000 deaths. For all of his brilliance and well-intentions his misguided calculations embroiled this nation into a tumultuous decade of unprecedented protests and unrest while propagating a war in a country that few Americans had ever heard of and knew even less of the reasons why we were there.

Prior to McNamara’s appointment as Secretary of Defense he was the President of the Ford Motor Company. It suffices to say the country would have been better off if he had stayed with Ford. At least he would only have been guilty of the possible death of a bad car design. As a graduate of UC Berkley it is ironic that this alumnus would stir up the student body decades later into a fervor of turmoil.

It is reported that McNamara died in his sleep at 93 years old. Thousands of young Americans were cut down in the prime of their life bleeding and dying from horrific wounds in the mud and stench of Vietnam jungles. They were not given the opportunity to die from old age but were sacrificed for political gain and some warped sense of a communist domino theory. Vietnam is still a communist country and if you check your clothing you may find a “Made in Vietnam” tag attached on the inside. Little comfort to those that died there, were wounded or were scorned by an ungrateful nation upon their return. Hopefully lessons were learned but history has a way of repeating itself.

For whatever good Robert McNamara might have done on this Earth it was overshadowed by his inept mismanagement of the Vietnam debacle. It’s easy to despise a man when he’s living, not so easy when he is dead and gone. Maybe it’s best to bury the contempt along with the man.