McNamara and Me

When I first heard of Robert McNamara's death, I did not immediately recognize the influence his life and legacy has had on me. I had not heard the name or thought of the man in a long time. My last memory of McNamara was being repulsed at his factual distortions regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis in the popular film, "Fog of War" (which I don't think I even bothered to finish).

It was a round-table discussion on Democracy Now! today featuring Howard Zinn and other prominent experts on U.S. history and foreign policy that touched on the significance of McNamara to a young radical like me. I had heard the name in history class, but it was not until I read David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest that 'McNamara' became an intriguing name. He was quite possibly the very best and brightest of the best and brightest: the description given by Halberstam to President John F. Kennedy's highly intellectual team of advisers. Kennedy himself quipped: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Nonetheless, McNamara, Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and other Kennedy administration officials would be better known for their failures in Vietnam than their Rhodes Scholarships.

Despite the large cadre of failures who were swept into the historical dustpan with him, it was McNamara and his story that led me to give up on government. I doubted that any dramatic "change from within" was possible. I identified much more with the activists camped outside the White House screaming "Hey, LBJ, whaddaya say? How many kids did you kill today?" than with the misguided officials inside, who may have had greater access to power but had far less access to reality. I didn't see myself as a yes man or as someone who could ever compromise on my values. I couldn't identity much with even the likes of Daniel Ellsberg because despite his courage, he still played for the wrong team for much of his life. I can hardly see myself wearing a suit to work.

But McNamara gave me hope as well as disillusionment. He helped me realize that you don't have to have a 4.0 GPA to understand foreign policy or warfare. In fact, less-educated Americans were more heavily against the War in Vietnam than their university-taught counterparts. The masses took to the streets while McNamara was trying to figure out how many pounds of bombs to drop on Hanoi's children. Humanity is not something that comes from a campus or a book. While reading about McNamara for the first time, I was proud of myself for taking a bold stance against the War in Iraq and organizing my fellow students to do the same. I was proud of myself for NOT being a stooge of empire.

I may not have the opportunity to run the Ford Motor Company, the Pentagon, or the World Bank (McNamara ran all three at different times in his life), but I can run a peace group - and maybe a small non-profit some day. I'm certain I'll sleep better at night in my later years than McNamara did. Of course, that's not saying much.

I don't know how McNamara will be remembered by most Americans (if he is remembered at all). I just hope that history books don't continue to present him as someone who beat the drum the loudest for one of the bloodiest and shameful U.S. military campaigns only to recant his hawkish views and become a dove. This is an over-simplistic view of the man at best. He may have admitted that the so-called Vietnam War was a mistake, but he never acknowledged the blood on his hands; he never apologized to the military families back at home or to the children of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. He may have spoken out against nuclear weapons, but so have some of the most unapologetic American imperialists, such as Henry Kissinger. I question his motives for abolition: Every foreign policy wonk knows that if nuclear weapons were abolished from the earth, there would be no longer any (violent) means of deterring the United States' conventional military superiority for countries like North Korea.

It's quite possible that McNamara never saw the light. And I'm sure he doesn't see it now. I just hope the architects of the current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan come to join the millions of Americans and the billions of people worldwide who have grown weary of war. I hope they become architects of peace.