Joe Galloway on Robert McNamara.
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.
Ouch!
His regret cannot be huge enough to balance the books for our dead soldiers. The ghosts of those unlived lives circle close around Mr. McNamara. Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the Infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late."
Of course, it could be argued that McNamara was simple thirty years too early. Back in the 1960’s people actually believed that war was an abomination, a state to avoided, a theft of what is good and decent about society. Now if a blogger called the deaths of soldiers overseas for a foreign population a waste-he’d get blasted about being unpatriotic.
Avoiding that debacle, shaped foreign policy and military thinking for a good 25 years. It led to the Powell doctrine that said-if you do go to war, you go full bore, and before you go, you better know damned well what the means of getting out was.
Ah, but then came the 21’st century and McNamara’s prodigy, Donald Rumsfeld, gave us back counterinsurgency warfare as a be all end all. Which also gave us a war without end, amen.
I’d be bitter too.