Thank you Bob for possibly the most interesting and frightening time of my life. Yeah, thanks.
He was CEO of Ford prior to his stint in the Kennedy and Johnson administration.
I'll close with a quote from McNamara, during the Vietnam conflict: "Every quantitative measure we have shows we are winning this war."
These two things are directly linked. He brought an MBA/CEO mindset to trying to run a war so looked at everything as if they were widgets.
These two things are directly linked. He brought an MBA/CEO mindset to trying to run a war so looked at everything as if they were widgets.
Yep -- JFK wanted "the smartest guys in the room" and all those statistics/numbers jockeys*, but nobody tempered that academic knowledge with guys who had combat experience -- I never understood why JFK (who at least had combat experience in the Navy) let these guys run the show. . . .
Yep -- JFK wanted "the smartest guys in the room" and all those statistics/numbers jockeys*, but nobody tempered that academic knowledge with guys who had combat experience -- I never understood why JFK (who at least had combat experience in the Navy) let these guys run the show.
To be fair Westmoreland had a fair amount of combat experience and was as responsible as the DOD folks for what was going on.
But didn't macca lose his position as SD because he pushed to withdraw from vietnam, well before it got to it's worst?One of my professors was McNamara's son in law. I was hesitant to tell Dad that I (by a roundabout path) own a small bookshelf once owned by Bob McNamara.
This same professor would pass around gratis copies of whichever book McNamara had written lately, including Fog of War. I gave a copy to Dad and his best friend (both men are decorated Vietnam Veterans). Said friend, who is also a distinguished academic, upon receiving the book, thanked me, then said "but **** on him. **** on him in big long squirts."
McNamara, LBJ, and Jane Fonda are the only people to generate such vitriol by my father or his friend.
I'll close with a quote from McNamara, during the Vietnam conflict: "Every quantitative measure we have shows we are winning this war."
But didn't macca lose his position as SD because he pushed to withdraw from vietnam, well before it got to it's worst?
On hearing of McNamara's death, I was reminded of this poem by Sigfried Sassoon.
Base Details
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say"I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and diein bed.
I think McNamara's story is more a cautionary one - warnng us of the limits of military power, and how even the best of intentions can go dreadfully wrong. McNamara may certainly have had his faults, but he was a highly skilled organizer who dedicated a large portion of his life to public service.
Starting in WWII, it was McNamara and his team of statistical analysts who transformed the B-29 raids on Japan from a costly disaster into a war-winning strategy. (The morality of fireboming Japanese cities, with the ensuing civilian deathtoll, I'll leave for discussion elsewhere.)
As an executive at Ford he helped reorganize the firm, turning it from a basically 19th-century autocracy in the wake of 40 years of Henry Ford's increasingly manic rule, into a modern functional corporation.
In his role as Secretary of Defense, he helped changed the formation of the US armed services from the "massive retaliation" mode of the Eisenhower years - into the flexible warfighting machine it is today. The fact that the US Government has a range of military options - from pinpoint bomb or missile attacks; small special forces raids; teams of military advisors; all the way to today's highly mobile, highly professional air/sea/land forces - is, in no small part, a legacy of the changes McNamara started.
We may scoff at McNamara's RAND corporation studies, with the daily computer printouts of X's and O's supposedly showing commanders if they were winning or losing in Vietnam. But it was an attempt to create order out of the inevitable chaos that is war. For good reason McNamara had learned to distrust "gut" feelings from military commanders.
The US would have lost in Vietnam no matter what McNamara had done. If he had stood up in 1965 and told Lyndon Johnson the war couldn't be won he would have been replaced by someone who said differently.
Nicely put. I tend to agree with you, though I wouldn't give him as much credit for transforming the military...
My understanding is that the Kennedy administration had wanted to separate the military's conventional warfighting capability from the nation's ability to fight a massive nuclear war.
In the 1950's, in the wake of the Korean War, army divisions (to cite one example) had been organized into so-called "Pentomic" divisions, each with five (hence the name) battle groups commanded by a Colonel. Attached to some divisions was also a tactical nuclear artillery (rocket or tube) unit.
In practice these divisions were found to be impractical: Five battle groups, plus artillery and supply formations, were too many for the division commander and staff to keep track of - and the nuclear artillery made the divisions unsuitable for all except a very few scenarios.
"Pentomic" Divisions were eventually scrapped - the army leadership had wanted to do this, but it required the support and approval of McNamara as Sec. Def. to accomplish this. Obviously, the Army has gone through many organizational changes since this time. But I feel that McNamara's insistence of a scientific, studied, "systems analysis" -type approach has helped pave the way for the superb military implement the US has today.
I think McNamara's story is more a cautionary one - warnng us of the limits of military power, and how even the best of intentions can go dreadfully wrong. McNamara may certainly have had his faults, but he was a highly skilled organizer who dedicated a large portion of his life to public service.
Starting in WWII, it was McNamara and his team of statistical analysts who transformed the B-29 raids on Japan from a costly disaster into a war-winning strategy. (The morality of fireboming Japanese cities, with the ensuing civilian deathtoll, I'll leave for discussion elsewhere.)