The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: twyacht on July 07, 2009, 06:37:32 AM
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I know some have a love em or hate em opinion of this man, Those who are older than me (almost 40), certainly will have more direct knowledge of his policies and strategies, especially during the Vietnam War years.
So for those specific members, what is the truth? Not the hype. He was an intellectual, Harvard Grad, Pres. of the World Bank, Sec. of Defense. Critical of the Iraq War, and admitted later in his life that American involvement in Vietnam was "all wrong".
I am curious and interested in this from a historical point of view, as he was a major player in an otherwise dark time in American History.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/07/06/ST2009070601790.html?sid=ST2009070601790
Was he a terrible man? Was he a decent man with the wrong plan? Was he a victim of politics?
Thank you.
Tom W.
Based on some of the responses from the other post, I was just trying to see if Vietnam Era, is all his legacy will be. Even if he admitted it was wrong.
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Was he not the man who pushed the AR rifle design into service against most all others wishes?
Not stating a fact, just asking a question.
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I have jury duty I have to leave for, but here is a shot. He set the tenor and tone for serious mistakes in mindset in the DoD. IMO he was ultimately responsible for seeing the AR implemented in a defective manner (no chrome plating in the barrel as Stoner designed, different and cheaper powder in the ammo causing gross fouling issues, no cleaning kits because the original design - which the DoD altered - was "self-cleaning", etc.). He was also the architect of the "bean counter" mindset, his forte at Ford BTW, which lead to "body counts" as a measure of "success" in Nam.
We were successful in Nam, but McNamara and the others in the Nixon Kennedy/Johnson admins caused the dark times you referenced because they were singularly incapable of handling the negative publicity and protests.
Gotta run . . .
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I served in the Army during McNamara's time. I think he was awful. I have lots of reasons for believing that including the AR15/M16 troubles. And the weekly reports I filled out in Vietnam -- they kept changing the questions to get the answers the Whiz Kids wanted.
Path is forgetting that McNamara was in the Kennedy / Johnson administration not the Nixon administration. But Path is right about the PR issues. Nixon was elected to get us out of Vietnam as best we could. He did that. The JFK, LBJ / McNamara mess is still screwing up our defense and politics.
As a personal view I despise the SOB. Enuf said.
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I would be willing to give the late Mr. McNamara a pass on the M16 problem if that was the only poor decision he made.
My problem was that he wanted to fight a war of incremental increases in force in Vietnam. We would only use what he thought was an appropriate response to any increased aggression that the NVA and their proxy the Viet Cong displayed.
This slight changes in force reinforced that the US did not want to win the fight but were just posturing for the Soviets and Chinese.
As early as 1962 the Joint Chiefs had told the SECDEF that if the US wanted to stop aggression in the South it had to stop war materials from arriving in the North from its communist allies. Gen Lemay had said the bombing of ports, and bridges had to be done to close all re-supply of materials. Lemay was vilified as a war monger. In 1972 the Air Force did just that and got the North to the peace table.
McNamara assumed that the North Vietnamese would be unwilling to loose large numbers of their young men. That was never a factor in the minds of the North’s leaders. In fact many Northern families never knew what happened to their sons even after the war ended.
McNamara had a list of the 100 most important targets drawn up and then proceeded to have them attacked in reverse order. He personally was responsible for the ROE for all military troops in SE Asia. You couldn't bomb a SAM site while it was being assembled because you might kill a Russian technician. The next day that same SAM site might kill an air crew. He announced targets before they were to be bombed. He did not allow the Navy to intercept supply ships unloading war materials on docks.
According to his own writing, he wanted to know numbers. How many bullets to kill an enemy soldier, how many sorties per day by the navy, how much oil used in a month. He was a manager of data not a leader of men.
Most damning action of McNamara was that by 1967 he knew fighting the war that way would be a failure and he continued it anyway.
IMHO they should have hung him and Jane Fonda from the same tree.
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The performance of Robert Strange McNamara in his various roles through out life underline the fact that as Sec. Def. He was not just the wrong man for the job, he was the wrong TYPE of man, with the wrong focus, and the wrong temperament for the job.
His experience was as a cost cutting, production increasing bean counter in the manufacturing industry. This did not fit with military reality where the troops need what they need when they need it. Where saving a few pennies per unit does not mean a slightly shorter service life for the unit, it can (and in the case of the M16 did ) mean death for the poor SOB's stuck using it.
Military success is not measured by "production rates" "body counts" or "Kill ratio's " it is measured by the far less tangible willingness of the enemy to continue to resist, and what neither he or any of the other democrats who got us into that war never understood was that based on the historical record of Viet Mihn warfare against the French the only way to break their will to resist would have been to go in with the intention of killing every communist in the region. The willingness to suffer casualties and keep fighting had at times been the only factor that kept the communist struggle alive.
Like Washington, Ho and Giap spent most of both Indo China wars simply trying not to lose.
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Thank you for all who posted. I was just correlating it to history. Going back through history, Ramon Magsaysay, commander of the American forces during the Phillippine-American war 1899-1902(4), was a strategic and political blunder.
12 days after we liberated the Phill., they declared war on the U.S. We had soldiers captured, dying of disease, and ill equipped personnel. Throughout the war. Which we had kind of a cease fire and subsequent treaty.
The Spanish-American War, while victorious, was against a 5th rate European country better 8mm Mausers and smokeless powder. Most U.S. forces had old powder Krag's in .30 cal. that gave away their positions, difficult to reload, and supply lines were a nightmare. General Nelson Miles, was the senior commander, and after the malaria, and dysentery, we lost almost 4000 men. 300 or so to direct combat.
Some labeled SECDEF Cheney as a war monger during Gulf War I, when we stopped in sight of Baghdad. Some still want Rumsfeld to swing from a tree.
Sec. Gates is drawing praise and criticism from both Libs and Cons. for walking the fence. If Afghanistan draws a lot of casualties, his name will come up as being responsible.
IMHO, it's an awful job, mistakes are going to happen when dealing with a bureaucracy that large, and having the "right man" for the job is almost impossible.
I wanted to hear about McNamara from you guys here, as it is more recent, I thank you all for the honest, first hand, take on what his policies were like.
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Sorry about the Nixon snafu - I went back and changed it. I did say I was in a hurry this morning, right? (I also noted the copious typos, for which I will lash myself appropriately!)
What ratcatcher and Tom danced around but didn't come right out and say ( ;D ) was that McNamara ran the war from Washington, and refused to let the field commanders call the tactical shots. McNamara and his minions micro-managed every aspect of the war, including target selection. You may have noticed there was emphasis by Powell during Desert Storm that he was not overriding the decisions of Schwarzkopf and the deputy field commanders. Of course, that doesn't include his getting all pussied about the Highway of Death and stopping the movement on the ground because of the destruction. I guess he forgot that war is hell. But Powell's public emphasis was a direct result of the lessons learned from Nam.
PS: I got kicked from the jury pool cuz of the meds I take and the need to use the john every 30 minutes once I take it. It only took them 5 hours to get to that point, but I made $25!!! Yeah!!
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Sorry about the Nixon snafu - I went back and changed it. I did say I was in a hurry this morning, right? (I also noted the copious typos, for which I will lash myself appropriately!)
What ratcatcher and Tom danced around but didn't come right out and say ( ;D ) was that McNamara ran the war from Washington, and refused to let the field commanders call the tactical shots. McNamara and his minions micro-managed every aspect of the war, including target selection. You may have noticed there was emphasis by Powell during Desert Storm that he was not overriding the decisions of Schwarzkopf and the deputy field commanders. Of course, that doesn't include his getting all pussied about the Highway of Death and stopping the movement on the ground because of the destruction. I guess he forgot that war is hell. But Powell's public emphasis was a direct result of the lessons learned from Nam.
PS: I got kicked from the jury pool cuz of the meds I take and the need to use the john every 30 minutes once I take it. It only took them 5 hours to get to that point, but I made $25!!! Yeah!!
Hey Path, it's $25 more than you had ;D
TWyacht, I don't know where you got your Philippines information but it's all messed up.
First off, Magsaysay had nothing to do with it, he wasn't BORN until 1907, He was the 3rd President of the Philippines and was killed in a plane crash in 1957. He seems to have been the last GOOD pres. they had.
The Philippinos were pissed because we did not grant them instant independence, but the presence of warships from several European powers , ( Including a small German fleet) meant that such an action would have been meaningless.
I don't know that many captured Americans died of disease, although as in any tropical theater of operations in that time it DID sweep through the Army, most captured Americans were butchered with machetes, it was a harsh war that ended when Gen. Fredric Funstan personally infiltrated the headquarters and captured Philippine leader Emilio Aguinaldo and his staff.
The major gripe the public had was the brutality of the methods used to fight it.
As for the Spanish War, first off it was fought against TRAINED troops with years of experience fighting Cuban rebels and bandits armed with modern Mausers, by inexperienced Volunteers and National Guard troops using black powder cartridges, ( The Krag rifle it's self was as modern as the Mauser, just the cartridge was obsolete) The only people with combat experience were senior officers such as General of the Army Nelson Miles, (comparable to todays "Chief of Staff" ) Expidition commander Gen. Shafter, who spent most of the campaign being carried around in a stretcher due to gout and other medical problems, Calvary commander Gen Joe Wheeler, and a few others who served on one side or another of the Civil War. (Wheeler specifically was a CONFEDERATE General) The prime complaint about this was the total lack of preparation, The Cuban invasion was put off for months while uniforms and weapons were procured for the troops who took more far losses to disease in their camps in Tampa than they suffered from any cause in Cuba.
This had no effect on the cheapskates in Congress who insisted on cutting defense budgets so that we entered WWI unprepared, We entered WWII unprepared,in the 6 years between the end of WWII and the Korean war CONGRESS again cut the military back more than dangerously.
As for Cheney and Gates, they served Republican administrations so they would be condemned even if they walked to work across the Potomac. Rumsfeld however WAS a meddler on the lines of McNamara especially in the area of forces assigned.
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Thank you TomB. this is where my point is going, and I appreciate the clarification.
History can be a double edged sword,written by biased people. We have tributes to Teddy Roosevelt at Sam Hill, but mistakes were made along the way that cost lives.
"Remember the Maine" was good for the public morale, but many troops died from faulty arms, equip. lack of planning, "cheapskates", and flat out idiots.
The whole political machine is a problem when the military is involved to do what they do best. No POTUS has just unleashed the military without "strings". The strings have become more "web-like" to this day, starting big time in the days of McNamara.
Politically correct warfare spells failure.
Even the political monster effected Patton, cause he wanted to keep kicking ass, MacArthur also wanted to keep going into the Korean and Vietnamese peninsula in 1945, instead just "faded away".
Politics "f" ed things up. Not the commanders or soldiers that actually had to carry out the orders. THAT in and of itself is the problem.
and IMHO, relating back to history and McNamara, is where it all went wrong...
Thanks again TomB. as you are the consumate historian, good to have the "record" is straight without any bovine scatology...
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R. S. McNamara was the kind of "Intellectual" who can do wonderful things in an academic setting but is incapable of tying his own shoes. He did do some intelligent things, but he did them without understanding how it effected the military systems overall.
One of the things he found when he became the Sec. Def. was that each service had different everything. Shoes, fatigues, planes, band instruments, all kinds of stuff. So he implemented a policy to streamline supply. The services had to have the same basic equipment and use the same vendors. Instead of half a dozen different footwear contracts all the services had to buy and issue the same boots, fine so far.
However, when it came to fighter planes, the Navy, Air Force and Marines all had different requirements. The Navy needed twin-engined fighters that could operate off of carriers and they needed to outclass enemy land-based fighters (better avionics, more power, etc.) and can do multiple jobs because a carrier only has so much space. The Air Force OTOH, uses air-bases so space is not as big a concern, the Air Force wanted cheaper dedicated units (Fighter, ground attack, bombers, interceptors, etc) so they could put more planes in the air. The Marines needed a dedicated ground attack/close support aircraft which had the ability to defend itself because the Marines aircraft are for supporting the ground troops not chasing the other guys around and establishing air superiority. 3 different missions, but McNamara wanted 1 plane, so everybody got the F-4, which was a good aircraft but it was a 'one-size-fits-all' design that didn't anything particularly well. It was a decent fighter, until it ran out of missiles as it had no gun. It did ground attack pretty well, but not as well as a plane designed for it, and it was too fast for really good close support (although many pilots did a yeomans work with it none the less).
McNamara didn't understand the problem and frankly, didn't care. He decided that the US could by thousands of F-4's, make everybody use them and save a fortune but reducing the cost of spare parts and training. he priced the trees and decided that the forest didn't matter.
the M-16 debacle was more of the same plus. The Air Force had a requirement for a new rifle as far back as 1956 (IIRC) for a rifle that had particular characteristics;
1) Effective range of 300meters
2) Flat shooting
3) More accurate than current service weapons
4) Size and weight comparable to the M-1 Carbine
5) Minimal penetration of hard targets
Number 5 was the kicker! The Air Force had learned the lesson from WWII that if the baddies get in amongst your aircraft and equipment your troops can do as much or more trying to defend them damage than the enemy will do trying to destroy them. The Air Force wanted something that would MINIMIZE the damage if rounds struck the aircraft or missiles or radar systems or whatever. The AR-15 and it's .223 Remington ammunition was just the thing for this as the bullets would tend to break up hitting the skin of the planes and the fragments were unlikely to do much damage to the internals. The fact that the AR-15 was known to be less robust than the M-1 or other battle rifles, or that the killing power of the weapon was reduced did not matter much since, at an airbase, armorers, spare parts and bunkers full of ammo are readily available.
McNamara saw the AR-15 at a firepower demonstration at an Air Force base (Lackland?) and thought it was neat. He was a big fan of high-technology and thought that the aluminum and plastic weapon was just that. At the same time the M-14 was having huge problems, it was more expensive than had been estimated, and was proving to be less useful than previously believed (remember it was supposed to replace the M-1, the M-3 submachinegun and the BAR). McNamara had Cyrus Vance (then Sec. Army) do further testing on the AR-15 and instead of telling him it was not what the Army and Marines needed, and exactly why, the brass simply fudged the tests and did everything in their power to fail the weapon, just as they had done in the late '50's. McNamara was tired of the services bucking him and thought that the fight over the AR was just more of the same. In 1963 he shut down Springfield armory and ordered the services to adopt the AR as is.
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cont. . .
McNamara saw everything in terms of numbers and systems, the whys and wherefores didn't matter. The M-16 was a weapon that fired bullets so it must be just like an M-14, the Air Force thought the AR was just what they needed so it must be just what everybody needed.
Likewise, if North Vietnam had 'X' number of troops and we could kill 'Y' then we would win. So all we had to do is figure out how much it would cost us to kill 'Y' and we would know what it took to win. Well, "Men are not potatoes", and systems analysis has little to do with the battlefield. McNamara "Knew" he was smarter than any soldier, and he hired a bunch of "Whizkids" that he "Knew" were just as smart as he was. He laid out his grand plans and pushed for things he didn't understand.
Another example. NASA "Cooperates" with the military and the Air Force has their own launch systems. In the late '60's a group of engineers went to McNamara with a plan. Instead of building rocket motors for space systems to scientific specs (one one millionth of an inch .0000001) they would make them to engineering specs (one thirty seconds of an inch .32). They showed a design for a rocket motor as large as the one on a Saturn 5 but which cost $150,000 (about 1/10th the cost). McNamara threw them out, explaining that the space program was there to impress the world with American technological superiority, not to build some kind of "Space Truck" to put things in orbit cheaply. American space vehicles have suffered from this mentality ever since.
The list of his sins goes on. McNamara was an elitist and an intellectual, he never understood the real world and the real people in it. He got millions killed pursuing his vision of how things "Should" work instead of attempting to find out how things really work. He didn't think he needed to. He never apologized for being wrong, he didn't think he was, it was the rest of the universes fault for not conforming to the ideal he envisioned. In later life he wondered around pontificating and pointing fingers at the rest of the world for his failures and adding insult to the injuries he inflicted.
That is why I hate the bastard.
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He got millions killed pursuing his vision of how things "Should" work instead of attempting to find out how things really work. He didn't think he needed to. He never apologized for being wrong, he didn't think he was, it was the rest of the universes fault for not conforming to the ideal he envisioned. In later life he wondered around pontificating and pointing fingers at the rest of the world for his failures and adding insult to the injuries he inflicted.
That is why I hate the bastard.
Thank you warhawke. The level of effectiveness, over a prolonged conflict, reveals the character of a person, and the span of time
where things went from bad to worse with McNamara shows that.
Hindsight being 20/20, would his own admission of a "total mistake" be worthy of anything? Did he "get it" after it was too late?
Thanks again,
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Thank you TomB. this is where my point is going, and I appreciate the clarification.
History can be a double edged sword,written by biased people. We have tributes to Teddy Roosevelt at Sam Hill, but mistakes were made along the way that cost lives.
"Remember the Maine" was good for the public morale, but many troops died from faulty arms, equip. lack of planning, "cheapskates", and flat out idiots.
The whole political machine is a problem when the military is involved to do what they do best. No POTUS has just unleashed the military without "strings". The strings have become more "web-like" to this day, starting big time in the days of McNamara.
Politically correct warfare spells failure.
Even the political monster effected Patton, cause he wanted to keep kicking ass, MacArthur also wanted to keep going into the Korean and Vietnamese peninsula in 1945, instead just "faded away".
Politics "f" ed things up. Not the commanders or soldiers that actually had to carry out the orders. THAT in and of itself is the problem.
and IMHO, relating back to history and McNamara, is where it all went wrong...
Thanks again TomB. as you are the consumate historian, good to have the "record" is straight without any bovine scatology...
The sad part of it, (except for the Cuban revolutionaries ) Was that the USS Maine was not destroyed by the Spanish or Cubans, but by her own designers and bad luck. Coal under certain circumstances can spontaneously combust, this was well known at the time and there were many documented cases of this happening aboard ships. The designers of the Maine placed an ammo magazine ( Bagged black powder, an explosive, unlike Smokeless powder which just burns really fast) so that it shared a bulkhead (wall) with a coal bunker. Research done since the end of the war, especially in the last couple of decades has proven fairly conclusively that an undetected fire in the coal bunker caused the magazine to blow up.
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Google "mcnamara apologizes" and you'll find out that he did finally apologize for the Vietnam war. I think it wasn't until 1995 but it's better late than never.