Robert McNamara Dies. Question for the forum.

[twyacht]

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.

[Badgersmilk]

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.

[Pathfinder]

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 . . .

[Bill Stryker]

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.

[ratcatcher55]

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.

[Sponsor]

[tombogan03884]

 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.

[twyacht]

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.

 

[Pathfinder]

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 (  ) 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!!

[tombogan03884]

 

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 (  ) 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 

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.

[twyacht]

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...