Robert McNamara

Robert McNamara, who died at 93 last week, was best known first for being one of the "best and brightest" that President Kennedy brought into the top echelons of the US Government in 1961. Later, he would be blamed as Secretary of Defense for the architect of the US build up culminating in the debacle of the Vietnam War. Although to be fair he has had 3 world class careers, first as one of the young Harvard educated managers who turned around Ford Motors in the 1950s which culminated in him being named President of Ford Motors, before he would join the Cabinet as Secretary of Defense and before he was removed by President Johnson to be the head of the World Bank for 13 years until 1981. At Defense, his legacy included racially desegregating the armed forces and sending troops to enforce the ruling in Brown vs Board of Education. He also introduced modern management structures as he struggled to control a "military industrial complex" that at that height of the Cold War consumed half the US Federal Budget and employed 3.5 million people. But he would live the rest of his life having his considerable achievements in life overshadowed by this disastrous legacy of US build up in Vietnam. I do not claim to be knowledgeable about him except in the outline. But in the mass of obituaries that emerged last week, I was presented with a man who was a clear and honest thinker. He was removed as Secretary of Defense after sending President Johnson a missive in which he concluded that the US was wrong about the war and that the US cannot win and should change course and aim for a negotiated exit. I find such clear headed acknowledgment of one's own mistakes highly impressive. Equally telling was his observations during WW2 when he was using his study into statistical methods in helping to plan US bombings on Japan; when after estimating to the general in-charge of the US bombers that the bombing in Tokyo killed 100,000 civilians and 900,000 Japanese civilians in total, he was reported to have told the general that, "you know, if we lose we will all be war criminals", to which the general quietly and grimly agreed. He struggled long and hard with question of what made something moral if one wins and criminally immoral if one loses. It was a question that he continued to struggle with even when first President Kennedy, and later, President Johnson escalated US fighting in Vietnam. After his removal, the Vietnam war escalated even more and continued for 6 more years at twice as many casualties as the first 5 years.