Robert McNamara and America's Tragic Memory Loss
Robert McNamara died today at age 93. As Secretary of Defense for Presidents John F. Kennedy and more notably Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s, it was McNamara who oversaw America's tragic military buildup in Vietnam.
He was a man with great intelligence that didn't prevent him from executing a plan that led to the unnecessary slaughter -- for reasons that remain hard to fully comprehend -- of tens of thousands of Americans and many more Vietnamese.
In Iraq, as in Vietnam, our policy-makers knew nothing or cared little about the long history and convoluted ethnic and religious politics of Mesopotamia's Fertile Crescent. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, there was no plan for the proper military follow-up to a period of "shock and awe" bombing. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we totally misjudged the "nationalism" of the people who lived there and how they would react to a long American occupation. And perhaps most importantly, In Iraq, as in Vietnam, there was no real "public debate" as we marched headlong and foolishly into 2003 -- with way too many "unexamined assumptions," "unasked questions," and "readily dismissed alternatives."
Pull the covers a little tighter, Rumsfeld.
1 comment:
Its sad that he only realized late in life that his power to do damage was truly frightening. I watch the documentary FOG OF WAR and see a man with a broken heart who would go back and change his contributions to the world if he could. Its a lesson to anyone in power. I hope he is finally at peace. He was a person created by the times he lived in. How strange that I feel that way today?
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