Comments on: Robert McNamara – R.I.P.

By: dirigo

dirigo — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:04:53 +0000

Another footnote …

http://www.truthout.org/070709R

By: dirigo

dirigo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:31:17 +0000

Quite right, it wasn’t a free choice …

By: dirigo

dirigo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:30:13 +0000

More on the Tonkin Gulf incident and McNamara’s role in it …

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/08/robert-mcnamara-deceived-lbj-on-gulf-of-tonkin/

By: William Timberman

William Timberman — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:47:47 +0000

Dirigo, thanks. I got the message, but it seems we've exceeded the Hag's default reply-to indent limits, so I'll stick my acknowledgment down here. I wasn't trying to be so precise. What I meant was something more like: when they sent you, you went. As opposed to not going. Both were choices, but neither were exactly what I'd call a free choice, in that there were penalties either way which, in a saner society, wouldn't have applied.

By: Karen M

Karen M — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:40:19 +0000

I keep coming across more opinions on McNamara… this one from Robert Scheer (formerly of the LA Times), now of TruthDig.com.

Somehow, his Irish DNA seems not to have taken hold; perhaps it was too much time working for Ford, but in general, being Irish means taking the side of the underdog. Maybe his family was Protestant when in Ireland, though. That might have made a difference.

By: dirigo

dirigo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:18:44 +0000

This can sound far-fetched, or over the top, or just plain nutty to pragmatic Americans who, like McNamara, are “results-oriented” and “goal-driven,” or whatever.

But in my time trying to make sense of my service in Vietnam (mostly during the immediate period of the “homecoming”), there were, here and there, some moments when I felt that we, all of us, were hurtling through a rip in the universe; and that one group of people who didn’t grasp what was going on were the political leaders and their acolytes who set it motion.

Sounds a bit hippie-ish I know (I watched Star Trek, in black and white, in transmissions from the AFN in Saigon), but that’s what it felt like at certain high moments. You had to be there …

Led by McNamara, the pied piper, these people thought they controlled the carnage they had set loose.

Not so …

By: Karen M

Karen M — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:56:21 +0000

And I just learned that McNamara's son (who goes by the name of Craig, having dropped the first name, Robert) protested the Vietnam War.

By: Karen M

Karen M — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:20:18 +0000

I finally read the Galloway piece at McClatchy. Wow!

By: Karen M

Karen M — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:35:06 +0000

The contrast in his opening… the young men that McNamara sent off to war, so many of whom died too young or were scarred for life… and yet, McNamara lived to a ripe old age of 93.

My grandmother lived to be 93. She was a useful, cheerful, and service-oriented person…

Reading Will Bunch’s piece I could only think that after living for years with the knowledge of what he’d done, McNamara’s real tragedy was in not speaking out before the Iraq Invasion. Apparently, he didn’t learn any lessons either.

The Daily Beast article makes me think that perhaps spread sheets have done as much damage to the world as the internal combustion engine, if it’s true that McNamara was as much accountant as architect.

By: dirigo

dirigo — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:19:40 +0000

Trying to get this to Timberman, as a clarification.

I did not choose to go to Vietnam. I signed a contract with the Air Force in May 1966, within a month of receiving a draft notice. The Air Force sent me to Vietnam the next year.

Can’t speak for bop …