the citizen-viewer

Robert S. McNamara: 1916 - 2009

Robert McNamara was the architect of a policy that directly killed many hundreds of thousands of human beings, and led to the deaths of millions more. Late in life he tried to resuscitate his image, saying that he and the other principals in the American war in Vietnam were wrong.

Not wrong in the sense of immoral or criminal, but in the sense of erroneous. In 1995 account, In Retrospect, one reads his account of error after error—erring always in the same direction: more war, more killing. To his credit, he didn’t apologize. To his discredit, he did not admit error at the time, but only error in hindsight, accompanied by a multitude of reasons those errors had been unavoidable. After all, the smartest man in the world can’t really make errors. He can, however, look back and realize that a different course of action would have been better.

It’s a work of extraordinary narcissism. McNamara at once took credit for realizing this grand mistake early, and therefore resigning (with a push) as Defense Secretary. However, he wrote, he felt it would have been improper for him as ex-Secretary to criticize the policy, even when he knew was wrong. While he kept his silence for sake of propriety, human beings continued to be slaughtered, bombed, poisoned, and sent to their deaths by the tens and hundreds of thousands.

Had he spoken out, perhaps it would have done nothing to end that war sooner. Perhaps it would have done nothing to prevent more recent wars, wars that like the American war in Vietnam were built on lies and sustained on false promises. He should have done it anyway.

Robert McNamara, your admissions were far too little and far too late. And far too self-serving.