The Washington Post reports: "Robert Strange McNamara, the former secretary of defense whose record as a leading executive of industry and a chieftain of foreign financial aid was all but erased from public memory by his reputation as the primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, died early this morning at age 93."
If you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". Here's an excerpt from Roger Ebert's review of the film:
The effect of "The Fog of War" is to impress upon us the frailty and uncertainty of our leaders. They are sometimes so certain of actions that do not deserve such certitude. The farce of the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction is no less complete than the confusion in the Kennedy White House over whether there were really nuclear warheads in Cuba.So true.
Some commentators on the film, notably Kaplan in his informative Slate essay, question McNamara's facts. What cannot be questioned is his ability to question them himself. At 85, he knows what he knows, and what he does not know, and what cannot be known. Lesson No. 11: "You can't change human nature."
By the way, CNN reports that "Though the increasingly unpopular conflict was sometimes dubbed 'McNamara's War,' he later said both administrations were 'terribly wrong' to have pursued military action beyond 1963."
P.S. Also, definitely read David Halberstam's classic, "The Best and the Brightest", which the Boston Globe called "[t]he most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam."
