“Lessons” of Architect of a Futile War

Robert S. McNamara, probably the most influential (and most controversial) secretary of defense in U.S. history, passed away at the age of 93.

Plenty has already been written about former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and much more will be written now that he is gone. Many commentators will remember him from his disastrous mis-management of Vietnam, some as an outspoken advocate of nuclear disarmament. And some will see McNamara as a tragic figure who “spent the rest of his life wrestling with the war’s moral consequences,” and as someone who “wore the expression of a haunted man.” (NYTimes obituary)

For me he is a quite archetypical Cold Warrior who put his pragmatism at the time in to the contest and acted as he believed was right.

Stephen M. Walt also sees McNamara’s role a little bit differently from the NYTimes obituary, for example:

I see his fate differently. Unlike the American soldiers who fought in Indochina, or the millions of Indochinese who died there, McNamara did not suffer significant hardship as a result of his decisions. He lived a long and comfortable life, and he remained a respected member of the foreign policy establishment. He had no trouble getting his ideas into print, or getting the media to pay attention to his pronouncements. Not much tragedy there.

McNamara may have been a gifted analyst and corporate executive, blessed with a lot of raw smarts, but he was also one of those people who could not imagine being wrong or resist the desire to tell the world what to do. Failure in Vietnam did not teach him humility; he ran the World Bank with same ego-driven sense of infallibility he had brought to the Pentagon (and with predictably mixed results). Yet this second experience with failure did not temper his love of the limelight or his desire to prescribe How Things Should Be Done. He spent the last decades of his life offering high-profile advice on various aspects of nuclear weapons policy — with the same degree of self-assurance he had always displayed — and he sought the spotlight once again with a belated memoir on his role in Vietnam. As always, however, it was filled with “lessons” for others; to the last, McNamara retained an unwarranted confidence in his own ideas as well as an inability to keep quiet.

But as Walt points out, McNamara’s later role in the society raises a broader question about the role of “former officials who have led their country into major disasters. Ordinarily, we should respect the men and women who have devoted years of their lives to public service and listen carefully to the counsel of those who have the benefit of long experience.” Also, someone who is no longer competing for a job in Washington might be more likely to give an honest advice instead of the one that still might face a confirmation hearing.

But in some cases — and a lot of former Bush administration officials come to mind here — the failures are of sufficient gravity as to render all subsequent advice suspect. And when a government official’s repeated errors have left thousands of their fellow citizens dead or grievously wounded, along with hundreds of thousands of other human beings, it would be more seemly for them to remain silent, in mute acknowledgement of their own mistakes. And if they persist in pontificating — as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, and Dick Cheney are now doing — a nation that understood the importance of accountability might have the good sense to pay them the attention and respect they deserve. Which is to say: none.

It might be a good time to really start considering where should the line for accountability been drawn.

Make sure to read McNamara’s great piece from FP – Apocalypse Soon and watch Errol Morris’ superb 2003 documentary, The Fog of War.

Link: Walt on FP