What we can learn from Robert McNamara
McNamara at a Cabinet meeting
Robert McNamara died this week at the age of 93. His family reported that he passed away in his sleep but did not supply a cause of death.
McNamara served as one of the principle architects of US involvement in Vietnam as the Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy and President Johnson. His years as a public leader during some of the most tumultuous years in the history of the United States make his legacy worth examination. A documentary on the former Defense Secretary’s life makes it easy by revealing what he saw as the most important lessons to be gleaned from his experience.
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, directed by Errol Morris, was released in 2003. In 2004 it won an Oscar for the Best Documentary Feature. It includes clips from a lengthy interview with McNamara when he was 85 about his childhood, the time he spent working at Ford and the various crises he dealt with as Defense Secretary. The film also includes recorded phone conversations between McNamara and the two presidents he served under.
As the title suggests, the film is divided into 11 lessons. “My rule has to been try to learn, try to understand what happened,” McNamara said in the opening scenes. “Develop the lessons and pass them on.”
McNamara’s critics frequently call him cold and arrogant, an “IBM-machine with legs,” but in this film he shows surprising sensitivity and a willingness to admit his mistakes. In one lesson entitled “Belief and seeing are both often wrong” McNamara acknowledges that one of the two alleged attacks by North Korean submarines in early August 1964 that prompted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution didn’t actually occur. In another lesson, “Proportionality should be a guideline in war,” he freely admits that during World War II his role in justifying the use of incendiary bombs, which killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in a single night, would have brought him before a war crimes tribunal had the Allies lost.
In addition to providing new insight into McNamara and his role in foreign policy during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, this film offers valuable advice on contemporary issues, especially the proliferation of nuclear weapons. As he discussed the Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara ascribed the successful negotiations to luck. He emphasized that even in a rational world nuclear weapons pose a huge threat, saying that “The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.”
Since he assumed the presidency, Obama has been a vocal supporter of nuclear arms reduction, even going so far as to publicly state that his long-term goal is the destruction of all nuclear weapons. This Monday, the same day McNamara’s death was reported, Obama concluded talks with Russia to reduce nuclear warhead arsenals. McNamara would have been proud.
“I think the human race needs to think more about killing, about conflict,” McNamara reflected in the film. “Is that what we want in this 21st century?” This message of peace, coming from one of the central architects of the Vietnam War, presents a profound irony. When the leaders of today look back on the wars they waged in Afghanistan and Iraq, will they too regret the decisions that led them to war?
