The former President of Ford Motor Company, US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War and President of the World Bank, is dead. He would seem to have been one inspiration for Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" (1963). Fittingly, I suppose, McNamara was born during the First World War and died during Iraq and Afghanistan.
From an early "Erik's Choice" essay (March 10, 2006):
Which brings me to The Fog of War, an excellent documentary released in 2003, centering around Robert S. McNamara, a man spookily like Donald Rumsfeld, our current Secretary of Defense.*
During the course of the film, McNamara ruminates on the excesses of past American policies and practices. Heavily involved during World War Two, McNamara assisted in the planning and evaluation of the air campaigns against Germany and Japan. With a haunting Philip Glass soundtrack overlaying his reminiscences, he recounts 68 bombings and firebombings of Japanese cities followed by the two even more horrific atomic bombings. He bluntly acknowledges that had the United States lost, he and his fellow planners would have been executed as war criminals. This is not to exculpate the Japanese policy makers (they were entirely brutal, as well), but the mass murder of Japanese civilians was one more great crime against humanity.
Lives squandered, cities in ruins. And for me, as with the Iraq War, it's personal. My friend Yoko Akiba of Hiroshima became sickly from that horrible day on, eventually dying of cancer in her fifties. An innocent little girl in 1945, she suffered the horrors of war for the rest of her life. Even her children paid -- born with severe complications, they, too, were casualties of the same war. Where McNamara really seems like Rumsfeld is during his term as Secretary of Defense during Vietnam. The same creepily calculated decision-making, the same deluded optimism, the same attitude toward the press and protesters. Now, just as then, we hear rosy predictions about a bright light at the end of the tunnel, about standing down as our proxies stand up. McNamara admits that, in retrospect, the anti-war protesters were right; American policy makers had been blinded by hubris.
*McNamara resigned in 1968 during the Tet Offensive; Rumsfeld resigned in November 2006 and left office in December, during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Today's Rune: Possessions.
4 comments:
At least McNamara had the good sense-- and conscience-- to realize that he'd made horrific mistakes. God rest his soul. Rumsfeld is still strutting around like a cock of the walk, unperterbed by any self-doubt brought on by the thousands of deaths and dismemberments his actions have brought on.
McNamara and Rumsfeld sure do seem like peas in a pod.
There is a little more to the story of his tenure during Viet Nam a little bit about him being lied to as far as objectives by TWO (JFK/LBJ)administrations about the objectives of that war (containment not escalation).
While not a fan particularly of his I am willing to know all of it.
He quit because LBJ bombed the north in retaliation for TET, after LBJ said he would not do it. Mac was honorable, much more so than fucking rumsfeld who still will go to the grave not knowing the meaning of the term.
As usual, Erik, thanks for the edjewmacation!!! You get to the point, and I need that!
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