WASHINGTON (AFP) — Robert McNamara, who served as defense secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and was one of the top architects of the US war in Vietnam, died Monday, the Washington Post said. He was 93.
The deeply controversial McNamara, who served as head of the World Bank after stepping down from his Pentagon post at the height of the Vietnam war, died in his sleep at home in Washington, the daily reported, citing family members.
They did not give a cause of death, according to the Post.
McNamara oversaw the escalation of US war efforts in Vietnam from 1961 to 1968. He was also an early advocate of counter-insurgency operations, a key architect of Cold War nuclear policy, and an early pioneer of systems analysis in which he applied scientific and operations research to military planning, corporate operations and international finance.
He also had a brief but storied career as an executive at Ford, where as one of the automaker’s “Whiz Kids” he rose rapidly through the ranks, in 1960 becoming its first president outside the Ford family and transforming it into a post-World War II powerhouse.
Like Lucy…he has some ‘splainin’ to do.
While we can’t blame all the mistakes of Vietnam on Robert McNamara, his incompetent micromanagement is clearly the cause of a tremendous amount those mistakes. So many lives…
I liked Billy Mays better.
Hey, McNamera was a good LIBERAL, a “do gooder” who only managed to preside over the murder of 58,000 Americans…hardly in FDR’s or Wilson’s league, but, hey, the Democrats will take what they can get.
If there were a God, Robert McNamara would be in big trouble now.
#34 There isn’t.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_toll
Some have mentioned “Fog of War.” Good flick, turns out it is on Google Video in the full version. Worth watching.
There’s one part when he says that if we’d lost WWII he and the US military leaders would have been tried as war criminals.
He also said that he couldn’t remember if he’d signed off on using Agent Orange. This didn’t strike me as believable. The use of defoliants was an issue with anti-war protesters. It’s not like this became an issue later, long after the war. DuPont was the Haliburton of Vietnam. He’d remember.
He put himself up as partially responsible for fire bombing Japanese cities in WWII, but he left the room auspiciously when it came to Agent Orange. Everyone has limits to admitting culpability I guess.
Nam, like Korea were two conflicts of MANY that the US made for their own selfish interests. Blaming any one man is worthless. They and all of you around as adults that voted for these idiots are responsible.
The ONLY two wars we had any business fighting since becoming a nation was 1812 and WWII.
Cursor_
# 37 Cursor_ said, “The ONLY two wars we had any business fighting since becoming a nation was 1812 and WWII.”
Basically, this is true.