Robert S. McNamara's In Retrospect

...Unchallenged assumptions...

...And reading a compact version of this story told by one of the chief architects of the policy is a very different experience...

...5— FALL • 1995 • 551 Books about misplaced faith in technology, and No...

...and a tendency to make decisions secretively after brushing aside questioning and deviating arguments (such as those presented by McNamara in two agonizing memos in 1967)—this was the "process" set up by the "best and the brightest...

...His change of mind on nuclear weapons—from the decision to build a thousand land-based missiles in 1961 to his later crusade about the military futility of these weapons, summarized in an appendix here—was something he could communicate reasonably early, since after 1945 nuclear weapons had never been used, and it made, in his view, essential sense to plead against any temptation to expand and use these arsenals in the future (indeed one of the most horrifying stories in this book is that of the many suggestions made, often in veiled words, by the military, and even McGeorge Bundy, to threaten to use nuclear weapons against Hanoi...

...Moreover, what gave aid and comfort to the enemy was an American policy that played into Hanoi's hands and was incapable of "saving" the South...

...The search-and-destroy strategy in the South, made possible by the huge deployments requested by the military, and then used to justify incessant demands for more troops—a strategy that McNamara accepted far too long—ravaged the very country we were supposed to "save...

...On the one hand, McNamara's cult of objectivity—which used to take the form of a fondness for mathematical 550 • DISSENT Books certainties and quantitative indices whose shortcomings he now recognizes—his reluctance to splash his feelings on the pages (a kind of pudeur that conceals, I think, a genuine fund of emotions and feelings) may put off some readers who expected something more personal...

...The public storm that followed the publication of the book was caused almost exclusively by the second and third questions—one of which (the last) he never addresses in print, and one of which he discusses in less than a page...

...Many years ago, James Thompson, a former aide of McGeorge Bundy, wrote in the Atlantic a brilliant article about the failure of so many American officials to resign on matters of principle, and to explain why...

...the very weakness of the country forced the United States to take over its fate to such an extent that it behaved like a colonizer and thus undermined the very causeselfdetermination—that it was supposed to uphold...

...Robert McNamara's "insider account of Vietnam policy-making," as the book jacket calls it, raises three issues...

...a constant tendency to avoid a rigorous evaluation of the costs and benefits of alternative policies...

...unresolved conflicts among the decision makers...

...He compares the concentrated and intense deliberations of the Kennedy administration during the Cuban missile crisis with the lack of anything comparable throughout the long years of the Vietnam war during which he was a key player...

...Most memoirs are self-serving: they either celebrate the author's feats or they are apologies for his mistakes...

...McNamara thought that this enormous expeditionary corps would at least incite Hanoi to negotiate...

...South Vietnam could not put together a stable and legitimate government capable of mobilizing energies for its defense...

...My one criticism would be that he should, in some part of the book, have done a more systematic job of putting together not just the lessons of Vietnam but the assumptions, often implicit, that pushed the political and military leaders into a bloody quagmire: the laughable conviction that Vietnam was a quasi-puppet of "Peiping" and that what was at stake was the containment of Red China's strategy of national liberation wars...

...un-thoughtthrough proposals...

...10—"we failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions...

...We can, however, not give him credit for having stayed as long as he did, and for moving (or being moved) to the World Bank in early 1968 without a public word of protest against the war, or of warning about its future...

...McNamara's are an unrelenting exercise at pointing out the magnitude of the mistakes, their disastrous effects, their cumulative weight...

...On this point, the education of McNamara remains incomplete...

...Not only did this not work, but he shows how messed up—largely by Lyndon Johnson's reluctance to suspend bombings of the North and by continuing failure to think through the concessions a genuine negotiation would have required— all the attempts at a diplomatic solution were...

...These lessons provide the essence of what could be called the tragic, gradual education of McNamara and, indeed, of many Americans, insofar as the young business leader who became Secretary of Defense in 1961 displayed so many typical American strengths and flaws...

...My own guess it that the real reason is far less political and far more psychological: that for may years this troubled and contradictory man, so eager for certainty, and always, at any moment, so sure of himself, could simply not bring himself to put all of this on paper...

...This leaves us with the last issue: why did it take McNamara so long to write this book...

...A critique of the war by one 552 • DISSENT Books of its architects would have been far more useful to the American people than helpful to Ho chi Minh...

...It is precisely because McNamara tries so hard to be fair (especially to LBJ) that his book is so devastating: nobody comes out well—and he makes no effort to spare himself...

...The eleven lessons that McNamara draws at the end are only too sound—and relevant to the present and the future: especially precepts No...

...Moreover, the way in which the war was fought made no sense: the bombings of the North, as McNamara rapidly discovered, did very little to reduce Hanoi's capacity to wage war and hardened its determination...

...We must give him credit for this: it is a rare event...

...To repeat what he says, even in summary form, is really not necessary for readers of Dissent...

...McNamara is particularly good at showing another often incredible messiness: that of what is pompously called the decision-making process...

...His brief defense, on page 314—that to challenge the policy "would have been a violation of my responsibility to the President and my oath to uphold the Constitution"— is wrong, terribly wrong...

...The ultimate responsibility of a public official is to his or her country—and indeed, when one's country's behavior is criminal, to humanity...

...Nevertheless, McNamara's contribution is enormous...

...The third is why it took him so long to unburden his conscience and to tell the story...

...Not everyone has the time or the need to go through the seven thousand pages that Daniel Ellsberg, in 1971, leaked to the New York Times...

...But it is the first that is the subject of this memoir, and even those who have taken McNamara to task for his stand on resignation and his long silence ought to recognize that, however late, he has performed a very great service to his country in writing this devastating, candid, and searching report...

...incremental escalations that invariably led to more, and more ineffective, additions...

...4—"our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture and politics of the people in the area, and personality and habits of their leaders," No...

...the belief that the loss of South Vietnam would have catastrophic effects not only in the area (the famous domino theory) but all over the world (as if America's credibility was better served by a demonstration of brutal ineptitude...

...Of course, it has its limits...

...One is the way in which vital decisions were made, the reasons why the men who made them were "wrong, terribly wrong," and the lessons we should draw from these catastrophic errors...

...Let us admit this, as the French would say—however, this argument expired in 1975, when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese...

...and, in Johnson's case, a determination to keep from the public the reality (and the financial costs) of a major war...

...the arrogant "can-doism" displayed by practically all the elites, from ex-President Eisenhower to the so-called wise men whose advice was so frequently lamentable...

...Those who, thirty or twenty-five years ago, opposed the war (and especially those critics who did not believe that America's policy-makers were moved by evil intentions, who thought that they were, so to speak, objectively rather than subjectively evil, and who did not see the Vietnamese Communists as shining knights, however heroic their fight for national unity) will find the book a documented confirmation of their sharpest accusations...

...Rather than berating him for his limitations and delays, I would congratulate him on having overcome his inhibitions and written a convincing, lucid, and deeply honest book...

...These are two very important issues, to which I will return...

...In talk shows and debates across the country, he has given—again—unconvincing excuses: to have written this earlier would have brought "aid and comfort to the enemy...

...The article remains as compelling now as it was then...

...But McNamara's change of mind and of heart about Vietnam was much harder to cope with: more than fifteen thousand Americans and hundreds of thousands ofVietnamese were killed while he was in power, and it must have been sheer agony for this proud and constricted man to put his pain on paper...

...It is hard to believe that a principled and, so to speak, didactic resignation would not have shaken the policy and the assumptions on which it was based...

...frequent shifts in position among the principals (including George Ball, the main dissenter...

...a refusal to level with Congress and the people (so as to protect his domestic priorities...

...The second is why a tormented, earnest secretary of defense did not resign in protest against a policy whose dreadful effects he had gradually comprehended...

...On the other hand, much of what he tells us had been revealed by the Pentagon papers, whose collection he ordered before leaving his post, and most of his conclusions had already been reached by the man whom he had put in charge of the Pentagon papers, Leslie Gelb, in a famous article that he later turned into a book with the help ofAnthony Lake...

...I, for one, will not blame him for this...