William Rivers Pitt: McNamara's Ghost

Any military commander who is honest with himself, or with those he's speaking to, will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power. He's killed people unnecessarily - his own troops or other troops - through mistakes, through errors of judgment. A hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand. But, he hasn't destroyed nations. And the conventional wisdom is don't make the same mistake twice, learn from your mistakes. And we all do. Maybe we make the same mistake three times, but hopefully not four or five.

- Robert S. McNamara

One of the last knights of Camelot, of the New Frontier, is gone. Robert S. McNamara, secretary of defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, former president of Ford Motor Co. and the World Bank, husband, father and chief architect of America's catastrophic war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, passed away at home after years of declining health. He was 93.

"Mr. McNamara is best remembered and in some quarters still reviled for the seven years he spent at the Pentagon and the part he played in waging the Vietnam War," read McNamara's obituary in the Boston Globe. "In 1995, he published his memoir, 'In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,' in which he wrote that he and other top officials were 'terribly wrong' to pursue the war. The controversy that erupted demonstrated the extent to which the nation's scars remained unhealed. Others can also be assigned responsibility for escalating the US role in the conflict during that time: Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. To many, though, it was 'McNamara's war,' as US Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon once put it."

The timing of his passing saw McNamara join a motley crew of notables and celebrities who have shuffled loose the mortal coil in the last two weeks. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Steve McNair; each of these luminaries got a share of media coverage - some more than others, of course - and McNamara was no different. Every major newspaper in America treated the death of McNamara as front-page news, and the only reason his passing was not part of the rotation on the cable networks on Tuesday was because they were very slowly burying Michael Jackson in Los Angeles.

Some other people also died in the last two weeks. Two International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on July 1. Three members of a family were killed by rocket fire on the same day. Two British soldiers and one American soldier were killed in Afghanistan on July 2. Another American soldier was captured. A Canadian soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on July 3. Two American soldiers were killed on the Fourth of July. A US Marine and three UK troops were killed in Afghanistan on July 5. Seven US troops were killed in Afghanistan on July 6. In the last two days, five Iraqi policemen and two Iraqi soldiers were killed in Baghdad. Five more policemen were killed in Mosul. Thirty-eight Coalition troops were killed in June in Afghanistan, and 19 have been killed in the first week of July. In Afghanistan, 1,220 Coalition troops have died since 2001. Fifteen US troops were killed in June in Iraq, and 4,321 have died since 2003.

None of these people got the same kind of ink as McMahon, Fawcett, Jackson, Mays, McNair or McNamara, but they are just as dead. The passing of McNamara and the deaths of all those soldiers belong in the same column, because they are all part of the same long, sad, blood-soaked story.

Vietnam was an exercise in hubris, deception and profiteering that McNamara spent the latter half of his life trying to justify, live down and explain away. The soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan would recognize Robert McNamara, for they were consigned to the grave by McNamara's modern replacements. Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rove, Libby and the other Bush administration officials who ginned up two wars and made abject debacles of both are the modern inheritors of McNamara's curse. As are the soldiers and civilians who have been chewed up and annihilated. As are we all.

Robert McNamara taught us all we needed to know about the folly of war, about aftermath and about regret. Nobody listened, nobody learned, except for the dead.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.

ENDS

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