McNamara’s war

July 7, 2009

ROBERT MCNAMARA had a life of ambitions achieved and, in his last phase, of service to humanity. But like one of the figures in Dante’s Inferno, he is fated to be remembered as an allegorical figure repeating over and over the tragic action that defined his life.

McNamara died yesterday at 93. No matter how many poor people he helped feed during his 13 years at the helm of the World Bank, and regardless of his efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation ever since, McNamara will forever be the officious defense secretary delivering a briefing crammed with statistics to show that American firepower was winning the Vietnam War.

About 58,000 Americans and as many as 5 million Vietnamese died in that war. And McNamara knew by 1967 that his beloved statistics were lying. But the can-do mentality that he absorbed at the Harvard Business School and perfected as president of the Ford Motor Co. went to poor use: He could not bring himself to tell President Lyndon Johnson the war was unwinnable. Instead, McNamara told Johnson only what he wanted to hear.

That period showed Americans how misguided, even immoral policies perpetuate themselves through inertia - and with the help of courtiers who tune out anything that could harm their careers. In McNamara’s time, he did not want to know that body counts meant little to North Vietnam’s leaders; that the theory of Asian nations falling to communism like toppling dominoes was utterly wrong; and that Vietnam would never be yoked to its historical foe, China.

There have been all too many other McNamaras before and since. His vigorous defense of the war should be a warning to every ambitious presidential adviser.