Robert McNamara and the fog of war
Monday July 6, 2009
Categories: Ave atque vale, War
The best thing you can do to mark the death of Robert S. McNamara, who passed away today at 93, is to rent Errol Morris's 2003 documentary "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara."...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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McNam is not so fondly remembered by me. He took our M-14s away from us and issued those POS M-16s because, "the Air Force Security looks good with them." I wish he could have been in my hole at Khe Sahn on February 3, 1968 about 3 am. Then he could have seen first hand what POS those toys were. May he rest in piece.
I saw this movie when it first came out.
You aren't at all clear in what you're conclusions are Rod. Did these terrible tactics save lives on both sides or not? Were they "war criminals"?
Academic hubris.
Did these terrible tactics save lives on both sides or not? Were they "war criminals"?
War crimes are war crimes whether or not the war criminal persuades himself that somehow murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians will save even more lives.
There's a decent quality version of the film on Google Video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6733596013688235740&hl=en
Good movie
My roommate had me see it a few years ago.
How does the opinion of a man who was born in 1916 (and who was accordingly 24 years old in 1940), impact on public policy decisions made in WWII?
Fog of War should be seen by all imo.
Regarding the fire bombing of Japan: One argument in its favor is that the civilian population had been militarized. If that is true, then the question of war crimes is a bit more difficult to answer.
But then there's Gemany.
Max - I was thinking of Dresden before I got to the bottom of your post. The fire bombing of Dresden still is controversial and gets to the point more so than the bombing of Japan.
@pb: Academic hubris.
Not quite. McNamara was president of Ford Motor Company before he joined the Kennedy administration.
How does the opinion of a man who was born in 1916 (and who was accordingly 24 years old in 1940), impact on public policy decisions made in WWII?
If I understand it correctly, it was LeMay who called himself a war criminal.
Precisely, freelunch. A man may not choose evil in pursuit of a good.
Of course they were war criminals for firebombing cities, no matter what fantastic claims of civilian militarization were made by Japanese propagandists. As was Truman for ordering the nuclear strikes. It really is that simple.
America may have had just cause to go to war, but she did not limit herself to just means in that war. But what do I know? I'm some looney christian.
It is a good movie. They showed it at the independent theater, Osio Theater, in downtown Monterey, California where I attended the military's Arabic Basic Course. I think the film would mean a lot more to me now, looking back on two years of operational experience in Iraq.
There are published Laws of Land Warfare, the basics of which are taught to every Army recruit, the complexities of which are argued over by JAG lawyers and Lethal Targeting officers in every Brigade Combat Team deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. It's interesting when the law and morality start diverging, isn't it?
I think the relevant question is, should there even be such a thing as war criminals?
Personally I think so, but I've always noticed that it is the losing side that gets prosecuted.
History is written by the victors.
Chris Mills
Robert McNamara was one of the chief architects of an immoral war, one which destroyed a large part of my generation. The worst casualties weren't always on the battleground. So many men my age are permanently and devastatingly emotionally crippled.
Did he know? Should he have known? I have no idea.
But when his generation, the WWII generation, pressured us - forced us, really - to go and fight this war, and get killed in rice paddies so far from home for no good reason that we could see (and, in hindsight, no good reason period) it ignited a generational war which tore down a good deal of the social stability of this society, and opened wounds which have not yet healed, and which may not heal any time soon.
Our parents (the so-called, called by themselves, "greatest generation") did not defend us. They were still back in their imaginations fighting the Evil Nazis, and then Evil Communism. They didn't see it. And we paid the price.
How much of this lies at the door of Robert McNamara? I don't know. Hindsight is always 20/20. The man did a great deal of harm to us and to this society. What did he know? What should he have known? I have no idea.
RIP
I can't tell you guys, our children, what it was like.
The draft forced our men to serve in Vietnam. We all knew what BS it all was. Even in our late teens and early twenties, it was obvious. (So why couldn't our parents see it??) So many came back in body bags; many many more, physically and/or emotionally crippled. For no good reason. For no reason. For nothing. Trying to explain our point of view to the self-defined "greatest generation" was an exercise in futility. You might as well talk to a brick wall.
So, we thought, what about the other "values" of this "generation"? And in some ways we threw the baby out with the bathwater. Sexual license, drug use, you name it. Because our parents had pinned their entire moral authority to something that any child could see was evil. So we wrote them off wholesale. Everything.
Viewed now, in the cool light of maturity, this was a mistake. But come on, you guys, we were like what, 20 years old? Were we supposed to be able to make fine distinctions? Children that age take the world as it is given to them. What were we supposed to do? Say, OK, so send me to a rice paddy so I can be shot and killed, in the service of the Great American Empire (which, by the way, doesn't exist)?
"Greatest generation" my left foot.
If there is an afterlife, there are probably a lot of dead soldiers who have a few things to say to McNamara.
alkali:
Not quite. McNamara was president of Ford Motor Company before he joined the Kennedy administration.
And this has any relevance to his skills (or lack of them) as Secretary of Defense? What is the source of his incompetence?
This, from Bob Herbert's column today:
"The hardest lesson for people in power to accept is that wars are unrelentingly hideous enterprises, that they butcher people without mercy and therefore should be undertaken only when absolutely necessary."
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