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Summary: An amazing feat of self-reflection.
Review: This book provides riveting insight into the crucial and excruciating decisions that determined U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. It not only provides a good overview of the war for people unfamiliar with it, but detailed explanations of critical junctures and how those decisions impacted the war's outcome. But the most amazing part of this book is how level and even-handed it is. Reflection usually provides someone ample opportunity to exaggerate, point fingers, exonerate oneself, etc. Robert McNamara rarely indulges in any of these. He is capable of writing not once but many times, the plain, devastating sentence which is almost unseen in this modern age: "We were wrong."
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Summary: Enlightening Reading
Review: This was a good read. I especially liked McNamara's reconstruction of the cabinet meetings (with Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy) that led up to our involvement in Vietnam: it really showed the ambivalence and confusion these two presidents had about our involvement in Vietnam. Also helpful was the way McNamara presented the real-life difficulties of trying to get disentangled from the mess he had helped create. I'd recommend this book to anybody who wants the other side of the story of our involvement in Vietnam (it certainly was not as black and white as I once thought it was). McNamara deserves a lot of credit for writing such an honest portrayal. Also interesting for any reader will be McNamara's reconstruction of the cast of characters involved in the major decision making (Kennedy, Johnson, George Ball, etc). I recommend this book and the edited version of The Pentagon Papers (which McNamara commissioned). This latter book really puts you inside the White House during the 1960s.
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Summary: A confession and an apology?
Review: Was it guilt that drove McNamera to write this or the selfish desire to dilute his share of the blame in the Vietnam debacle? Despite his claim to the contrary in the preface, I think it was mostly the latter. I don't think his arrogance would allow him to do any less. While many are guilty of arrogance, McNamera's indirectly led to the deaths of thousands.While an extremely intelligent man, he had no business deciding defense or foreign policy issues. He should have stayed in the business world and now be writing commentaries on operations and organizational management. Maybe as a secretary of defense to Kennedy, he may have provided some value, since Kennedy was astute in world affairs and maybe McNamera provided some balance; but as a secretary to LBJ, it was the blind leading the blind and a prescription for disaster. One interesting comment in the book is the assertion that JFK would have never allowed the Vietnam fiasco to happen. I cautiously agree to some extent, and not because I fall prey to the mythic JFK legend, but because foreign policy was his forte, while domestic policy was LBJ's. JFK was an independent thinker in this arena, and he would have led McNamera, Bundy, et al., rather then been influenced by them. (BTW, Alan Schwartz has a new, different take on LBJ's foreign policy prowess in "LBJ and Europe"). To his credit, McNamera does not shift blame, just dilutes it. For a more telling version of this whole mess, read McMasters' "Dereliction of Duty". Many think McNamera guilty of war crimes, and while I think that is excessive, I certainly do not think he deserved the Medal of Freedom or the privilege of profiting from his "memoirs". He has a few new books out -- I think I will pass.
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Summary: HE CRIED WHEN HE GOT THE MEDAL OF FREEDOM
Review: Watch the documentary "Fog of War" about McNamara. Watch closely the footage of him receiving the medal of freedom from LBJ. The core of his personality is revealed. What does an arrogant obsessive-compulsive narcissist do when the brutal reality of his own massive mistakes finally gets makes it through his elephant-thick hide? And how do you penetrate the skin of someone who candidly admits that he makes mistakes but quickly says, "But I won't tell you which ones"? What finally was able to get through to him was that Quaker protestor who immolated himself below McNamara's office window. It took something that intense for him to really start to GET IT; for him to be able to see just how badly he had screwed up. And that experience I believe triggered in him the kind of depression you see in a narcissist -- the self-absorbing, self-pitying type -- which was manifested by his nervous breakdown (you know you had one, Robert, ADMIT IT!), his consequent need to leave office, and his tearing up when given the medal of freedom. LBJ weren't no dummy. He gave him the medal because he knew people. Two things about McNamara -- he worships those with more authority than himself and (its counterpart) he fears criticizing those same authority figures. LBJ sensed this and knew that medal would be a salve for McNamara that would ensure his continued silence about the administration's mistakes in Vietnam, and he was right on target. So why did McNamara never speak out against the war after he left office (his most serious mistake in my opinion)? Because the good little authority-worshipping boy scout bean counter had his shiny new medal to kiss goodnight every time he suffered one of those annoying pangs of conscience. When the rash of new books critical of him began to make more noise than he could offset by getting out and holding his prized little medal, he decided to write his own self-serving books to convince others of the same self-deception he has used on himself all these years. But he does not know himself in the least. His narcissism (and its hand-maiden, intellectualization) is so massive that he will never be able to penetate it. He will die clueless. But he can rest assured that history will shed more and more light on his true self as time wears on. One thing I will say in his favor is that he does appear to have a conscience. This sets him apart from one other infamous figure in history that had the same kind of cold, bureacratic, methodical approach to state efficiency as McNamara -- STALIN! Unlike Stalin, McNamara was not a psychopath. And so McNamara is not a war criminal (at least in my opinion). What is he then? Just someone who is as big a brain as he is as big a jackass -- the kind of guy whose ass you would pay to kick.
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Summary: ARE YOU READING THIS REVIEW, MR. MCNARAMA?
Review: Within the first day of posting my previous review, I got one vote of unhelpful feedback. That's OK, it's a free country (so far). But then I got to wondering whether it might be from Mr. McNamara himself? Such a compulsive narcissist would probably check Amazon reviews on the books he had published on a daily basis I bet. So I thought I would drop one more insight in his direction, on the off-beat chance that I was right... Mr. McNamara, remember in "Fog of War" how incredulous you were when the other staff member actually had the gall, the GALL, to tell JFK that he thought he was mistaken? You were thinking to yourself, "Whew, boy, I know I'd never do that to Jack!" That shows exactly where you are coming from in your worshipping of authority figures and your consequent fear of criticizing them. Well, that comment from that staff member proved critical to the safe and successful resolution of the missile crisis. And a similar comment (or rather, series of discussions) between you and LBJ could have similarly avoided catastrophe in Vietnam, but you just couldn't bring yourself to challenge him could you? Yet LBJ was a pliable politician who often didn't not know how he felt about something until he had taken in all sides of it from his advisors (a la Truman), so you were in a PERFECT position to influence the course of history. You yourself even admitted to your misgivings WHILE IT WAS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL but you just couldn't clash with your beloved scoutmaster could you, you devoted little eagle scout? Then again, you said you almost came to blows with the ex-North Vietnam leader who asked you if you had ever read any history, which indicates that you really might have been clueless about the deep issues regarding Vietnam until the 1990s. If that is the case, then you are merely ignorant of data from the human plane of history (a little to cozy with your slide-ruler?). Either way, what a tragic, tragic, tragic shame that such a horrible war was essentially waged by a bean counter like yourself, who had neither the backbone to stand up to his boss when his boss was soliciting his candid opinion, nor the humanitarian sophistication to comprehend how another culture would view US aggression on their own soil. [If I cared more I would investigate the details relating to your oblique reference to your prosecution of the war perhaps contributing to the death of your wife. Which death affected you more -- hers or the Quaker's??]
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