tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post6036555352199752355..comments2023-10-30T06:31:05.501-07:00Comments on MilPub: McNamaraFDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-91884782308075794232009-07-09T11:18:00.821-07:002009-07-09T11:18:00.821-07:00Mike, It's not his mistakes but rather our mis...Mike, It's not his mistakes but rather our mistakes.We the people allow this stuff to happen. Both then and now.<br />jimrangerhttp://rangeragainstwar.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-22628245970996423092009-07-09T11:13:45.483-07:002009-07-09T11:13:45.483-07:00"Let's forget the history books..." ..."Let's forget the history books..." For shame, Ranger!!! You know better. How do you focus on the present and the future if you ignore history? <br /><br />Although I do agree that this has mostly turned into a <i>trash-the-man-but-learn-nothing-from-his-mistakes</i> post. <br /><br />mikeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-74831938096260122562009-07-09T07:33:33.973-07:002009-07-09T07:33:33.973-07:00Rummie and the Boys' Club.
http://tinyurl.com...Rummie and the Boys' Club.<br /><br />http://tinyurl.com/lrsdcs<br /><br />The famous poem with the famous line "the centre cannot hold" is very apt for these days.<br /><br />http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html<br /><br />The next 2 don't get quoted as much, but still:<br /><br /><b>The best lack all conviction, while the worst <br /> Are full of passionate intensity.</b><br /><br />Ranger:<br /><br /><b>The lives lost are gone- we must focus on today and ending the presently accepted lies that pose as policy . . .</b><br /><br />Not for nothing does the Holy Writ call us "sheep". Driven by dogs or led by leaders who are hardly more than sheep themselves.<br /><br />....basilbeastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-26133881849776233522009-07-09T07:13:15.740-07:002009-07-09T07:13:15.740-07:00Chief,
As an afterthought, I'm not implying th...Chief,<br />As an afterthought, I'm not implying that you have any personal knowledge or experience with Pig Nite. This was a literary device only.<br />jimrangerhttp://rangeragainstwar.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-76862260305789247742009-07-09T07:09:39.667-07:002009-07-09T07:09:39.667-07:00Chief,
Let's forget the history books- they ch...Chief,<br />Let's forget the history books- they change nothing and are not as entertaining as graphic novels.<br />The lives lost are gone- we must focus on today and ending the presently accepted lies that pose as policy.Johnson told us that Amurican boys wouldn't fight and die in SEA if he would be elected- the same implied promise was made by Obama . Nobody seems too enraged at his policies on the phony wars. We are a nation out of control, nowhere in our presnt comments are we even mentioning the complicity and connivance of the Congress.Then like now they pass the appropriations bills on an emergency basis and to hell with what the voters want. Mc Nameras lies are petty compared to those of the Congress and the President. It's a national shame that we all know that our leaders are lyers and we accept this as doctrine.<br />VN/Afgh/Iraq share a common thread, it's not that we can't win but rather that there is nothing to win. They are all meaningless encounters as hollow as picking up a bar whore at Pig nite. And for this we fight.<br />In closing- if the Secdef or any other unelected stooges get away with lying then the Congress is not doing their jobs of oversight and funding as described in the Constitution.<br />jimrangerhttp://rangeragainstwar.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-59786688798816594592009-07-09T06:47:17.003-07:002009-07-09T06:47:17.003-07:00Ael: You're right, in that the failings of ...Ael: You're right, in that the failings of the jack fool that follows whouldn't be equated with th failings of the tomfool that leads.<br /><br />But McNamara was a special case.<br /><br />LBJ was in a uniquely powerful position to get the hell out of the RVN in 1964. He had a domestic agenda, the "Great Society", that was being pulled apart by Vietnam. He was a domestic policy wonk, not a "statesman". Bearing every burden, that was JFK's schtick. If McNamara had been the smart guy he was supposed to be, if he'd gone to LBJ in '64 and said, look, this thing isn't a world-wide Commie conspiracy, it's a goddam Vietnamese civil war and we need no part of it.", and shown all of his famous graphs and charts proving that we could spend a lot of blood and treasure there and get nowhere...<br /><br />Well, he didn't. So the man's name should be a byword and a hissing.<br /><br />And he's just one. Bush <i>fils</i> should go down in history as the American Somoza of Oughts; brutal, stupid and greedy, with extra incompetence sauce. I would opine that we don't feel nearly as dismissive and angry about American "leaders" like Laird, Newt Gingrich, Franklin Pierce, Chief Justice Taney, John Poindexter, or Warren Harding. All idiots or incompetents, all people who cost the American people either wealth, honor or lives.<br /><br />It should be, at least, a public shame and disgrace to be as wrong, and then as dishonest about the wrong, as those people are or were. We can't get the public and the history books to begine treating them all with the contempt they deserve right away.<br /><br />But McNamara is in the news right now, and he's a good place to start.<br /><br />Just sayin'.FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-21078048851196814962009-07-09T06:29:28.647-07:002009-07-09T06:29:28.647-07:00Hmm, let me try another tack to make my point.
Co...Hmm, let me try another tack to make my point.<br /><br />Compare and contrast the moral failings of Robert S. McNamara and Melvin R. Laird.Aelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10788190394672505925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-37022280101384146452009-07-09T05:56:13.182-07:002009-07-09T05:56:13.182-07:00AEL -
Are you really saying that we never complai...AEL -<br /><br />Are you really saying that we never complained about JFK, LBJ, Nixon, or Bush? I think if you look at the vast record of comments by everybody who posts here regularly you will find quite a number of posts bashing those gentlemen.<br /><br />Yes, we are focusing on McNamara at the moment but we are all very aware of the failings of the men listed above.<br /><br />Bob McN, Feith, Gonzo, Yoo, and many others were tools wielded by criminally short-sighted but powerful men to do terribly stupid things. You are right that, in general, we should concentrate on the primary person. But as the Nurnberg trials showed, the defense of "just following orders" is unacceptable in the larger scope of human affairs.Plutohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04036751798841079048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-61467664612775554752009-07-08T22:51:39.935-07:002009-07-08T22:51:39.935-07:00I am *glad* that I have never had to truly test my...I am *glad* that I have never had to truly test my "personal honor and dignity".<br /><br />I fear that I would come up short, and consequently, am reluctant to chide others for their moral failings.<br /><br />I also note that McNamara was ultimately a henchman. Where are the complaints about JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Bush? It was their watch!<br /><br />Instead we have critiques of Gonzalez, Feith and Yoo. (and boy, they can be critiqued!).<br />But they were all chosen by the lawful president of the time. <br /><br />If you don't like the people chosen by the president, then perhaps you are choosing the wrong president. Don't complain about them for their failings when they were doing exactly what they were chosen to do. <br /><br />Might as well complain about a fish for swimming too much.Aelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10788190394672505925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-54966093430748854262009-07-08T20:57:51.420-07:002009-07-08T20:57:51.420-07:00Jim: The point is just that - we haven't judge...Jim: The point is just that - we haven't judged the man. No one in authority; no politician at her podium, no preacher or priest in his pulpit, no pundit in his expensive TV chair, has been willing to stand up and say plainly: this man lied, he betrayed his trust, he was a fool and a traitor to his country and the people who trusted and followed him.<br /><br />In the same way that Nixon and Kissinger and Reagan and Ollie North and Dick Cheney and Dougie Feith and Paul Wolfowitz and Abu Gonzales and Colin Powell remain wealthy, deferred to, respected and listened to.<br /><br />The tragedy of McNamara is that he was allowed to go down to the grave in peace. Our tragedy is that we allowed him to.<br /><br />The issue is not one of personal like or dislike. It is that failure to tell the truth to power, failure to live up to the standards of personal honor and dignity, in a man who wasn't a walk-on but a major character, a Duncan to LBJ's MacBeth. The fact that he lied, that we knew he lied, and that we not only failed to hang him from the Liberty Tree as a dreadful example to the others who would prefer to put personal safety and comfort before the benefit of the Republic, but, instead, continued to treat him as an elder statesman, says more about the moribund condition of our democracy than any amount of powermongering from the Right.FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-43056300294892000952009-07-08T13:21:43.210-07:002009-07-08T13:21:43.210-07:00To all,
The fact is that all your comments are per...To all,<br />The fact is that all your comments are pertinent BUT the dead and wounded of RVN are dead and gone and still suffering if alive.. XIN LOI. Let's get a bit less personal here and move to the larger point-why are we doing the same thing today that we condemn RN for doing yesterday.? What have we learned and how have we benefitted? NADA it appears.<br />This is a failure of Democracy and RN like the rest of us were simple walk on players.<br />I will not judge the man. If there is a God then it's her job to provide judgement.<br />jimrangerhttp://rangeragainstwar.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-85552013272955621962009-07-08T11:01:28.022-07:002009-07-08T11:01:28.022-07:00It seems to me that McNamara's overwhelming hu...It seems to me that McNamara's overwhelming hubris was his greatest sin. <br /><br />First in demanding all the data points that Mike mentioned (where he assumed his data points would more accurately represent the situation on the ground than a report by a human being)<br /><br />Second, when he compiled the data points and found that they indicated that the US was going to lose in Vietnam, he assumed that his own data points were wrong because he was in charge.<br /><br />Third, when he faced reality and admitted that this was a war that couldn't be won, he kept blaming other people for the failure for most of his life. It was only at the very end that he finally realized that the only person to blame was himself. <br /><br />To take that long to make such a basic realization is almost incomprehensible to me and says quite a lot about the man's ego.Plutohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04036751798841079048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-35595049466151595592009-07-08T10:09:50.586-07:002009-07-08T10:09:50.586-07:00I may be medieval in this, but I truly believe in ...I may be medieval in this, but I truly believe in the ideas of confession, repentance and penance. We all fuck up. To continue to live requires that we be able to own up to our wrongs and failures, to accept our responsibility and to make an offering to those we have wronged.<br /><br />My problem with McNamara - and I was never touched directly by his acts during the Vietnam War - is that while he publicly confessed, and sort-of repented, he never sacrificed <i>himself</i>, never made the offering of his life appropriate to the shades of those who lost theirs because of his arrogance and cowardice.<br /><br />When you think of it, the only real way for the man to have "apologized" to those he wronged and the degree of his wronging, would have been to have had to have given up everything; wealth, power, comfort, in effect his entire life, and have toiled anonymously as the lowest of menials, cleaning the toilets of the poor or bandaging the weeping sores of lepers, until he died and was tipped into an unmarked pauper's grave, forgotten, alone and unmourned.<br /><br />Instead he will be interred in some well-tended Episcopalian cemetary, his passing eulogized by his well-fed, well-dressed cronies, his failings elided, his "remorse" softened and pasteurized. THAT, to me, is the real shame and real crime the man represents. Instead of an object lesson to those still living public life (see C. Powell, et al) in the failure of human decency that his bootlicking and self-excusing life represented, he will go into history as a sort of faded footnote in a forgotten mistake.FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-75232159871139452282009-07-08T09:22:32.519-07:002009-07-08T09:22:32.519-07:00My beef with McNamara has a different cast. I thi...My beef with McNamara has a different cast. I think his confession in his book was BS. His sin IMHO was never that he was afraid to speak truth to power. Did he not in fact get fired by LBJ for speaking his mind???<br /><br />His sin was his overbearing arrogance and refusal to listen to any subordinates unless they told him what he wanted to hear about his sacred statistics.<br /><br />McNamara's type of statistical analysis is great for quality control when measuring the output of lathes and milling machines or returned merchandise. And it may have had a small role in defeating the U-Boat threat in WW-2. But it is a detriment when company and battalion commanders have to spend most of their time responding every nit that he was trying to measure.<br /><br />mikeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-57674695029339366652009-07-08T08:52:40.461-07:002009-07-08T08:52:40.461-07:00McNamara's fall from grace is that he could ha...McNamara's fall from grace is that he could have been the stand up guy. <br />He could have been the one who prevented the fuck up of the century. <br />He could have been the one for the history books who placed country above personal loyalty...but...he did not.<br />He choose silence.<br />He choose omission of action.<br />He choose his place in history, and by so choosing...he has earned the righteous condemnation that he earned. <br />Whether he thought of the future consequences of his silence or not, he is the author of his future.<br /><br />So this is the lesson I learned from Mr. McNamara: <i>My objections born in silence condemns me far more than being a cheerleader because if I perceive the truth and do nothing...I'm guiltier than the person who ignored the truth from the get go.</i>sheerahkahnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16694622087244891222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-47096446367024034262009-07-08T07:15:33.644-07:002009-07-08T07:15:33.644-07:00Nicely written Publius.
For years I waited for ...Nicely written Publius. <br /><br />For years I waited for McNamara to make his confession, thinking it would bring some relief and closure. Strangely, when it finally came, the opposite happened, and the anger and depression just worsened. <br /><br />Powell is from the same mold. There was a time when I would have voted for him in a heartbeat, and I would have followed him into the gates of hell. I believed he was one of the great military leaders of our generation. But like McNamara he eventually confused his loyalties to his chain of command with his duties to his country. <br /><br />The honorable course was clear at the time he made his choices. A private message to the administration, resignation if the administration didn't listen, and then a public statement setting out his reasons for resigning.<br /><br />Went to the Zachery Taylor National Cemetery a few weeks ago and visited an old friend at A-794.<br />Fred Salyer. Got his McNamara Fellowship about 1966, didn't make to 21.<br /><br />Walter OlinAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-31605719335036026052009-07-08T06:55:23.842-07:002009-07-08T06:55:23.842-07:00First, I would like to offer that upon hearing of ...First, I would like to offer that upon hearing of Mr McNamara's passing, my eyes remain dry.<br /><br />Second, as to Colin Powell, I would offer the following, not in his defense, but in explanation. Powell spent virtually his entire adult life in uniform. While we are expected to speak honestly and candidly to our superiors when they are ready to follow a misguided course, that "speaking out" is only to the superior involved, not to the world at large. If the superior rejects our advice and still issues a lawful order, we either obey as if it were our own idea, or request relief from service. A subordinate does not conduct his own investigation of his superior's "intel" unless it is patently obvious to be false.<br /><br />Powell was the perfect shill for the Rove/Cheney administration. He came into the office of Sec State conditioned to expect truthful information from his superiors, and, of course, he didn't.<br /><br />That does not excuse him, but it does sort of explain his profound failure.<br /><br />AlAviator47https://www.blogger.com/profile/05585964386930142907noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-56728480512560459902009-07-08T05:27:20.831-07:002009-07-08T05:27:20.831-07:00I heard an excellent piece on NPR yesterday about ...I heard an excellent piece on NPR yesterday about McNamara which included a lot of tape from the final interview that McNamara gave in 2005.<br /><br />In short, McNamara agreed wholeheartedly with you. It seems to have taken almost 40 years but Bob McNamara finally came to the conclusion that he'd made a huge mistake and was essentially a war criminal.<br /><br />Although he physically moved on to the World Bank (where he did good work) and other positions, Vietnam dogged him for the rest of his life. He was always being asked questions about it and he was always asking himself questions about it. <br /><br />I'm very curious about when he finally came to the soul-shattering decision to finally accept all blame for his actions. He certainly hadn't done it when his book came out, there he only admitted that "some mistakes were made."<br /><br />On the subject of moral courage, I've got a strange connection to that issue right now. I recently had a review of my performance and one of the things that my boss revealed was that I'd been considered for a minor promotion but had not been chosen (in fact the position still hasn't been filled).<br /><br />The reason I was passed over was that it was generally agreed that I am too willing to share my opinions with too many people and that if I want to get promoted I need to keep my opinions to myself and keep to the company line.<br /><br />The opinions I share at work have VERY minor consequences compared to that of the Secretary of Defense or State and yet I can't help but wonder if McNamara and Powell didn't recall similar conversations they'd had in their careers before they held such exalted positions.<br /><br />I am too willing to tell truth to power (although I note that senior management in my company is usually willing to listen to me when I do choose to speak to them) but the people who continually get promoted are trained to be quiet when push comes to shove.<br /><br />While this is very helpful to the people who promoted them, there comes a time when you need to speak up for the good of the world. Far too many people fail to recognize it when it happens and stumble around in the dark for the rest of their lives trying to blame somebody else for their mistake.Plutohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04036751798841079048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-64104157839385744002009-07-07T22:54:03.048-07:002009-07-07T22:54:03.048-07:00I fear you have unreasonable expectations.
Judgin...I fear you have unreasonable expectations.<br /><br />Judging by past and present behaviour,<br />moral courage is not a requirement for high leadership.<br /><br />In fact, it may well be a disqualifying factor.<br /><br />You ask too much from Mr. McNamara. Or perhaps, everyone else asks too little from the rest of our leaders.Aelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10788190394672505925noreply@blogger.com