Robert+McNamara+(TH)

Robert S. McNamara Robert S. McNamara was born on June 9,1916 in San Francisco, California. He attended college at the University of California at Berkley and was an assistant professor at Harvard. He was also well known as the Executive of Ford Motor Company in the 1950's after World War II. Careless management had cost the company badly, so McNamara and his crew soon brought in state-of-the-art methods to the business. He is most well known for his decisions as Secretary of Defense during Vietnam. When McNamara first entered the Pentagon, he had great faith in American goodness, American power, and his own ability. Here is a quote from McNamara after the Cuban Missile Crisis. “There was a moment on Saturday night, October 27, 1962 when, as left the President’s office to go back to the Pentagon---a perfectly beautiful fall evening---I thought I might never live to see another Saturday night.” He was the person who recommended to Kennedy to launch the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was a plan to rid Cuba of Castile. McNamara had a hard time as Secretary of Defense. The worst part of his career was during the Vietnam War. McNamara believed that the US led the “free world” and so therefore it was their responsibility to take care of South Vietnam. McNamara was against the coup against Diem, but instead wanted to pressure Diem into reforming. McNamara thought that the US could win the war in Vietnam by using it’s superior values and by committing it’s superior its superior resources effectively. But by the fall of 1965, McNamara started to doubt the effectiveness of US military operations, especially air strikes. Americans that were against the war started calling the war “McNamara’s War”. His suggestion to start pulling troops out of Vietnam was rejected by President Johnson in 1967. McNamara didn’t want all the deaths caused so far to be for nothing, so he didn’t want to take out troops. But that only caused more deaths. After the war McNamara said, “We acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.” He said “we” as in the US government. Soon after the war, McNamara left the pentagon in “a state of near emotional exhaustion.” It is not known for sure whether McNamara resigned after a very hard seven years, or if President Johnson asked him to resign. After working as Secretary of Defense, McNamara was the head of World Bank. His policies at World Bank led to what was called the third world debt crisis years later.

sources: Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War