Word: mcnamara
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...think for a moment that McNamara started the Vietnam War. That was mainly the result of how U.S. leaders in the aftermath of World War II perceived the communist threat and thought about foreign policy. By the time McNamara got to Washington in 1961, the Cold War was blossoming, and along with it, the domino theory. That theory, rooted in the run-up to World War II, held that it would be dangerous folly to let an aggressor snatch away little countries, be emboldened and then make world war. The aggressor had to be stopped wherever he was making...
...McNamara didn't know anything about Vietnam. Nor did the rest of us working with him. But Americans didn't have to know the culture and history of a place. All we needed to do was apply our military superiority and resources in the right way. We needed to collect the right data, analyze the information properly and come up with a solution on how to win the war. McNamara did just that until sometime in late 1965. Then he began to wonder, perhaps because of the bad dreams he was having as American casualties mounted, whether the war could...
Even as he had these doubts, he had no answers for them. He was not prepared to argue that we simply withdraw. America was bleeding, its cities were burning, and it was never clear to me exactly how McNamara connected this America with that war in Vietnam. In wartime, the Pentagon is the biggest bunker of all, aware of what's going on, but remote...
...policy. Things get lost--critically important things--even from an experience as profound as the Vietnam War, even as we go deeper into new wars like Afghanistan. And as I now contemplate the departure of a life so central to my own and that of my country as Bob McNamara's, one overriding lesson bombards my mind: nationalist wars, civil wars, tribal and religious wars--they can never be won by Americans. As long as we're there and willing to fight and die, we won't lose. But in the end, we can't win either unless we realize...
...pictures of the life and times of Robert McNamara on LIFE.com...