Robert McNamara: Architect of a Failed War - Essay Example

? Robert McNamara: Architect of a Failed War Robert S. McNamara (1916-2009) was the eighth Secretary of Defense serving from 1961 to 1968 during both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Despite his stellar career in business and finance before and after his time as Defense Secretary along with successes while in that capacity, McNamara’s legacy will forever be tied to the Vietnam War. McNamara was responsible for orchestrating a massive military buildup that would involve the U.S. in a decade long war which resulted in the loss of 58,000 American servicemen. A bitterly divided public directed blame and their anger on him for the misguided and unnecessary human carnage. He took responsibility and accepted blame in his 1995 memoir. Vietnam was characterized then and still is today as “McNamara’s War.” Under his direction, the Pentagon employed the weaponry and technology of the world’s most powerful military force against an impoverished peasant nation approximately the size of New Jersey and came away losers. In hindsight, McNamara’s ambitious, confident and technological-based methodology may have been appropriate in a military engagement with the former Soviet Union on European soil but this tactic had disastrous consequences in the swamp-like rice paddies and dense jungles of Vietnam. McNamara gained a reputation as brilliant statistician and tactician during WWII earning the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and was awarded the Legion of Merit medal for his service in the Office of Statistical Control. During the late 1940’s and the entire decade of the 1950’s, McNamara along with a team of others reversed the lagging fortunes of the Ford Motor Company making the auto giant into a profitable operation with his innovative ideas. McNamara was selected President of Ford in 1960 becoming the first person outside the Ford family to attain this position. President Kennedy offered him both the Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of Defense Cabinet positions in 1961. Though his education, MBA from Harvard, and business experience may have been more suited to the Treasury position, McNamara chose Defense. He was a close confidant of Kennedy who often consulted McNamara on a range of issues. In his position as Defense Secretary, McNamara was a central figure during the Cuban Missile Crisis triumph and the Bay of Pigs debacle. His concept-to-design development of the multiple-warhead nuclear missile altered the balance of world power in the U.S.’s favor for a time. “McNamara sponsored development of missiles that could carry up to 14 nuclear warheads each, giving the United States the ability to strike more Soviet targets without adding missiles and the capability of launching more warheads than the Soviets could fend off.” (Lippman, 2009). Following his tenure at the Pentagon, he was appointed president of the World Bank where he concentrated on building the economies of poor nations. Despite his great intellect and otherwise stellar career, the name “McNamara” will be forever infamous due to America’s involvement in Vietnam. Before the U.S. became involved in Vietnam, France spent a decade fighting the Communist North Vietnamese in their attempt to consolidate the South and North into one country. When the French withdrew in the mid 1950’s, the U.S. initiated a limited role sending economic support and a few hundred military advisors to aid the South Vietnamese government in its efforts to repel the Northern aggressors. During the abbreviated Kennedy presidency, thousand more “advisors” were sent. McNamara fully endorsed the added personnel. During his first trip to the Southeast Asian nation in 1962, years before most Americans knew of any military involvement or had even heard of a country called Vietnam, McNamara said that “every quantitative measurement we have shows we’re winning this war.” (Lippman, 2009). Had the war never escalated beyond a few thousand advisors, history would not have remembered what is now an infamous statement frequently quoted by his many critics in the latter years of the war to sarcastically condemn the wisdom of America’s futile involvement. Technically speaking, the U.S. continued to win the war throughout the conflict, if measured by the statistical method in which McNamara was firmly attached. In addition, U.S. troops won most every major battle but the political perception, along with the reality of the situation taken as a whole was that America lost its first war. Despite his obsession with statistics, charts and consultations with military tacticians, all of which gave him the confidence to publicly announce the U.S. and its South Vietnam ally were consistently winning the war; McNamara understood the reality of the situation. Privately, he was not as certain of ultimate victory. In 1964, he had misgivings well before the public turned against the war. That year a major Buddhist uprising in the capital city of Saigon upset the South Vietnamese political structure. He commented that the Viet Cong (North Vietnamese) had “large indigenous support” and were tied together by “bonds of loyalty.” (Lippman, 2009). In 1966, during buildup of U.S. troops in Vietnam, the anxiety of the Cold War between the former Soviet Union and U.S. raged on throughout both countries and Europe. McNamara said it was “a gross oversimplification to regard Communism as the central factor in every conflict throughout the underdeveloped word. The United States has no mandate from on high to police the world and no inclination to do so.” (Kapln, pg. 236) He may have understood the situation perfectly yet continued to ask for more troops to, in effect, police the world, or at least part of it. The August 2, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident is credited for the U.S. altering its advisory role in Vietnam to one of full scale military involvement. Three North Vietnamese naval torpedo ships were reported to have fired on two U.S. Navy destroyers while on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin, the body of water bordering Vietnam. Allegedly, one of the North Vietnamese vessels was sunk and another heavily damaged by U.S. ships and warplanes sent to retaliate. One U.S. vessels, the USS Maddox, was struck by a single bullet that glanced off the ship’s steel hull. Again, on August 4, two North Vietnamese ships engaged a U.S. warship and were reportedly sunk although no evidence supports the claim. President Johnson had given the order to attack the ships. Johnson then called the Soviet Union to tell them of the incident and that he had no intention of further attacks on North Vietnam or its military. Two days later, on August 4, Johnson ordered retaliatory strikes on military installations in the North. McNamara was influential in using this incident to persuade Congress to escalate military involvement. This scene is reminiscent of Colin Powell offering “evidence” to the UN prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on a false pretext. On August 10 by a nearly unanimous margin, Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution permitting the president “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the U.S. and to prevent further aggression.” (Torreon, 2011). From this point on, most of McNamara’s time was spent managing the war. In February 1965 the Viet Cong launched an attack on the U.S. Air Force base at Pleiku, South Vietnam. Eight Americans were killed and at least 100 wounded. The North Vietnamese were attempting to remove the largest threat, an air base, and then continue with their plans to take over an already unstable and weak South Vietnamese opponent. With the situation quickly deteriorating, the U.S. had three available options, none of which were especially favorable. 1) The U.S. could continue as it had with a limited role effectively limited to advising and aiding the South Vietnamese but risked embarrassment if the circumstances kept deteriorating and already weakened resistance forces collapsed. 2) The U.S. could simply leave and let the North quickly take the South. This was a popular option among some leaders in Congress and the military. However, this was the Cold War era and the U.S. did not want to be perceived as unwilling to use its military might, that it was unsure of its strength, or that it sanctioned the continued spread of comminism. Enemies and allies alike might take the “cut and run” strategy as a sign of weakness causing future negotiating difficulties in “hot spots” around the world. 3) The U.S. could do what it did, become deeply involved similar to the Korean conflict a decade earlier and hope for the same result. One outcome was the same, about 58,000 service men killed but South Vietnam no longer exists unlike South Korea. After consulting military officials, McNamara and President Johnson decided on an alternate plan, one that offered a compromise, of sorts, between a full-scale involvement and remaining in an advisory capacity only. The U.S. would not send ground troops but utilize its air power in a relentless bombing campaign that would ‘bring the war home’ to the North Vietnamese people. Air power offered the opportunity to keep the war at a distance relatively inexpensively. Most policymakers understood that using air power was inexpensive in comparison with an extensive ground war but any involvement was not going to be cheap. The limitations of this bombing plan termed “Rolling Thunder” became apparent fairly quickly. The initial bombing raids involved 267 sorties targeting 491 buildings but less than 10 percent were destroyed and only a couple dozen more damaged. These laughable results instigated a scathing memorandum from McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Our primary objective, of course, was to communicate our political resolve. Future communications of resolve, however, will carry a hollow ring unless we accomplish more military damage than we have to date.” (Drew, 1986). By the summer of 1965 Rolling Thunder had expanded considerably. It was at this time government and military officials were debating the merits of further escalation, whether or not to add ground troops to the air campaign. On July 1 McNamara wrote a message to Johnson calling for a “total quarantine of the movement of war supplies into North Vietnam, by sea, rail, and road, through the mining of Haiphong and all other harbors and the destruction of rail and road bridges leading from China to Hanoi.” (Drew, 1986). Rolling Thunder was a bullying tactic meant to convince the much smaller, weaker North Vietnamese to end the aggression or at least to negotiate a peace treaty. It accomplished neither. The first combat troops began arriving in March of 1965. The plan was to engage the enemy, kill as many as possible then pull back, not try to hold forbidding, hostile areas. Again, this was meant to terrorize rather than defeat the Viet Cong hoping they would withdraw permanently. This tactic was used by the commander of operations in Vietnam, General Westmorland, throughout the war but was never successful to any great measure. McNamara admitted a few years later, while still in his position as Secretary of Defense, that the massive bombing assaults over North Vietnam and trying to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail supply lines was not affective because the Viet Cong lived off the land therefore did not need supplies except for ammunition. He also admitted several years after the war ended that he wasn’t able to convince Johnson to stop air and ground operations believing at the time that neither would ever be effective. If you can’t bomb the people into submission, hit targets or disrupt supply lines by air or secure victories and gain ground with combat troops its a futile endeavor. Critics are quick to suggest maybe McNamara was unwilling rather than unable to convince Johnson. (Lippman, 2009). U.S. involvement in Vietnam began in earnest during 1965. The Viet Cong responded to the large scale air assaults and limited ground campaign of the U.S. by escalating its military actions in the south. In response, the U.S. decided to launch a full scale campaign. McNamara’s strategy for victory, encouraged by military commanders in Vietnam, led to 485,000 troops being deployed by 1967 and more than half a million the following year. The numbers of dead and wounded soldiers were tremendous due to the enormous commitment of forces. McNamara created a statistical plan for victory. He determined that the U.S. could win the war by attrition, that the American military was winning the war of numbers, more Viet Cong killed per American. Therefore the enemy would run out of troops before the U.S. The world would then be safe from the “Domino Affect” of spreading communism and the U.S. military would gain prestige, an important asset during the Cold War. McNamara used a macabre formula that included body counts to calculate the success rate of the war. Simply stated, the formula used a multiplier for U.S. dead to calculate the approximate Viet Cong dead minus the number of troops he thought they had. McNamara evidently did not consider an unlimited number of Chinese troops might be sent to help the North or that the former Soviet Union would supply them with weapons and an air force. McNamara was suffering credibility issues from early on. He told the press during the Kennedy presidency all American personnel would be out of South Vietnam by 1965. The credibility gap only opened wider after the initial involvement. In 1966, McNamara emphatically stated that military manpower and draft calls would decrease by 1967, Few believed him and they were right not to. Troop numbers increased the next three years along with draft calls. He told Congress the rationale for saturation bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail was to decrease Viet Cong troop penetration in the South. Both the media reports from correspondents in Vietnam and the Pentagon’s own intelligence proved enemy penetration was actually rising despite an intense bombing campaign. McNamara’s loss of trust among the American people, along with the overall resentment of the war, led to an incident in 1966 when he visited Harvard for an informal dialogue with a group of undergraduates. His car was blocked and surrounded by approximately 800 students who heckled him screaming “murderer.” McNamara climbed on top the car on that cold Boston day in November. He spoke to the angry crowd saying unapologetically “I spent four of the happiest years of my life on this campus, doing some of the things you do today. But I was tougher than you, and I'm tougher than you are now. I was more courteous then, and I hope I’m more courteous today.” (Lippman, 2009). As 1966 came to a close, about 400,000 troops were stationed in Vietnam. In that year more than 6,000 Americans lost their lives and 30,000 seriously wounded. McNamara wrote a private letter to Johnson expressing considerable concerns about America’s continued involvement in Vietnam. “The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week,” he wrote, “while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue, whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.” (Lippman, 2009). McNamara also publicly admitted the pointlessness of bombing North Vietnam. He spoke of the severe consequences of waging war in this way, for these reasons at this great cost. McNamara announced the construction of an invisible electronic barrier just south the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in September, 1967. Its purpose was to act as alarm notifying the U.S. military of enemy troop movement into the South. When breached, the U.S. would respond by shelling the particular point of entry with artillery or sending in an air strike. Named the “McNamara Line,” this concept had been under consideration well before its namesake became Secretary of Defense. The U.S. contemplated using a military blockade along the narrow 40 mile border between North and South Vietnam in 1958 as did the French in 1954. The Vietnamese themselves built two walls in the 1600’s by those in the South wanting protection from northern invaders. Operation Rolling Thunder acted as a barrier in this region too. The McNamara line was expected to be more effective and certainly more humane. (Brush, 1994). In January, 1968, during Tet, the most celebrated holiday in Vietnam, massive numbers of Viet Cong poured across several places along the border of the South attacking dozens of villages and cities in every region of the country. The Americans were caught off guard, unprepared for the onslaught, even though intelligence information had reported considerable numbers of enemy troops positioning for an assault. American troops regained control over most cities but had lost many rural areas to the enemy. Prior to the Tet Offensive American troop numbers had been steadily rising for three years, from 3,500 in spring 1965 to half a million in early 1968. In the aftermath of the bloody struggle to repel an estimated 100,000 Viet Cong troops, General William Westmoreland asked President Johnson for additional troops, a request that was denied. The Johnson administration re-evaluated the wisdom of American involvement in Vietnam following Tet. With McNamara’s urging, the Tet Offensive caused Johnson to begin de-escalating troops from Vietnam. This sudden change in direction caused many to believe that Tet was a military success for the North but militarily speaking was considered a victory for the U.S. because the enemy was driven out of South Vietnamese cities. It was, however, a major psychological loss for the Americans. The public was growing weary, vocal and in some cases violent in its opposition to the war fueled by a media that had turned against American involvement in Vietnam. Politicians that had previously supported the war were now starting to rethink their stance. Tet was also a public relations failure for the Communist Northern forces that lost more than 60,000 troops during the offensive alone, more than the Americans total KIA during the entire 10 year war. The credibility of the Viet Cong was damaged as well. “The Communists claimed to be a liberation force, but there had been no popular uprising on their behalf in South Vietnam.” (Sander, 2008) The Tet Offensive clearly displayed the limitations of American military might, not just for the Vietnam era but permanently. The fact that a far less technologically advanced Viet Cong military staged a major assault years into the war was a cold dose of reality for America and the world. It became evident that the U.S. could not effectively fight against guerilla warfare tactics waged by indigenous peoples. No matter what strategies were used, number of troops or types of weapons, Vietnam was a war that was never going to be won in the conventional sense. In addition, the South Vietnamese people seemed to have lost interest in fighting against their aggressors. Tet was a major turning point of the war in many respects. The offensive radically changed the thinking of many former pro-war advocates including Secretary of Defense McNamara who had strongly advocated reducing troop numbers just prior to Tet which put him at odds with many top military officials. After the offensive he was more convinced that ever. (Sander, 2008) During 1967 McNamara was becoming increasingly opposed to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. His strategies and leadership abilities were being questioned by the public, White House officials and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Rumors began spreading that he was considering leaving his Cabinet post. McNamara wrote Johnson a memorandum in November 1967 recommending the bombing campaign be halted and ground operations be given back to the South Vietnamese, in essence, end America’s involvement in the war outside an advisory capacity. Johnson quickly and sternly rejected the proposal. General Westmoreland, on the other hand, was pushing for a troop increase at this time. His appeals became more urgent following the Tet Offensive. McNamara and Johnson met on February 17, 1968 to discuss Westmoreland’s request for more troops. McNamara was adamantly against the request claiming that it was too costly in terms of men and money, that continuing the military operations in Vietnam was futile, a never-ending proposition with no hope for military or political success. On February 28 Johnson released McNamara from his Secretary of Defense post and, at the same time, offered him another job, one for which he was well suited, head of the World Bank. The Vietnam War was rightly vilified by those against it at that time and by history which has judged it an unnecessary war that cost American lives, money and military prestige. Perhaps unfairly, all those involved in the decision making leading up to and during the war have been vilified as well including McNamara. In his book “The Best and Brightest,” David Halberstam wrote that McNamara was “a prisoner of his own background unable, as indeed was the country which sponsored him, to adapt his values and his terms to Vietnamese realities since any real indices and truly factual estimates of the war would immediately have shown its bankruptcy.” (Halberstam, pg. 248). The author’s final assessment of McNamara was harsh and reflected the general feeling of the public at that time. “McNamara did not serve himself or his country well. He was, there is no kinder or gentler word for it, a fool.” (Halberstam, pg. 219). President Johnson would not run for a second term due to the Vietnam War, a race he surely would have otherwise won. His accomplishments included the Civil Rights Act and “Great Society” programs such as Medicare but Vietnam will always be a large stain on the Johnson presidency. Perhaps the person most vilified is and was General Westmoreland. History has been kinder to McNamara because he realized the futility of the war and tried to end it prior to 1968, the year the most American casualties occurred. McNamara was the primary architect of the war in Vietnam, a moniker that will forever be associated with his name. His original reason for involving the U.S. in Vietnam was the “Domino Theory” but also believed that if Kennedy had not been assassinated, the U.S. would have withdrawn instead of escalating troop numbers. In his memoir, McNamara admitted the war was terrible and that he lacked the ability and inner strength to convince Johnson to end it. He did not aggressively or public push for withdrawal in large part to his loyalty to an administration who disagreed with his point of view. Robert McNamara achieved more in the public and business sector than nearly any of his generation, or any other generation, and should be remembered for what he was and what he did rather than for the Vietnam War alone, a war that he regrets and tried to stop although by his own admission not as assertively as he should have. References Brush, Peter. (February, 1996). The Story Behind The McNamara Line. Vietnam. pp. 18-24. Retrieved from http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/central/Brush/McNamara-Line.htm Drew, Dennis, Col. (October,1986). CADRE Paper, Report No. AU-ARI-CP-86-3, Air University Press. Retrieved from http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/readings/drew2.htm Halberstam, David. (October 26, 1993). The Best and the Brightest. Ballantine Books. Kaplan, Fred. (1983). The Wizards of Armageddon. Stanford University Press Stanford, California. Lippman, Thomas W. (July 7, 2009). Defense Secretary, Architect of U.S. Involvement in Vietnam Robert McNamara Dies. The Washington Post Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/06/AR2009070601197.html Sanders, Vivian. (2008). Turning Points in the Vietnam War. History Today. Retrieved from http://www.historytoday.com/viv-sanders/turning-points-vietnam-war Torreon, Barbara Salazar. (December 29, 2011). U.S. Periods of War and Dates of Current Conflicts. Congressional Research Service. Retrieved from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS21405.pdf Read More