McNamara: How I Could Have Ended the Vietnam War

I interviewed McNamara in July 2001 at his office in Washington, DC. He was much the same as he later appeared in the 2003 documentary “Fog of War”; he may even have been wearing the same tie. In the course of our interview, McNamara said something which he subsequently refused to allow me to publish in the book that I was writing, in part, about his colleague McGeorge Bundy.

As I write this over breakfast, the Washington Post’s website (but not yet the New York Times’) is reporting the death of Robert Strange McNamara, Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 and one of the main architects of American involvement in the Vietnam war.  Most of the many obituaries to come naturally will focus on his errors of strategy and execution in Vietnam, the way the war blighted his reputation, and the scorn from liberals and conservatives alike when he confessed in his 1995 memoir (In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam) that he had known the war would end in failure.  The conventional wisdom holds that if McNamara had resigned his position in protest rather than keeping silent for almost three decades, he might have ended the war; since he didn’t, the blood of the Vietnam dead was on his hands.

I expect that few of the obituaries will make much of the fact that McNamara was a Republican.  McNamara’s politics don’t seem particularly salient to most commentators.  His Republicanism came from a combination of family tradition, fiscal conservatism, and progressive outlook that was quite compatible with the cautious reformism and Cold War muscularity of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier.  The fact of a Republican serving as Defense secretary under Democratic presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson underscored the extent to which Cold War foreign policy, including the Vietnam war, was supported by bipartisan majorities in Congress throughout much of the 1960s (although there were antiwar activists in both parties).  Nor were McNamara’s innovations at the Pentagon distinctively Republican, apart perhaps from his preference for decentralization (a carryover from his management approach as president of Ford Motor Company) and his push to desegregate the military’s off-base housing (a move opposed by Southern Democrats).

McNamara’s sad example does, however, raise some questions for today’s Republicans.  I interviewed McNamara in July 2001 at his office in Washington, DC.  He was much the same as he later appeared in the 2003 documentary “Fog of War”; he may even have been wearing the same tie.  In the course of our interview, McNamara said something which he subsequently refused to allow me to publish in the book that I was writing, in part, about his colleague McGeorge Bundy.  Like McNamara, “Mac” Bundy had served under both presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and (as national security advisor) was another prime mover in the American involvement in Vietnam.  Bundy was also a Republican, and in fact had been part of the “New Conservative” movement in the GOP during the 1950s.  It became obvious during our interview that McNamara blamed Bundy, of all people, for the continuation of the Vietnam war – because Bundy left the Johnson administration in February 1966.  “I’ve often thought,” McNamara told me, “that had Mac Bundy remained in the government, between us we could have stopped the Vietnam war.”

McNamara and Bundy were both skeptical of the decision to escalate U.S. troop involvement in early 1965.  They collaborated on the so-called “fork in the road” memo of January ’65 which contended that the then-current policy toward Vietnam was doomed to failure, and that there needed to be a full debate over whether the U.S. should intensify its military commitment to Vietnam or pull back.  “We leaned toward getting further in,” McNamara recalled, “but we thought both options should be debated.”  With Bundy’s departure from government, McNamara saw himself as an isolated voice, within the top echelon of the administration, calling for a reappraisal of Vietnam policy.  “In May of ‘67 and again in November ‘67, I wrote memos that essentially said we ought to get out of Vietnam, though they didn’t actually state that.  But I failed to push the critical issues to full debate within the top levels of the executive branch.  And I think that if Mac had still been there, sharing many of the same ideas, I think between the two of us we would have brought those issues to a critical debate and ended the war.”

It’s safe to say that of the tens or even hundreds of thousands of critiques that have been written of McNamara and Bundy and other members of the so-called “Best and the Brightest” (David Halberstam’s term for Johnson’s Vietnam advisors in his brilliant and mendacious book), none have criticized them for staying in power rather than leaving.  But in McNamara’s worldview, it was a shirking of responsibility to stand outside the decision-making circles if you had an opportunity to make a contribution inside them.  That was an obligation that crossed party lines and loyalties.  Further, the least effective response a government official could make to a policy with which he or she disagreed was to resign and publicly criticize the policy.  That was not only a breach of faith, it deprived the skeptic of any policy impact and hardened the government in its misguided course.

Today’s Republican Party and the conservative movement as a whole – to the extent that they are separable any more – are in danger of following the example of the New Left during the 1960s.  That is to say, Republicanism is becoming more of a protest movement than a direct participant in the political process.  It seems unlikely that many Republicans will look back to the flawed figure of Robert McNamara as an oracle.  But they might at least consider his contention that the path to power – and the dilemmas and tragedies that accompany responsibility – is through pragmatic participation rather than only principled protest.