Twenty-eight years after departing the Pentagon as secretary of defense, Robert McNamara gives us his book, "In Retrospect." Dubbed one of the "best and brightest," the whiz kid takes full advantage of 20/20 hindsight, confesses errors and still doesn't understand the Vietnam War that he so miserably micro-managed.
He brought his cold, indifferent and aloof number-crunching management methods from his position as CEO of Ford Motors (producing the Edsel) with him to the Pentagon staff. This management style was a disaster when applied to a war 12,000 miles away. Not ever knowing the difference between managing and leading, the ultimate arm-chair warrior directed the daily prosecution of the war, including personally picking targets for the U.S. Air Force.When my country asked me to risk my life in Vietnam, I had every right to believe two things. First, my country was convinced that the effort in Vietnam was a just cause and, second, that my country would make it possible for the war to be won. I spent two years in Vietnam seeing war and combat on a daily basis, part of that time as the commanding officer of an assault helicopter company. I also had the unpleasant duty of writing to families in the United States and explaining that one of their loved ones serving with me had paid the ultimate price in heroic service of this country. A letter-writing duty McNamara evidently missed.
My questions then to the former secretary of defense are these:
1. Did you really think your experience at Ford Motors gave you far better insight than the professional military in how to daily prosecute a war?
2. If you really did have such serious reservations over our involvement in Vietnam in the mid '60s, why didn't you resign your Cabinet position in protest?
3. Your ego-enhancing book tour is drawing flak and opening old wounds. What is its real agenda?
The 11 lessons from the Vietnam War noted in the book badly miss the mark, primarily because the basic premise that the war could not be won was fatally flawed. From my perspective, some of the real lessons from the Vietnam conflict are these:
1. Don't commit the United States' military to an armed conflict if you don't intend to win.
2. Once committed to conflict, allow the military to conduct the war.
3. Rules of engagement must allow pursuit of the enemy - there can be no safe sanctuaries.
4. For major conflicts, the reserve forces must be called up early and become involved.
Karl Von Clausewitz's (1780-1831) lessons on war are equally valid today when he wrote: "No one starts a war - or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so - without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it."
Ellen Goomdan in her recent editorial (Deseret News, May 7) captured my feeling of McNamara and his book when she stated: "In the end, we are reminded of the other lesson of Vietnam. The sorry, infuriating, bewildering reality that the best and the brightest can still succeed brilliantly at analysis and fail utterly at understanding."
Sorry, Mr. Secretary, you still just don't get it.
Donald G. Andrews
Colonel U.S. Army (Retired)
Provo