Because one day wasn't enough.
Secretary Gates had this to say - not that ringing an endorsement, but it was just a quickie statement pushed out to cover the event, not the eulogy at McNamara's funeral:
Statement by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the death of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara was a patriot and dedicated public servant who took on grave duties during a period of great consequence. Having also held this post in a time of war, I have a special appreciation of the burdens and responsibilities he faced. As America's longest-serving secretary of defense, he implemented visionary reforms that fundamentally changed the way this department does business -- reforms that long outlasted his tenure at the Pentagon. With his keen analytical mind, Secretary McNamara never shied away from the most pressing national and international issues of his time -- above all, matters of war and peace including his own decisive role in shaping that history. My thoughts and prayers are with his family.
Contrast that with this assessment from a two-tour Vietnam vet:
McNamara authored operations research and zero defects for the battlefield....I consider him the most destructive individual to the Military of the 1970's..
One of the "best and brightest" of the Kennedy Days.
May God grant that people of his east coast elitist ilk never influence our country again. (Of course now we have the Chicago gang to worry about.)
During the Vietnam War, McNamara's "keen analytical mind" determined that spreading a line of passive sensors along the DMZ was the most cost-effective means of eliminating NVA infiltration into the South.
A "keen analytical mind" unfettered by the constraints imposed by common sense...
Nicely contrasted. Sadly, the 'elitist ilk' come from many places.
Man. Talk about differing opinions.
Hmmmm... well, Chief, he may well have gotten that one...
Here, these items from the past will show how "brilliant" and in tune with military reality he was:
Eliminating half sizes from boots to save money. Probably didn't kill anyone, just f*kked their feet up permanently, especially the grunts.
Switching to a cheaper ball powder after the M16 was designed and tested for use specifically with IMR type propellents, and that DID kill a whole bunch of soldiers and Marines who got stuck with that mickey mouse rifle.
Project 100,000, where that number of people who could never possibly have gotten into the military at any other time got to be cannon fodder right along with the rest of the Americans sent over to Vietnam. What the hell was this man thinking when he got this bright idea? It was uniformly unsuccessful and many of these folks got starched over there because they weren't bright enough to grasp what was going on around them.
Last but not least, how many millions of people died in Southeast Asia because the U.S. Government screwed that war up by the numbers, even as our military won every significant engagement and destroyed both the VC and NVA as efficient fighting forces, and how many millions live under communism now for that reason?
I ain't gonna miss that turd one little bit.
The man was at best a menace to this country, second only to Carter in that category, but Carter only comes in first because he is still alive and still trying to screw our country up when the situation presents itself.
It failed, it had miserable results, but not all of those results come from lowered standards. Isn't one of the complaints from Vietnam that once a guy got good at his job that he was ready to leave? I'ev heard lately that it takes a Troopie 18 months to really learn his job, and that's only something that's come to be understood in the last 20 years or so.
So, fine, hurl your insults and venom at the man, but at least be reasonable and honest about it. THe military failed in it's training of the extra(and if USMC Steve is right, and only 1% created 99% of the problems, and the retention increaded the over all force by 1/4, well, there's a benefit ain't there?) trouble makers. And that comes back to the culture---wasn 't really ready for citizen-soldiers even though that's what guys like Creighton Arbrams, and his predecessors, believed was necessary for the job.
Hate the man for stuff he deserves to be hated for, not stuff you just feel like dumping on him 'cause you hate him. Honestly, I can dig and find stuff that'd make Marshall look like an a-hole too.
The idea was to use the Armed Forces -- primarily the Army -- to give them job skills so they could become productive members of the Great Society. What McNamara failed to grasp was that there are limited openings in civilian life for unarmed ammo dump guards or people who can throw grenades really short distances.
For you Newbies out there, you had to score a *minimum* of 31 points on the intelligence test in order to be inducted into the draft-era military, which equated to an IQ of approximately 80. Project 100,000 forced the Army to accept people who only scored *10* points.
Aaaaaand after mandating the program, Mack the Knife steadfastly neglected to fund the "job skills" training he blathered about.
If you put him in an infantry partol, you have to spend most of your time making sure he doesn't kill a friendly by accident, and doesn't get himself killed during contact because he's totally unaware of what's going on around him.
Imagine sending a five-year-old into combat. That's what Project 100,000 was all about.
ry, your boss tells you to take a five-year-old kid, feed him and clothe him for two months while you're teaching him how to drive an articulated rig. And you're gonna do it all on *your* dime.
So, whose fault is it after two months when the kid doesn't qualify for an over-the-road CDL?
Even McNamara admitted he dicked things up royally. As time has gone on, history has been less and less kind to McNamara.
I gave him credit for breaking the Ordnance Board - and it was the Ordnance Board, not McNamara, that fornicated the dog with the IMR vice Ball powder issue. Okay.
I also got to deal with Project 100,000 survivors. As in men enlisted under those standards. As in NCOs who were nice men, with limited capabilities, who had troops three times as smart as they were. Some managed, many of them *I* and my compatriots (and the other good NCOs) had to handle the results of. In ways and numbers far out of proportion to their presence.
We weren't doing ourselves any favors there, needing bodies or no. It.Was.Not.A.Good.Idea. Drafting more people, from a qualitative perspective, would have been a better (though not politically) idea. The Auld Soldier admired his draftees, at least the ones who put some effort into making lemonade out of the lemon they'd been handed.
And for some here, who lived through his tenure and the aftermath, a little "I told you so" venting is okay.
These two posts weren't about a reasoned discussion of the McNamara Era. They were petty vengeance and venting by people who suffered genuine harms from his ideas and management style.
And if you read the Viet Vet boards, you'll realize that around here, we've been nice.
Aaaand just to be a teeny bit contrarian myself {g}: The F-111 was a pathetic excuse for a fighter. Very true. But. Once they got the bugs worked out (yes, I know their first Vietnam deployment was botched) the 'Vark turned into an excellent all-weather penetration bomber. Or so I'm told. :) At least we eventually got something useful out of the debacle, albeit the very expensive and long way around... Definitely not the way to run a fighter project. And something good resulted, unlike Project 100k.
The other point is a question, since I'm not deeply informed on this. It is my impression that MacNamara was the one who pushed extensive Army use of the new UH-1, and development of the Air Cavalry. Was that, in fact, what happened?
Not the sort of guy anyone can depend on as a lookout, or a phone talker, or in a gun mount with moving machinery and stuff that goes boom. Too hard to supervise to make him a permanent mess cook. Basically he took up a bunk, and required one reasonalby intelligent sailor to keep an eye on him at all times.
Probalby ended up as a member of Congress. If so, surely a Democrat.
McNamara didn't push the UH-1, since each of the Army's (then-twenty) Divisions was already flying a hundred of them. What he *did* do was tell the Army to form a Transportation Requirements Board to determine if the Army actually *needed* all those expensive helicopters -- he wanted to replace them with trucks. The aviators caught wind of it and -- no surprise -- stuffed the Board with aviators (the Howze Board). After conducting testing that went 'way beyond its original mandate, including forming an entirely new Brigade-sized unit and experimenting with *armed* helicopters, the Howze Board produced a report so detailed and chock full of statistics that McNamara reportedly accepted its findings without even bothering to read it. My tactics IP at Hunter-Stewart was one of the original testers -- he said they scrounged most of their fuel and equipment, and purposely avoided asking for an increase in funding to avoid tipping the bean-counters, because if SecDef "had ever found out the full extent of what they were doing, he would have pulled the plug."
So, ironically, McNamara actually *did* have a hand in the development of the airmobile concept, even though his original intention was to *reduce* the number of helicopters in the Army.
Actually, while there is some fair level of heat in many of these entries, including mine, they are for the most part factual representations of the stupidity this man was responsible for. I seriously doubt the ordnance board would just have dreamed up a total modification of the 5.56 ammo without guidance from the office of the Secretary of Defense, particularly given that his sole concern was cost cutting with absolutely no regard or interest in the potential loss of efficiency or life it might cause. He was more arrogant than MacArthur with even less interest in the results of his actions. And he showed that it was not all that difficult to get around him in some areas such as the helicopter brouhaha mentioned above, so he didn't even know how to control his people either. What a blivet he was.
And ry, I don't know what your problem is, but see someone about it. ANYONE who would attempt to make sense of, let alone defend Project 100,000 is either insane or terminally stupid. There was absolutely no valid reason for it. One does not put morons into the line if one intends to win the war one is in. The correct response to the problem was to end ALL student deferments, and particularly to draft the rich assholes first, so they would have one opportunity to actually do something of value for once in their lives. but then, look at the party responsible for getting us into that war, and the party that got us out of it. NONE of the Project 100,000 troops contributed significantly to the war effort because they just didn't have it to give. And there was no all volunteer military then, nor was this a volunteer experiment, they were drafted. Get with it man.
@To All, as I read through both thread on this subject, there was the use of the word, "elitism". This is a term for both parties, not just one. There will a time when all of history will be opened, then and only then, will we see every thing in context.
But the Ordnance Board actively and dishonestly tried to sabotage test results, etc. And they weren't doing it so much because their rifle was superior (we didn't really get something close to Stoner's actual design until the adoption of the M16A2) as they were doing it because it wasn't their rifle. [Update: Don't take my "long time reader" comment as a snark - I just *lurve* my M1A.]
Sigh. Yet another jackass who thinks that destroying the system that produced the folks who came up with all the nice toys, on all those evil deferements dontchaknow, is the way to go. THis reminds me of the time Chuck Z, in one of his lesser thougtful moments, ripped a researcher for not doing research that Chuck thought lead to helping his boys on the ground, except that the stuff the guy was doing helped perfect the clotting agent someone at UCD came up with and has saved lives on the battlefield. Narrowminded. NArcisstic. Parochial. Sometimes there's simply no living with Uniforms. Terminal assholism, apparently. NO cure, or so I'm told.
Hope nobody in your family has used any of those post-1065 drugs, buckethead, or then you'd be a hypocrite as well as a fool because a good many of the folks who designed and made those drugs were guys on deferements who would've wasted their time not getting the educations needed to do it with. So, you're only using pre-1965 anti-depressants, cancer druge, anti-biotics, and the like right? You drive a dinosaur, right?
Yeah, the solution to a problem is just to screw it up real royal, all in favor of the almighty Grunt. NO sense of context. No sense of anything else being important or even useful. What a jackass.
Apparenly my problem is I don't read from youd jacked up hymnal, Steve. I actually use my brain and, heaven forbid, try to place the decisions in the context in which they happened. But that ain't good enough because it isn't in the approved hymnal.