Sic Transit Robert McNamara – 1916 – 2009

Boy, they just keep dying, huh? This time it’s Robert Strange McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense during much of the Vietnam War.

McNamara was an intersting fellow. Very intelligent, very capable, but clearly someone who, at least for a while, believed his own hype and thought he (and the Kennedy/Johnson administrations), could do no wrong.

He did other things in his life as well, of course, including work during WWII, running the World Bank, and other things, but Vietnam will always overshadow everything else, rather like how Watergate overshadows everything else Nixon did.

For those who want to learn more about McNamara’s complex legacy, I strongly suggest the documentry film The Fog of War. It’s McNamara talking about a number of things, including a mea cupala over Vietnam. It’s really fascinating and I highly recommend it.