Charles Drago Wrote:And so is all he took to the grave.

Quote:The Washington Daily News, 21 June 1965, p. 27

McNamara’s Progress

By Richard Starnes

In the euphoric prehistory of the Johnson Administration, Big Daddy was fond of telling his callers that his two most valuable legacies from President Kennedy were John McCone and Robert McNamara.

Mr. McCone, now departed Washington, was head of the CIA, and it is known that his view of the outside world colored Mr. Johnson’s profound ignorance of the same subject in the months immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy.

But Mr. McNamara was always a close second, and with Mr. McCone’s orderly retreat to his business interests on the West Coast it became an article of faith that the Defense Secretary with the hayseed hair-do had become Mr. Johnson’s right bower and most influential adviser. He is to this day, and each fresh disaster in Viet Nam strengthens him in the role.

The reason for this is to be found in the nature of the two men. Both are positivists, neither has time for subtle shading, both are profoundly impatient with facts that cannot be hammered into submission. Mr. McNamara’s enormous ability to give no information and his ready facility with numbers commend him to the President, whose thrift and careful husbandry are legendary.

These same brisk characteristics commend themselves to Congress. Insoluble problems are an affront to men whose guiding philosophy is that there is no human ill that cannot be cured by the timely application of an appropriation poultice. Mr. McNamara bespeaks all the homely virtues that are beloved by our lawgivers – industry, incisiveness, enterprise, and no time for frills or imponderables.

It made a great deal of plain old meat-and-potatoes good sense, for example, to contend that the American function in Viet Nam was to train and advise an army devoted to the defense of a legally ordained government. The same thing had worked in Greece and elsewhere, and there was no sensible reason it wouldn’t work in Southeast Asia.

In October, 1963, Mr. McNamara reported to the National Security Council that “the military program in South Viet Nam has made progress and is sound in principle.” Pierre Salinger, then White House Press Secretary, added that “Secretary McNamara and Gen. Taylor reported their judgement that the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965, altho there may be a continuing requirement for a limited number of U.S. training personnel.

“They reported that by the end of this year the U.S. program for training should have progressed to the point where 1000 U.S. military personnel assigned to South Viet Nam can be withdrawn.”

Early in 1964, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. McNamara repeated this optimistic theme, asserting “that it is reasonable to expect that after four years of such training we should be able gradually to withdraw certain of our training personnel.”

And, scarcely 11 months ago, McNamara was able to report a “dramatic drop” in South Vietnamese army desertion. Today – and even before the Viet Cong’s monsoon offensive began chewing up battalion-sized chunks of South Vietnamese troops – desertions had risen (dramatically is the only proper adjective) until losses via this route averaged from 20 to 35 per cent every 90 days.

At his press conference last week, Mr. McNamara said “about 100, 000 men are currently being added” to South Vietnamese forces. It is not clear if this number is in addition to the 160,000 figure most recently cherished in the Pentagon’s manpower numbers game, or if it represents a scaling-down of that figure.

But in truth it doesn’t make any difference. Three years ago, when optimism was oozing from every high command pore in the American apparatus in Saigon, U.S. “advisers” in the field were complaining that South Vietnamese troops were frequently unwilling to fight.

All the soothing syrup in the Pentagon’s pharmacopoeia can’t hide the leering, evil reality of war in Southeast Asia: If large-scale fighting is to be had in that jungle hell, American troops by the hundreds of thousands are going to have to do it.

Paul Rigby Wrote:A rather good sketch of the essential RSM at the zenith of his influence:

Quote:The Washington Daily News, 21 June 1965, p. 27

McNamara’s Progress

By Richard Starnes

In the euphoric prehistory of the Johnson Administration, Big Daddy was fond of telling his callers that his two most valuable legacies from President Kennedy were John McCone and Robert McNamara.

Mr. McCone, now departed Washington, was head of the CIA, and it is known that his view of the outside world colored Mr. Johnson’s profound ignorance of the same subject in the months immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy.

But Mr. McNamara was always a close second, and with Mr. McCone’s orderly retreat to his business interests on the West Coast it became an article of faith that the Defense Secretary with the hayseed hair-do had become Mr. Johnson’s right bower and most influential adviser. He is to this day, and each fresh disaster in Viet Nam strengthens him in the role.

The reason for this is to be found in the nature of the two men. Both are positivists, neither has time for subtle shading, both are profoundly impatient with facts that cannot be hammered into submission. Mr. McNamara’s enormous ability to give no information and his ready facility with numbers commend him to the President, whose thrift and careful husbandry are legendary.

These same brisk characteristics commend themselves to Congress. Insoluble problems are an affront to men whose guiding philosophy is that there is no human ill that cannot be cured by the timely application of an appropriation poultice. Mr. McNamara bespeaks all the homely virtues that are beloved by our lawgivers – industry, incisiveness, enterprise, and no time for frills or imponderables.

It made a great deal of plain old meat-and-potatoes good sense, for example, to contend that the American function in Viet Nam was to train and advise an army devoted to the defense of a legally ordained government. The same thing had worked in Greece and elsewhere, and there was no sensible reason it wouldn’t work in Southeast Asia.

In October, 1963, Mr. McNamara reported to the National Security Council that “the military program in South Viet Nam has made progress and is sound in principle.” Pierre Salinger, then White House Press Secretary, added that “Secretary McNamara and Gen. Taylor reported their judgement that the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965, altho there may be a continuing requirement for a limited number of U.S. training personnel.

“They reported that by the end of this year the U.S. program for training should have progressed to the point where 1000 U.S. military personnel assigned to South Viet Nam can be withdrawn.”

Early in 1964, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. McNamara repeated this optimistic theme, asserting “that it is reasonable to expect that after four years of such training we should be able gradually to withdraw certain of our training personnel.”

And, scarcely 11 months ago, McNamara was able to report a “dramatic drop” in South Vietnamese army desertion. Today – and even before the Viet Cong’s monsoon offensive began chewing up battalion-sized chunks of South Vietnamese troops – desertions had risen (dramatically is the only proper adjective) until losses via this route averaged from 20 to 35 per cent every 90 days.

At his press conference last week, Mr. McNamara said “about 100, 000 men are currently being added” to South Vietnamese forces. It is not clear if this number is in addition to the 160,000 figure most recently cherished in the Pentagon’s manpower numbers game, or if it represents a scaling-down of that figure.

But in truth it doesn’t make any difference. Three years ago, when optimism was oozing from every high command pore in the American apparatus in Saigon, U.S. “advisers” in the field were complaining that South Vietnamese troops were frequently unwilling to fight.

All the soothing syrup in the Pentagon’s pharmacopoeia can’t hide the leering, evil reality of war in Southeast Asia: If large-scale fighting is to be had in that jungle hell, American troops by the hundreds of thousands are going to have to do it.