Prevention?...at what cost?

Mr. Robert S. McNamara passed away this week at 93. And in light of all famous, infamous, and/or notorious deaths being completely eclipsed by the passing of Michael Jackson and the onslaught of media coverage surrounding it, I've seen little more than brief (if not disregarding) obits and sidebars circulating through the media about this milestone. The King of Pop's talent and curious lifestyle gained the attention of millions. So too did the incisive decisions of Mr. McNamara affect millions of lives and help set the United States on a new trajectory; one of a war lost, civil unrest, and a loss of reliance upon elected officials.

My education of Mr. McNamara is short. My interest stemmed from research about the Vietnam war done some 10 years ago, and culminated in the examination of Errol Morris' illuminating documentary, THE FOG OF WAR. The film pieces together direct interviews between Mr. Morris and Mr. McNamara with archival footage of Mr. McNamara's childhood, college career, service during WWII and time in office as the Secretary of Defense. Mr. McNamara narrates his story through the telling of lessons learned from the war. Amidst the revels of triumph (Cuban Missle Crisis) and grief of defeat (Bay of Pigs) there are candid, poignant moments that provide the viewer with a sense of introspective, pensive thought on behalf of an older and (perhaps) wiser McNamara.

Either that, or Mr. McNamara is so savagely cunning with his remorseful facade that nothing more is illustrated than the duality of man. In fact, he himself had called out this trait in a third person retrospective of what he would have said during his acceptance speech upon winning (ironically) the Medal of Freedom in 1968. "You are thinking this man is duplicitous, you are thinking that he has held things close to his chest, you are thinking that he did not respond fully to the desires and wishes of the American people." He was either so moved by the award of the medal from President Johnson, or so frazzeled and disillusioned by his seven-year service to the administrations that he pardoned himself from speaking during the engagement.

Critics have called him nothing more than a bean counter (his formal education in accounting), a war monger who saw the world in black and white and people as numbers; figures that could rightly be extinguished as a means to an end. And while his name will forever be linked to Vietnam and it's bordering countries, his hand in the bombing campaigns over Japan during WWII were equally as tragic. He laments in the film, "we were behaving like war criminals...if we lost the war, we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals."

His practice, by his own claim, was prevention; averting nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as war with China through Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of lives for the prevention of further escalation.