McNamara, Vietnam, Iraq
I have a vague idea that Robert McNamara has always been wrong about matters that were important from his point of view. At Ford in the 50s he panicked at the growth of small, cheaply made cars in Europe--and tried to get Ford to build something like a Volkswagen Beetle, such as the one he drove. As advisor to LBJ, he recommended gradual escalation in Vietnam, supposedly "calibrating" a response as needed, and measuring results by the body count. At the World Bank he was responsible for large loans to Third World countries that were later found to be unsustainable; crippling burdens were imposed on these countries in an attempt to make them pay.
So maybe in disavowing what he did in Vietnam, and in criticizing the Bush approach in Iraq, he is wrong again?
The gist of this story is that the U.S. is making some of the same crucial mistakes in Iraq that it did in Vietnam. Some of the points are a bit vague--but then, McNamara is almost 90.
It's best to know a lot about local cultures before sending in troops. Having an alliance with other major powers will help with that. Huh? Foreign leaders can be removed for human rights violations; but unilateral action should only take place when U.S. soil is under attack. The U.N. should play a big role.
Surely Bush's defenders have a point is saying the U.N. doesn't have much of a track record in going up against existing governments of sovereign states. The presumption of the U.N., as of many treaties, is that all governments are equally legitimate. Of course this isn't true. The U.N. has lots of experience at peace-keeping, but very little at war-making, or trying to cool down a truly hot situation.
McNamara has a lot of faith in the International Criminal Court. It remains to be seen whether that court can deal with a large number of individuals, from different countries, on time frames that will help those countries move forward with new regimes.
Update: This sentence by Doug Saunders of the Globe, not by McNamara, does not inspire confidence: "The Iraq action, which would have been conducted in some form or another at some point under any imaginable government, would have been far better conceived if its executors had read Mr. McNamara's works instead of the Book of Revelation."
By comparison, here is a cogent criticism of the Bush approach in Iraq: the war against terror is quite different from deciding to displace failed regimes; the latter can be managed by deterrence, and in fact can be used to weaken (probably not eradicate) international terrorists.
(Link to Hit and Run, where Jeff Taylor, in criticizing Perle and Frum, cites Jeffrey Record, a professor at the U.S. Air Force's Air War College and one time staffer to Sen. Sam Nunn).
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