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Did the United States win or lose the Vietnam War?
Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense from 1961-1968, under Kennedy and Johnson. “He oversaw hundreds of military missions, thousands of nuclear weapons and billions of dollars in military spending and foreign arms sales.”

Criticisms: -During the Cuban Missile Crisis he was advising President Kennedy to bomb Cuba. However, in a documentary called //The Fog of War,// McNamara described himself as, “as trying to help Kennedy avoid war with Russia.” -McNamara didn’t think the war could be won, however he never told anyone until he was out of office. Many people got angry at this fact and asked, “How could a Secretary of Defense send soldiers to a war he did not believe could be won?” -Others also questioned why it toke him so long to speak out against the war? -One of McNamara’s goals was to “build an electronic barrier across the demilitarized zone that separated North and South Vietnam.” Many soldiers called it the McNamara Line. “The barrier proved to be worthless.” It was attacked by North Vietnamese, and construction of the barrier was ultimately stopped because of the destruction and cost.

Goals: -McNamara’s first goal as Secretary of Defense was to “defuse the myth of the missile gap.” In Kennedy’s presidential campaign, JFK stated that the US was weaker than the Soviets when it came to nuclear power. It took McNamara three weeks to determine that there was a gap. However, he found that the gap was in our favor, and the Soviets did not in fact have a more powerful strategic nuclear arsenal than the US. -“Fine-tune American plans for nuclear war.” McNamara made a plan that if a nuclear attack by the Soviets fell on the US, “America's retaliation would not target the enemy's civilian populations, but would instead target their military bases and installations.”-He wanted to tame the pentagon, which is in fact the Secretary of Defense’s job, but none of his predecessors were able to do so.-With what would soon become one of his downfalls, McNamara wanted to “build an electronic barrier across the demilitarized zone that separated North and South Vietnam”-Another goal was to “transform the armed services.” This eventually led to the increase in soldiers in Vietnam.

Methods they used to share message, examples -In the documentary, //The Fog of War,// McNamara commented on the Cuban Missile Crisis saying, “In the end, we lucked out – it was luck that prevented nuclear war.” He made this statement 40 years after the event.-In a speech to NATO foreign ministers in Paris in 1962, McNamara stated, “But after a full nuclear exchange such as the Soviet bloc and the NATO alliance are now able to carry out, the fatalities might well exceed 150 million.” He continues to talk about what would happen in a nuclear war stating, “The devastation would be complete and victory a meaningless term.” McNamara did not believe in nuclear war. He saw that if either side (US or Soviets) hit the other, it would be pointless because of the death and destruction it would cause. -As McNamara began to see that the war in Vietnam was pointless, he sent a letter to President Johnson pleading with him to negotiate peace instead of continuing the war.

In a sense, McNamara was not very public with his methods. He preferred to stay quiet talking only to those he needed to. For the time period during the Vietnam War, it was not smart to stay quiet. He never shared with the public his opinion, until after the fact in interviews and his book, //In Retrospect//. American’s trusted him, and felt betrayed when they learned he didn’t believe in the war either, yet continued to send out troops. McNamara’s goals were practical in the sense that he did what he had to do. By taming the Pentagon, he was able to make the military more efficient which was needed at the time, and was unable to be done by his predecessors. His look on nuclear war was spot on with a lot of Americans. He shared his belief against nuclear war, and even prepared a retaliation if an attack ever did occur. At the time, nuclear war was in the minds of Americans all that time and he helped add a bit of security.

Evaluate successes: The reason for the growth in troops was because of McNamara’s urging. The numbers rose from thousands, to half a million in the early 60s. However by the mid-60s he was beginning to have doubts about the war. While he was still the Secretary of Defense, he was never worried about “the morality of the war, but about whether it could be won.” He stated that the war was “wrong, terribly wrong.” As he saw the downfall of the war, any attempts to make things right were gone. Many recall him as being “often aloof and occasionally arrogant.” This left him with few allies in the Pentagon. He even lost the trust of President Johnson who thought McNamara was trying to help Robert Kennedy run the 1968 election. With this in mind, Johnson announced that McNamara would give up his post to run the World Bank. McNamara did have a few successes as Secretary of Defense, including making the military more efficient, eliminating waste, and redundancy. He also “enlarged the defense secretary’s role, handling foreign diplomacy and the dispatch of troops to enforce civil rights in the South.” Overall, McNamara knew Vietnam was a failure and has struggled with the guilt of sending men to Vietnam. “He acknowledged that he failed to force the military to produce a rigorous justification for its strategy and tactics, misunderstood Asia in general and Vietnam in particular, and kept the war going long after he realized it was futile because he lacked the courage or the ability to turn Johnson around.”McNamara stated, “The American failure in Vietnam was seeing the enemy through the prism of the cold war, as a domino that would topple the nations of Asia if it fell.”

Works cited:

Lippman, Thomas W.. "Defense Secretary, Architect of U.S. Involvement in Vietnam Robert McNamara Dies." //Washington Post: Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis//. N.p., 7 July 2009. Web. 1 May 2012. <[]>.

"McNamara Line - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." //Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia//. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 May 2012. <[]>.

"Robert McNamara." //NNDB: Tracking the entire world//. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 May 2012. <[]>. Weiner, Tim. "Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War, Dies at 93 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com." //NY Times Advertisement//. N.p., 6 July 2009. Web. 1 May 2012. .