{"id":6,"date":"2010-10-22T15:17:09","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T15:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/?p=6"},"modified":"2010-11-12T02:21:17","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T02:21:17","slug":"bound-by-numbers-mcnamara%e2%80%99s-attempt-to-influence-the-post-vietnam-war-discourse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/2010\/10\/22\/bound-by-numbers-mcnamara%e2%80%99s-attempt-to-influence-the-post-vietnam-war-discourse\/","title":{"rendered":"Bound By Numbers: Robert McNamara Remembers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_7\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-7   \" style=\"margin: 10px\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/files\/2010\/10\/Krusell-image-300x187.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"240\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robert S. McNamara               Courtesy of the Library of Congress<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Robert S. McNamara served as the Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. \u00a0In 1967 McNamara changed his position on the war in Vietnam and began advocating a draw down of American troops in the war-torn region. \u00a0McNamara made his switch from war hawk to dove, unusual for a Secretary of Defense, based on a mathematical analysis of the deteriorating situation.\u00a0 In his article, \u201cBound By Numbers: McNamara\u2019s Attempt to Influence the Post-Vietnam War Discourse,\u201d Brian Krussell relies on McNamara\u2019s various post-war reflections to argue that the secretary&#8217;s perennial focus on numbers ultimately prevented him from ever truly coming to terms with his contributions to the American fiasco in Vietnam. \u00a0 Though McNamara experienced a change of opinion that led to what appeared to be a principled resignation, Krussel contends that McNamara\u2019s reversal \u201cunderlined a shift in calculation, not an emotional or moralist reassessment.\u201d \u00a0Krussell also faults McNamara\u2019s subsequent post-war apologies as being similarly detached. In reflections such as <em>In Retrospect<\/em> (1995) or the documentary <em>The Fog of War<\/em> (2003), McNamara attempted to explain his Vietnam-era mistakes in policy-making in ways which Krussel characterizes as \u201cself-serving.\u201d Rather than recognizing the inherent irrationality of war, McNamara continued to remain &#8220;bound by numbers&#8221; until the bitter end.<\/p>\n<p><em>This article has been adapted from a paper originally submitted to <\/em><em>Prof. Pinsker\u2019s US Diplomatic History class (HIST 382) during fall semester 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Go to <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/files\/2010\/11\/Krusell-REVISED.doc\">\u201cBound By Numbers: McNamara\u2019s Attempt to Influence the Post-Vietnam War Discourse\u201d by Brian Krussell<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert S. McNamara served as the Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. \u00a0In 1967 McNamara changed his position on the war in Vietnam and began advocating a draw down of American troops in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/2010\/10\/22\/bound-by-numbers-mcnamara%e2%80%99s-attempt-to-influence-the-post-vietnam-war-discourse\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":500,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2882,2852],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/500"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}