Word: mcnamaras
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...Leathernecks who set up the McNamara line-the string of forward posts just below Viet Nam's Demilitarized Zone-used to describe their shell-pocked bases as "machines for killing Marines." The wry echo of Le Corbusier's famous line was morbidly appropriate. To counter enemy infiltration into South Viet Nam, the outposts had to be close to the DMZ-and therefore within easy range of Communist artillery in North Viet Nam and of mortars and rockets illegally positioned inside the six-mile-wide zone...
Last week, in a further Vietnamization of the war, the last of the bases that made up the McNamara line were turned over to the South Vietnamese army (ARVN). Six of the seven bases along the 40-mile stretch below the DMZ, from the South China Sea to the blue-tinged Annamite mountains of western Quang Tri province, are now manned by ARVN 1st Infantry troops and Marines. In a month or two, G.I.s will be pulled out of the seventh position, an outpost near the coast called Alpha 1, and the U.S. 5th Mechanized Division will leave its headquarters...
...McNamara agonized much more than he let on. The day after the Viet Cong raid on Pleiku, Hébert asked him why the U.S. could not even defend an airbase. "Because we don't have enough people," replied McNamara. "Why don't you get them?" demanded Hébert. "Because more men would be killed." "How many?" "Two hundred and fifty thousand," said McNamara with finality. It was a price that he was unwilling to pay. He wanted to have it both ways: victory and humanity. It was not an easy mix, and even...
Eventually, he would pace his bedroom far into the night reflecting on the dying Americans and Vietnamese. Sensing the shift in mood, Columnist Joe Alsop pronounced him a splendid "defense minister" but lacking the innate toughness required in a "war minister." After McNamara appeared at a congressional hearing in summer 1967 and criticized the bombing policy as futile, Johnson griped that he had gone "dove," and arranged for him to be appointed president of the World Bank...
Throughout his career as Defense Secretary, McNamara the technician seemed to be at war with McNamara the humanist. The man of supreme self-confidence was more of a Hamlet than anyone knew-torn between technocratic and humanistic impulses and afraid to go too far either way. If he had swung in one direction, would he have been more successful? Even McNamara could not answer that one. Probably no humanist could have brought the Pentagon under control, and no technocrat could conduct the Viet...