Word: war
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...many of his critics and contemporaries, Robert S. McNamara will forever and singularly be known as the supremely rational and self-confident defense secretary who irreparably plunged the United States into the Vietnam War, even while believing that the conflict was not winnable...
...McNamara, who endowed a Kennedy School lecture series entitled The Robert McNamara Lecture on War and Peace, died on Monday at age 93 at his home in Washington. He served as defense secretary for Presidents John F. Kennedy '40 and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968, during which half a million American soldiers were sent to war in the jungles of Vietnam and hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs were dropped. While McNamara had said early on that he was "pleased to be identified" with the war, his confidence in the military effort steadily deteriorated, albeit not publicly...
...broke down in tears, in front of the President and the cameras," said Marvin L. Kalb, a Kennedy School professor who, as a former journalist, knew McNamara personally. "It was a sad thing to observe, for somebody who was so confident that he knew how to run the war, to leave in tears and in full awareness that he had failed...
...became heavily involved with efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation, and he spoke and traveled widely in his later life denouncing America's role and his own role in Vietnam. He even wrote a memoir indicting American policy in Vietnam and was featured in the acclaimed documentary, "The Fog of War...
...despite these efforts and his attempts to share the lessons that he had learned in office, some continue to feel that McNamara ought to have denounced more forcefully and publicly the war while he was in power. His failure to do so and his failure to save thousands of American lives, critics argue, can never be compensated...