McNamara compared to Kerry

[john5746]

Many vets and people are mad at Kerry because he faught to end the Vietnam conflict. Even he regrets some of the words he used, but most of it was stories he had been told, probably from other vets.

 

Contrast this to McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam war, who says he knew all along the war was a mistake, yet kept silent and kept increasing the conflict. I don't know if he really knew from the beginning, but I am sure at some point he did know it was a mistake, yet keep quite and stay the course.

 

Should we frown upon those that tried to end the war or those that kept it going, even when they felt it was a mistake? McNamara says the Iraq conflict is also a mistake, but if he were in the Bush Administration, he would tow the party line. I wonder if Colin Powell and others are doing this.

[budullewraagh]

powell is certainly following suit. if you have looked into cheney's stupid zealotry, any references to powell involved him opposing cheney. powell didn't speak at the convention either

[Phi for All]

One of the things I've always held against McNamara was going against Sen. Symington's recommendation to unify the military under a single Chief of Staff, abolishing the JCS. I've always felt it was stupid to have 3 different branches of the military spending taxpayer dollars to go after every buck allocated to defense. It's triple the paperwork, triple the staff and I'm just not sure it's necessary to compartmentalize our own forces to such an extent.

 

I know McNamara did it for the same reasons any good businessman would have in taking over in a time of tension. You don't want to change things too radically just before things get hot. But I've often wondered how much more effective our forces would be if we had soldiers who knew about ships and soldiers who knew about tanks and soldiers who knew how to fly planes, and they were all United States Defenders, instead of having internal rivalries and lack of fiscal cohesion between Navy, Army and Air Force.

 

Does anybody know if Kerry is planning any radical overhauls of the military in this respect?