Nation: McNamara's Many Wars

• Share

(2 of 3)

No Time. As far as the pay-raise issue goes, McNamara was acting in his familiar role of lightning rod for the White House. He was trying to control costs—as do all department heads. Besides the specific effort to hold down the fiscal-1967 budget, the Johnson Administration is committed to keep all wage increases within reasonable bounds.

The troubles with helicopter procurement and the flow of supplies rest more squarely on the Defense Secretary. The helicopter shortage was a miscalculation—one of the few that can be put at McNamara's door—and the seriousness of the logistics snarl did not become apparent to McNamara until November. A well-founded anecdote has it that when McNamara learned the extent of the difficulty at a Saigon briefing, he also discovered that General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp Jr., the Pacific commander, had anticipated the trouble in September.

"Why in hell didn't you tell me?" demanded McNamara, as subordinates of Wheeler and Sharp looked on bug-eyed. "Why, damn it, I could have had the 8,000 logistics men that we need here today—even if I had to go out and pull them in off the street."

McNamara's critics feel that he might have anticipated the problem on his own; after all, a dozen years ago Army officers foretold the difficulties of sus taining a major expeditionary force in Viet Nam as an argument against going to France's aid in the Indochinese war.

Theoretically, a logistical foundation should always be laid before large numbers of troops land, but the war in Viet Nam strays far from the manual. The deteriorating military situation last spring, which led to the huge U.S. buildup, permitted no time for methodical preparation. The fact is that 190,000 troops are now in Viet Nam and performing well, and that most of them were put there in a hurry. The logistical snafu is being gradually unknotted. Most important of all, as McNamara says, "we have stopped losing the war."

Flabby Militia. Despite all the controversy that has grown up around McNamara since he took office five years ago this month, he has not lost many home-front wars either. He has become the strongest Defense Secretary the U.S. has ever had, achieving something his predecessors despaired of or only dreamed of: making the sprawling military establishment responsive to overall direction. He has brought scientific deliberation into the previously haphazard selection and development of major weapons, imposed stern economy measures while increasing fighting strength. He is reshaping the Army reserves and National Guard from an antiquated, flabby militia into a modern, lean strike force. He has exported his brand of innovation to NATO, helped give the alliance a more effective fighting force.