President Kennedy elevated “whiz kid” Robert McNamara from president of The Ford Motor Company to Secretary of his Department of Defense, this during a time of accelerating US involvement in Vietnam. Today, McNamara is remembered as that war’s chief architect and disciple—as a brilliant man whose damn-the-facts zealotry fated this nation to staggering human and financial losses.
Condi Rice is another whiz kid lifted from outside the Beltway (Stanford U. provost) to serve, first, as President Bush’s National Security Advisor and, today, as U.S. Secretary of State. Described as “brilliant” by many, Rice is arguably co-architect of the U.S. War on Terror and has recently declared that the U.S. must continue its war in Iraq, lest terrorism tighten its grip worldwide. Shrugging off increasingly gloomy intelligence reports and gathering bipartisan dissent alleging a war with no coherent objective or exit strategy, she is said to have an almost religious fervor in her belief of continued U.S. fighting.
I see Condi Rice as destined to be remembered as this generation’s Robert McNamara—as a person whose book smarts are no match for her hubris and blind obedience. That said, I believe history should judge her more harshly than Mac. Bush is too dim-witted to grasp the strategic and tactical realities of the Iraq quagmire. Rice isn’t. Rice–a student of history–apparently learned nothing from McNamara’s mistakes and instead continues to play cheerleader to a hopeless cause.
I’d tend to analogize Colin Powell to Robert McNamara. Both clearly disagreed with their respective superiors regarding the conduct and ultimate goals and conclusion strategy to the main conflicts at hand, and both accepted grave moral abd ethical compromises under the assumption that it was better to remain in place and server the chief executive rather than to step aside and wash hands of the matter. Both participated in the suppression and whitewashing of data which would have undermined the argument for engaging in conflict (Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction for Powell, the Gulf of Tonkin incident for Mac), and both left office half in quiet disgrace, half in forced resignation. (McNamara claims to have had a conversation with former editor Kay Graham in which he said regarding his resignation, “Even to this day, Kay, I don’t know whether I quit or was fired?” to which she responded, “You’re out of your mind. Of course you were fired.”)
Both were smart, highly calculating strategists with a strong background in systems analysis and a penchant for advocating the use of overwhelming force in engagement of war. Both publically cautioned against the need for war, contradicted their chief exec in a contentious manner, and ultimately kow-towed to remain in position. Condi Rice may be smart, but she’s towed the party line all the way without any appearance of dissent or internal conflict.
I won’t segue into comparisons between Johnson and Bush other than to note that both entered into and unilaterally widened unnecessary, expensive, and ultimately futile wars with limited support for the mudfoot on the front lines, and did so with aid, however reluctantly, of their respective SecDefs.
It has to be Donald Rumsfeld. He is the architecht of the “transformation” of the military by specialized training and personnel reduction which has left the army ill-suited to the manpower-heavy task of occupying Iraq. Based on these ideas, he insisted on repeated reductions the force levels of the Iraq invasion force during planning. He aggressively sought and was granted full control over post-invasion operations, and then failed to plan effectively for them. He ignored the commentary of knowledgable analysts that that post-war occupation would require hundreds of thousands of troops.
In short, his erroneous “systems analysis” controlled the conduct of the war and post-war activities without any realistic feed-back from knowledgable field commanders. He intimidated his generals into (I believe in a good faith effort to conform to the wishes of their superior) giving him plans and estimates that had fewer forces than were realistically needed. When his subordinates spoke forthrightly he either ignored them or shut them out. (see Shinkesi, Gen. Eric).
He (along with Cheney, Wolfowitz and others) sidelined Colin Powell and repudiated the Powell doctrine, going for the minimum number of troops rather than overwhelming force, so I don’t think the conduct of the Iraq war and aftermath can be blamed on Powell. Likewise, Rice was still a marginal (though more important) player. It has to be Donald Rumsfeld and his military decisions that will be likened to McNamara.
My recollection is that Mac was gung-ho, harbored no lingering doubts of the war throughout Kennedy’s administration and well into Johnson’s, and certainly never expressed them. Perhaps the memory fails, but my impression is that Mac was far more a true believer than Rumsfeld II ever was. This changed about 18-24 months before Tet.
My recollection is that a skeptical Powell was quickly marginalized by Rumsfeld and his neocon lieutenants. Condi then sold the war like an Amway rep. Admittedly, however, it’s hard to keep track of Greek tragedies with so many doomed players darting in and out, but Powell certainly knew he was peddling junkware when he did his UN sales job.
The Mac-Rummy analogy seems compelling, at least given the context presented above. Rummy has always given that “I’m channeling Mac” vibe. Bad person to imitate.
It’s too early to know just what Rice thinks, but her “We’ve made a thousand mistakes” glitch spoke volumes.
The truth is that there is no current comparison to McNamara. It’s always tempting to assume that the roles are the same and the actors just change, but that’s not the case here. Comparing Robert McNamara with Colin Powell is like comparing Lee Iacocca with Michael Schumacher; they may both be vaguely connected to the same enterprise but they’re completely different sorts of people.
McNamara was the absolute, ultimate inconic example of post-WWII scientific management and its application to government. This was, bear in mind, an era when people quite honestly believed that computers could be used to perfectly predict human behaviour and stuff like that. The siginificance of McNamara is that he brough to the White House the belief that the government, and a war, could be managed the ay a corporation is managed; that everything is measurable and can be micromanaged down to the last detail, like running a factory under a Six Sigma program. This kind of stuff worked well in some areas, like nuclear deterrence, but as we all know, did not work so well in Vietnam.
Today, we understand the concept of chaos, that such things cannot be won through micromanagement if the overall concept is flawed. Then, they didn’t know that.
Powell, really, is in no way like McNamara; he does not have the same background, has had virtually no similar philosophical effect on national policy, and is nowhere near McNamara’s intellectual equal. He has no more skill in systems analysis or organizational theory than almost any senior executive at any large company. Powell is a career military man who rose through the ranks more by being skilled at playing the politics and sensing the way the wind was blowing than any unusual military genius.
Furthermore, if what the apologists are saying is true, his approach to Iraq is not remotely similar to McNamara’s history with Vietnam. McNamara was an enthusiastic proponent of the Vietnam War from the beginning, only later souring on it because Johnson rejected his advice. Powell, conversely, was supposedly an opponent of the Iraq War but went along with it because it was good for his career to do so, as well as just a sense of personal loyalty, according to some sources.
Condaleeza Rice is nothing more than an empty skirt who has been totally bullied by both Cheney and Rumsfeld. To think that she has any real influence on foreign policy is ludicrous.
Don’t know about empty skirt, but I agree I can’t really think of any policy or decision that is associated with Rice in the same way the Iraq War is associated with Cheney and the program to modernize the military is associated with Rumsfield. Rice comes across more as an intelligent spokesperson for the administrations actions. Indeed Bush’s foreign policy during the 2000 campaign, which was supposedly largly crafted by Rice, has little or nothing to do with current US policy.
Of course who knows what ideas actually come from where. For all I know Rice is the mastermind behind everything that comes out of the Whitehouse, but for an outsider looking in, it doesn’t look that way.