Robert McNamara's Role in "The Fog of War"

I've watched this documentary a number of times now and it seems to be saying that the Vietnam War was all Johnson, not McNamara. There are audiotapes played of conversations with him (McNamara) and Kennedy talking about withdrawal, then Kennedy is killed, Johnson takes over, and the audiotapes are of Johnson pressuring for stepped up involvement over McNamara's apparent objections (or at least reservations).

I was only just being born when Johnson was firing McNamara. So, any people reading this who were around and following events as they were happening, tell me: What's the real story regarding McNamara and Vietnam?

(First tried posting in GD but no one was responding. Maybe I'll have better luck here, eventually.)

If the Vietnam War was all Johnson, why did it become a wedge issue between McNamara and his son? The following may not answer your questions but it is a little glimpse into what was going on behind the scene - with his family life, anyway. From his son's perspective, Robert McNamara was pro war.

The other Mr. McNamara

Raised during his father’s war, a Winters organic farmer cultivates fields and minds

By Cosmo Garvin

It's barely a footnote in the Errol Morris documentary The Fog of War, but for one brief moment, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara dwells on the toll that the Vietnam War took on his own family life. He matter-of-factly notes that his wife and children were opposed to the war that he directed under the Johnson and Kennedy administrations. Then McNamara explains that the stress became so great for his family that his wife Margaret and teenage son both contracted painful stomach ulcers.

It's a detail that hardly merits a mention. After all, the film is concerned with much more horrible and tragic developments of the mid-20th century: the firebombing of Japan, the near nuclear holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the millions of deaths in Vietnam.

But that footnote does hint at the lessons one of the other McNamaras drew from the war and social upheaval of the 1960s and early 1970s. For Craig McNamara, the stomach ulcer he developed at age 17 was just the physical manifestation of the confusion and frustration he felt toward a society seriously out of whack.

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"I felt very disconnected from our society," he said. Not unaware--I was acutely aware of what was happening. It was just very disturbing and very confusing. When your parents and your society are moving in a direction that you, as a 19-year-old, feel is incorrect, what can you do about it?"

Despite his opposition to the war, Craig--then enrolled at Stanford University--refused a student deferment and promptly was drafted. He reported to the Oakland Draft Board for what he called the "humiliating experience" of the draft-board examination. But the ulcers caused Craig to be bumped from a draft classification of 1-A to 4-F--useless to the Pentagon.

Feeling profoundly disconnected from the policies of his father and the U.S. government, and not quite sure what to do with his life, Craig left school and traveled throughout Latin America. There, he said, he learned a lot about the relationship between land, agriculture and political power.

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http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-05-20/news.asp