Now that the dust has settled, what's your assessment of

>>2954572

A good guy who gets hated on because it's a popular meme to do so

>support escalation in Vietnam in summer of 1965, when it still matters
>become emofag in 1967 when it's too late to stop the war

>>2954572
Disastrous. Caught up in the advent of new technology. He thought it would solve everything, and he was wrong.

>>2954572
I liked Fog of War

>>2954769

>Lesson 3. There’s something beyond one’s self
>Lesson 4. Maximize efficiency
>Lesson 8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning

And he keeps on like this. Yeah real insightful, Bob-o. Is this all you learned in your 90 years on the earth?

>>2954764

>Caught up in the advent of new technology. He thought it would solve everything, and he was wrong.

elaborate, I'm curious for specific examples

>>2955510

Systems analysis. It's great if you want to sell a lot of cars for lower overhead costs, but not so great if you want to avoid a land war in Asia.

>>2955510

McNamara used his knowledge of economics and statistics to introduce an analytical rigor to military procurement that simply wasn't there before. Before him, the military could simply say, "we want X" and then congress would shell out money for X. Now, suddenly when the military said "we want X" they would be met with questions like "Y is cheaper than X, could we try that instead?" And by the way, in this context "X" almost always means bomber aircraft. The Air Force was considered the most important branch by far at this point in history and the Air Force saw itself as a bomber force. Kennedy and McNamara didn't like that the entire military seemed to be oriented purely around bombers, because it left the President in an awkward position where during a crisis, the President's options for dealing with the situation would be effectively limited to "Nuke 'em" or "Don't nuke 'em" with no intermediary options.

It didn't help matters that the Air Force kept an ever expanding list of targets that had to be destroyed inside the USSR in the event of a nuclear war. And you need more than 1 bomber per target to compensate for the inevitable fact that most bombers would be shot down before reaching their assigned targets. By 1963, the Air Force declared that it ultimately wanted an inventory of 3000 Minuteman ICBM, 110 Atlas ICBM, 70 Titan ICBM, and over 800 supersonic bombers to enable them to carry out a devastating strike against the Soviet Union with over 90% certainty of all assigned targets being nuked. These assigned targets weren't limited to just military targets but also nearly every major city located within the USSR.

McNamara pushed for a more "flexible" approach which heavily de-emphaised nuclear weapons as instruments of national security. McNamara's ideas of "flexible response" would be put to the test in Vietnam, with mixed results.

He really loved the F-111.

https://archive.org/details/TheFogOfWarElevenLessonsFromTheLifeOfRobertS.Mcnamara

I think McNamara was a pretty cool guy, eh kills gooks and doesn't affraid of anything

>>2954736
Just described the Vietnam war in general.