The War Hawk Who Wasn't

"In early April 1966, nine months after urging President Lyndon B. Johnson to dispatch tens of thousands of combat troops to Vietnam, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara confided to a Pentagon aide: "I want to give the order to get our troops out of there so bad that I can hardly stand it." Throughout his remaining 22 months in the administration, McNamara advised Johnson to temper the intensity of the conflict and seek a diplomatic resolution,"

"McNamara is remembered as a war hawk, the cold-blooded director of a conflict in which some 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese died. So associated was he with the Vietnam War that it came to be known as "McNamara's War." But letters, diaries, and other materials unavailable to previous biographers reveal that the defense secretary led a double life. He was a war proponent in the Johnson administration and a war opponent in private,"

Robert McNamara urged a major troop deployment to Vietnam yet privately expressed a strong desire to bring U.S. forces home. He continued to implement President Johnson’s orders to expand combat operations while advising restraint and diplomatic solutions in private. Private letters, diaries, and other materials indicate he led a double life as a public war proponent and a private opponent. His contorted sense of loyalty to the president prevented him from resigning in protest or openly calling for withdrawal. He judged those choices as wrong and regretted the human cost of an unwinnable war.

Read at The Atlantic