Editing Robert McNamara (section)

===Departure===
[[File:Moods, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in Cabinet Room meeting - NARA - 192612.tif|thumb|right|President Lyndon B. Johnson and McNamara at a cabinet meeting, 1968]]
[[File:Dean Rusk, Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert McNamara in Cabinet Room meeting February 1968.jpg|thumb|Cabinet meeting with [[Dean Rusk]], President Johnson and McNamara, 9 February 1968]]
McNamara wrote of his close personal friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy and how she demanded that he stop the killing in Vietnam.{{sfn|McNamara|1995|p=257–258}} As McNamara grew more and more controversial after 1966 and his differences with the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff over Vietnam War strategy became public speculation, frequent rumors surfaced that he would leave office. By 1967, McNamara was suffering visibly from the nervous strain as he went days without shaving and he suffered spasms where his jaw would quiver uncontrollably for hours.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=451}} Johnson said about him: "You know, he's a fine man, a wonderful man, Bob McNamara. He has given everything, just about everything, and, you know, we just can't afford another Forrestal" (a reference to the first Defense Secretary, [[James Forrestal]], who committed suicide due to work-related stress and depression).{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=451}}&nbsp;&nbsp;

====Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing====
Senator [[John C. Stennis]] was a conservative Southern Democrat who enjoyed much influence as a senior member of the [[United States Senate Committee on Armed Services|Senate Armed Forces Committee]].{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=507}} Stennis saw himself more as a champion of the military rather than its overseer, and as such the military often leaked information to him, in the full knowledge that he would take up their cause on Capitol Hill.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=508}} Reflecting their unhappiness with McNamara's leadership, in the spring of 1967 senior generals and admirals let Stennis know of their belief that the Defense Secretary was mismanaging the war. This led Stennis to schedule hearings for the Senate Armed Forces Committee in August 1967 to examine the charge that "unskilled civilian amateurs" (i.e. McNamara) were not letting "professional military experts" win the war. He charged that McNamara had placed too many restrictions on bombing North Vietnam to protect innocent North Vietnamese civilians.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=508}} The chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Senator Richard Russell Jr., was opposed to the war, but he expressed his opposition in the most cautious and lukewarm terms as he did not wish to appear unpatriotic, and so the hawkish Stennis enjoyed more power than his title of deputy chairman of the committee would suggest.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|pp=484 & 491}}

The hearings opened on 8 August 1967, and Stennis called as his witnesses numerous admirals and Air Force generals who all testified to their belief that the United States was fighting with "one arm tied behind its back", implicitly criticizing McNamara's leadership. They complained of "overtly restrictive controls" in bombing North Vietnam that they claimed were preventing them from winning the war.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=508}} When McNamara himself appeared as a witness before the Senate Armed Forces Committee on 25 August 1967, he defended the war in very lukewarm terms that strongly suggested he had lost faith in the war, testifying that the bombing campaign against North Vietnam was ineffective, making the question of the bombing restrictions meaningless.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}} McNamara described all of the 57 restricted targets as either of no importance such as a tire factory in Hanoi that produced only 30 tires per day or carried too much risk of hitting Soviet ships bringing supplies to North Vietnam.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=453}} He warned that the prospect of American bombers damaging or sinking Soviet merchantmen while wounding or killing Soviet sailors carried too much risk of causing World War Three.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=453}} McNamara testified that the bombing campaign had failed to reduce the supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail as the Viet Cong needed only 15 tons of supplies per day to continue to fight and "even if the quantity were five times that amount, it could be transported by only a few trucks".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}} McNamara went on to say that the bombing raids had not damaged the North Vietnamese economy which was "agrarian and simple" and the North Vietnamese people were unfamiliar with "the modern comforts and conveniences that most of us in the Western world take for granted".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}} McNamara also stated that North Vietnamese morale was not broken by the bombing offensive as the North Vietnamese people were "accustomed to discipline and are no strangers to deprivation and death" while everything indicated the leadership in Hanoi were not affected by the bombing raids.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}} Thus, he lacked "any confidence that they can be bombed to the negotiating table".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}} McNamara concluded that only some sort of genocide could actually win the war, stating: "Enemy operations in the south cannot, on the basis of any reports I have seen be stopped by air bombardment-short, that is, of the virtual annihilation of North Vietnam and its people".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}}

Besides Stennis, the other members of the Senate Armed Forces Committee were senators [[Henry M. Jackson]], [[Strom Thurmond]] and [[Stuart Symington]], all of whom were very hostile to McNamara in their questioning of him.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}} Senator Thurmond reproached McNamara: "I think it is a statement of placating the Communists. It is a statement of appeasing the Communists. It is a statement of no-win".{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=454}} Privately, McNamara felt that Thurmond was an "ass", saying he was a bigoted, ignorant Southern politician whose only values were a mindless militarism, a fervent belief in white supremacy and a fondness for marrying women far younger than himself. McNamara felt that it was beneath him to be questioned by Thurmond, which explained why he was notably truculent in his answers to him.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=454}}  &nbsp; &nbsp;

Stennis wrote the committee's report which accused McNamara of having "consistently overruled the unanimous recommendations of military commanders and the joint chiefs of staff", whom Stennis wrote had proposed "systematic, timely and hard-hitting actions".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}} Stennis damned McNamara for putting in bombing restrictions to protect North Vietnamese civilians and claimed that the war could be easily won if only McNamara would just obey all of the advice he received from the military.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}} Stennis was not influenced by the hearings as he had written the committee's report before the hearings had even began.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=509}} 

Johnson saw the hearings as proof that it was time to dismiss McNamara, whom he believed was "cracking up" under the strain of the war, as reflected in the Defense Secretary's criticism of the Rolling Thunder bombings.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|pp=509–511}} Stennis, an ardent white supremacist who had fiercely opposed Johnson's civil rights legislation, was an old enemy of Johnson's, which led the president to decide not to sack McNamara in August 1967 as that would be seen as a victory by Stennis, and instead to wait a few months to fire him.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|pp=509–510}} In an interview with his biographer, [[Doris Kearns Goodwin]], Johnson stated that McNamara was "cracking up" as the pressures of the war were too much for him, and so he decided to fire him as it would have been "a damn unfair thing to force him to stay".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=511}} Johnson had long resented and hated the Kennedy brothers, whom he thought looked down upon him as "white trash" from Texas. Senator Robert F. Kennedy had emerged as a leading critic of the war by 1967, and Johnson stated to Kearns his belief that McNamara had suffered a nervous breakdown, of which Kennedy, a close friend of McNamara, had taken advantage of.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=511}} Johnson told Kearns: "Every day, Bobby [Kennedy] would call up McNamara telling him that the war was terrible and immoral, and that he had to leave".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=511}} To soften the blow, Johnson claimed to Kearns that he had talked it over with McNamara and had decided to offer him the presidency of the [[World Bank]], "the only job he really wanted then".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=511}} Johnson had chosen the job of World Bank president for McNamara because its rules prohibited the president from involving himself in the domestic affairs of member nations, which would prevent McNamara from criticizing the war after he left office.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=463}} Johnson's biggest fear was that if he fired McNamara, then he might join with Kennedy in criticizing him and the war; given his status as the longest-serving Defense Secretary, such criticism would be especially damaging.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=463}}&nbsp;

When a reporter asked McNamara if the Stennis hearings indicated a rift between him and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, McNamara replied: "My polices don't differ with those of the Joint Chiefs and I think they would be the first to say it".{{sfn|Langguth|2000|pp=454–455}} General Earle Wheeler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had become dissatisfied with McNamara's leadership and was outraged by that remark. In response to McNamara's claim that the Joint Chiefs supported him, he proposed that the Joint Chiefs all resign in protest at McNamara's leadership.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|pp=454–455}} General [[Harold K. Johnson]] of the Army, who erroneously blamed McNamara for Lyndon Johnson's decision not to call up the Reserves in 1965, agreed to Wheeler's plan with his only regret being that he did not resign in 1965.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=455}} The plan collapsed when General [[Wallace M. Greene]] of the Marine Corps refused to go along with it.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=455}}

====March on the Pentagon====
On 21 October 1967, McNamara saw the [[March on the Pentagon]] anti-war protest from his office in the Pentagon. He witnessed hippie girls placing flowers in the guns of the [[District of Columbia National Guard|D.C National Guardsmen]] standing in front of the Pentagon.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=460}} McNamara described the scene as "hellish" as the hippie girls bared their breasts to tempt the Guardsmen to "make love, not war" while other hippies spat in the faces of the Guardsmen.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=460}} However, despite seeing the March on the Pentagon demonstrators as a sign of social decay, his characteristic competitive spirit came to the fore as he argued that if he had been leading the March on the Pentagon, he would have taken over the Pentagon and shut it down, saying hippies lacked the necessary discipline and intelligence.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=460}} On 31 October 1967, McNamara wrote Johnson a memo which he sent the next day saying that the war could not be continued as it "would be dangerous, costly in lives and unsatisfactory to the American people".{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=461}} Johnson wrote on the margins on the memo remarks such as "How do we get this conclusion?" and "Why believe this?"{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=461}}

====Resignation====
In an early November 1967 memorandum to Johnson, McNamara's recommendation to freeze troop levels, stop bombing North Vietnam and for the U.S. to hand over ground fighting to South Vietnam was rejected outright by the President. McNamara's recommendations amounted to his saying that the strategy of the United States in Vietnam which had been pursued to date had failed. McNamara later stated he "never heard back" from Johnson regarding the memo. Largely as a result, on November 29 of that year, McNamara announced his pending resignation and that he would become President of the World Bank. Other factors were the increasing intensity of the anti-war movement in the U.S., the approaching presidential campaign in which Johnson was expected to seek re-election, and McNamara's support—over the objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of construction along the 17th parallel separating South and North Vietnam of a line of fortifications running from the coast of Vietnam into Laos. The President's announcement of McNamara's move to the World Bank stressed his stated interest in the job and that he deserved a change after seven years as Secretary of Defense (longer than any of his predecessors or successors).

Others give a different view of McNamara's departure from office. For example, Stanley Karnow in his book ''Vietnam: A History'' strongly suggests that McNamara was asked to leave by the President.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=511}} The historian [[Arthur Schlesinger, Jr]] stated that he was present during a conversation between McNamara and Senator Kennedy during which the former told the latter that he only learned from reading the newspapers of Johnson's announcement that he had just "resigned" as Defense Secretary and had been appointed president of the World Bank.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=511}} McNamara himself expressed uncertainty about the question.<ref group=Note>McNamara later recounted in the documentary ''[[The Fog of War]]'' his description to his friend [[Katharine Graham]] of his departure as Secretary of Defense: "Even to this day, Kay, I don't know whether I quit or was fired?"</ref>{{sfn|Morris|2003}}{{sfn|Shafritz|Russell|Borick|2013|p=196}} On 17 November 1967, a story in the ''[[Financial Times]]'' of London based on leaked sources in Washington stated McNamara was going to be the next World Bank president, which came as a considerable surprise to McNamara.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=463}} Afterwards, McNamara met with Kennedy who told him to resign in protest and denounce the war as unwinnable, counsel that McNamara rejected, saying that Johnson had been a friend and that he was still loyal to him.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|pp=463–464}} When McNamara refused to resign, Kennedy told him that he should turn down the World Bank presidency and join him in criticizing the war, which McNamara refused to do.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=464}} Johnson knew that McNamara was concerned about poverty in the Third World, and that the possibility of serving as World Bank president would be too tempting for McNamara to resist.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|p=464}}

McNamara left office on February 29, 1968; for his efforts, the President awarded him both the [[Presidential Medal of Freedom|Medal of Freedom]]{{sfn|Blight|Lang|2005|p=203}} and the [[Distinguished Service Medal (U.S. Army)|Distinguished Service Medal]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Robert Strange McNamara|url=http://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/73018|access-date=2021-04-04|website=The Hall of Valor Project|language=en|archive-date=June 11, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210611230202/https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/73018|url-status=live}}</ref> McNamara's last day as Defense Secretary was a memorable one. The hawkish National Security Adviser, Walt Rostow, argued at a cabinet meeting that day that the United States was on the verge of winning the war. Rostow urged Johnson to send 206,000 more American troops to South Vietnam to join the half-million already there and to drastically increase the number of bombing raids on North Vietnam.{{sfn|Milne|2009|p=4}} At that point, McNamara snapped in fury at Rostow, saying: "What then? This goddamned bombing campaign, it's worth nothing, it's done nothing, they dropped more bombs than on all of Europe in all of World War II and it hasn't done a fucking thing!"{{sfn|Milne|2009|pp=4–5}} McNamara then broke down in tears, saying to Johnson to just accept that the war could not be won and stop listening to Rostow.{{sfn|Milne|2009|p=5}} Henry McPherson, an aide to the president, recalled the scene: "He reeled off the familiar statistics-how we had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than on all of Europe during World War II. Then his voice broke, and there were tears on his eyes as he spoke of the futility, the crushing futility of the air war. The rest of us sat silently-I for one with my mouth open, listening to the secretary of defense talk that way about a campaign for which he had, ultimately, been responsible. I was pretty shocked".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=512}} &nbsp;

Shortly after McNamara departed the Pentagon, he published ''The Essence of Security'', discussing various aspects of his tenure and position on basic national security issues.{{sfn|McNamara|1968}} He did not speak out again on defense issues or Vietnam until after he left the World Bank.