Editing Robert McNamara (section)

====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}}