It's worth a read, and raises a rather subtle, but crucial question about McNamara and morality in general. The author asserts (and, given the author's examples, it is hard to argue) that in fact what drove McNamara -- even in his worst errors -- was an abiding compassion, which led him to a catastrophic blindness when it came to Vietnam.
Which led me to muse: can we really call a technocratic drive (which, everyone agrees, was McNamara's stock-in-trade) to "fix" the world -- be it the Pentagon or Souteast Asia (or Iraq?) -- seemingly without regard to the human cost "compassionate"? To me that bespeaks a frightening logic, and one which we have seen before. It is the apotheosis of the enlightenment canard that the human cerebrum, if employed in good faith, will inevitably lead the rational agent to act in the way that is "right." And, most disturbing, it is the mindset that is the least likely to admit the possiblity of being "wrong."
Back to thinking about chickens. Or Nathan Birnbaum. Something.
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