LET ’ER R.I.P.: Lost in the din of Michael Jackson’s cataclysmic death throes and postmortem prognostications was the demise of Robert Strange McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, who died peacefully in his sleep on July 6, at the ripe old age of 93. As is clearly not the case with Michael Jackson, no one is fretting what will become of McNamara’s body. But wherever he’s planted, I’m inclined to dig up his remains and whack him with my shovel. It won’t change a thing. But it might make me feel better. Maybe for a second.

McNamara last spoke in Santa Barbara in 2006 — to agonize, as an age-ripened sage, over the infinite perverseness of the species and the attendant risks of nuclear Armageddon. It’s unclear how many times he visited Santa Barbara before. But we do know that in his less benign incarnation — as Secretary of Defense — McNamara dispatched hundreds of young Santa Barbarans off to Vietnam during the fruit of their youth. We also know 98 of these young men would never make the return trip, blown to bits in a war we’d discover later that no one really believed in, least of all McNamara. You could never have known this at the time, watching McNamara in action. With his hair shellacked into total submission and his index finger a perpetual motion machine, McNamara personified absolute and irresistible certitude. He always was the smartest guy in any room, and it would take computer technology 40 years to match the man’s staggering recall.

McNamara was not just a brain. He also had, we would have to learn later, a heart. He was an intensely tormented man, it turns out, about the Vietnam War, which he confessed was all a big mistake. Even so, he could never bring himself to actually say he was sorry. He had been acting in service of the president; the war was Johnson’s fault. It was Kennedy’s fault. And besides, we acted upon the best information and wisdom of the day. In some ways, he’s right; in many, he’s wrong. But when I think of the 58,000 Americans and 3.4 million Vietnamese killed, I’m most inclined to reach for my shovel.

McNamara’s life is a cautionary tale for those of us too easily dazzled by sheer brilliance. The youngest and highest-paid assistant professor at Harvard Business School, McNamara was recruited by the Air Force to apply his business skills to the art of war. WWII airplane production increased exponentially almost overnight. Crunching the numbers, he figured out why 20 percent of all American bombers turned around before dropping their bombs — pilot fear. And even in the last good war, fought by America’s “Best Generation,” McNamara would be struck by the scale of death. On one night alone, 100,000 Japanese civilians would be burned alive in firebombing raids he helped orchestrate. After the war, he joined Ford Motor Company, then badly failing, bringing wartime skills and talents to the manufacture of cars. He turned Ford around, promoting the small and sporty Ford Falcon as an antidote to all the oversized beautiful gas hogs then choking the roads. And he greatly reduced traffic fatalities by removing steering columns that impaled drivers involved in head-on collisions; he added seat belts, too.

When President Kennedy tapped McNamara for the Defense Department, McNamara’s sole and overriding fixation was preventing nuclear war. It was a legitimate fear. Many generals enthusiastically embraced the first-strike, kill-’em-while-you-can philosophy. As an alternative to this nuke-happy mindset, McNamara supported the buildup and deployment of conventional forces to contain the commies, wherever they were — and, in some cases, where they were not. In that context, Vietnam was an insignificant speck of dust. But it was an opportunity for McNamara to say yes to the generals to whom he’d been saying no.

The war would be won because the United States could not afford to be punked by a third-rate nation and maintain street cred with the Soviet Union or China. The facts, however, rudely intruded. South Vietnam, as a state, was a fiction imposed by Western nations without regard to either history or reality. At best, South Vietnam’s government was 20 pounds of crap wrapped in a wet paper bag. It could not hold up. Yet we were winning the war because Bob McNamara told us so. Every night on national TV, with charts, maps, and fingers flying.

Initially, McNamara thought we were winning, too. But he quickly found out the generals were either clueless or playing him for a fool. Rather than expose such deceit, he embraced it, embellished it, and sold it as his own. The ultimate number cruncher, McNamara broke down the war to body counts. McNamara became, as David Halberstam described in The Best and the Brightest, “the quantifier trying to quantify the unquantifiable.” Later, when other members of Johnson’s cabinet indicated doubts, McNamara would invite them to private meetings. In such intimate encounters, he was encouraging, sympathetic. But in full meetings with Johnson present, he would attack the doubters with cold ferocity. As always, McNamara’s weapons were facts and figures. McNamara’s victims would be awed by his arsenal of data. Later, they’d discover, he was not above making things up: It got the job done. With McNamara’s foot squarely on the gas, Johnson accelerated the war effort. Congress — duped by tall tales of an alleged attack on a Navy ship — gave Johnson a blank check to attack the North Vietnamese. When it was over, we dropped three times the tonnage on North Vietnam than we did on all of Western Europe throughout World War II. We killed more than half as many Vietnamese as the Nazis killed Jews. Despite the mind-boggling enormity of this carnage, we still hear how the United States could have finished the job if not for the meddlesome intrusions of the media, the peace movement, and the politicians. At some point, McNamara found he could not make up any more facts. He was forced to concede victory was not an option. For this betrayal, Johnson cut him loose.

Subsequent presidents learned well the tragic lessons of the shiny-headed Robert McNamara and the Vietnam War. Disarm the media by keeping reporters contained, if not quarantined; keep any footage of flag-draped coffins off the nightly news. And squash the potential of any peace movement by avoiding — at all costs — the draft. Congress, likewise, learned its lesson. Whenever a president submits a blank check to wage war, sign first and ask questions later. My first impulse, as always, is to reach for my shovel. I’m just not sure whom to whack first.

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