ROBERT S. MCNAMARA: 9 JUNE 1916 • 6 JULY 2009

Following Robert S. McNamara's death on 6 July 2009, at age 93, dozens of obituaries appeared, most of them telling the same basic story. McNamara was portrayed as an American variant of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a bright and successful man but also a bad and destructive man whose pursuit of power and colossal arrogance led America and the world into the quagmire of the Vietnam War. The grandson of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine, and son of a San Francisco shoe salesman whose education ended after the eighth grade, McNamara rose to positions of power and wealth while still a young man. As defense secretary, McNamara commanded the most devastating military machine in history. He sent an army of more than half a million to South Vietnam, and he launched what would become the most intense bombing campaign in history against North Vietnam -- all to no avail.