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Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara Dead At 93
July 6, 2009 9:19 a.m. EST
  
  
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Matthew Borghese - AHN Editor
 
Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara has died at the age of 93. He served during the Vietnam War under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and has widely been credited as the tactician behind expanding the ground war against the Viet Cong.
McNamara went to work at Ford Motor Company in 1946 and was selected to serve as president of automaker only a day after Kennedy was elected to lead the nation in 1960. He was Kennedy's second choice for Defense Secretary and began to reshape American military policies and philosophy.
Under his leadership, the primary mission of the U.S. armed forces was "to prevent the steady erosion of the Free World through limited wars." In his inaugural address, Kennedy vowed to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."
But the United States would soon enter a new age of warfare, moving away from the traditional frontline combat seen in World War II, and into an era of guerrilla tactics.
According to the Pentagon, the Kennedy administration placed particular emphasis on countering Communist "wars of national liberation," in which the enemy avoided head-on military confrontation and resorted to political subversion and guerrilla tactics.
McNamara wrote in 1962: "The military tactics are those of the sniper, the ambush, and the raid. The political tactics are terror, extortion, and assassination."
By 1968, almost 535,000 American troops were in South Vietnam and the U.S. Air Force had begun bombing targets in North Vietnam.
Eventually, the tide of public opinion would turn against the Vietnam War and McNamara's policies. He left the Pentagon in 1968 and was awarded the Medal of Freedom and the Distinguished Service Medal.
McNamara would go on to serve as President of the World Bank and published his memoir, 'In Retrospect,' in 1995.
 
  
  
  
    
      
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