{"id":16293,"date":"2009-07-07T13:59:50","date_gmt":"2009-07-07T18:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=16293"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:13:11","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:13:11","slug":"robert-mcnamara-astrology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/robert-mcnamara-astrology\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert McNamara"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JUDITH GAYLE | Political Waves<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Us old hippie types came face to face with a familiar name a few days ago; just one more of the steady stream of those passing into the Great Beyond. But this one provoked a heart-heavy remembrance. Many MANY of us appear to be hoping he’ll need sunscreen where he’s going, if not full gear to protect from karmic napalm. Robert McNamara<\/strong><\/a> — a man as fully hated as Rumsfeld, and but one order of magnitude beyond — has gone to meet his Maker. He died in Washington, DC Monday at the age of 93.<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>
Robert McNamara meets with President Kennedy in the Oval Office in 1963.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What did McNamara do to earn so much strong feeling? Secretary of Defense to JFK, he was inherited by LBJ and played war architect to the Vietnam debacle, much as Eichmann played accountant and manager to Hitler’s final solution; cut and dried, numbers and charts, records and dispassionate statistics. The business-as-usual accounting he put forth to the nation was met with counterpoint by REAL … yes, we had actual reporting then … footage coming out of ‘Nam of wounded soldiers and burnt children. This, every night on the nightly news. Body counts in the hundreds every week. Astonishing that it went on so long.<\/p>\n

Mr. M showed no heart until much much later in his life<\/strong><\/a>; and even then, he couldn’t quite apologize for all he’d orchestrated — although he clearly saw in retrospect how badly he’d fumbled it all. By some reports, he left LBJ’s administration when it became apparent how badly he’d botched; by others, he was asked to leave. His legacy is the ‘business’ of war; his very name a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n

McNamara devoted his later years to heading the World Bank, focusing on poverty and assuaging his conscience. I don’t believe in Hell but if what weighs heavily on our soul continues with us until we can sort it through, Mr. M has plenty of sorting ahead of him — and millions of brutal deaths as companion. He was the Godfather of our current military industrial complex and responsible for recreating the American fighting force to become what it is today; a crackerjack and world-dominant killing machine. Systems analysis was Mr. M’s game — now its ours. Over 58,000 of our soldiers and nurses died in Vietnam; over a quarter of a million were wounded; close to 2000 were MIA. Estimates for Vietnamese casualties range to over two million, and the Vietnam War is what led to the killing fields of Cambodia. If its true that we must feel, actually feel, the impact of our activity on earth through the events of those who suffered them before we can move on, Robert McNamara has a very long and painful life review ahead.<\/p>\n

Essentially, this was one of the most pitiful humans on the planet; he knew what he did, and he regretted it — read his own thoughts in this article from a website called Hullabaloo<\/strong><\/a>. He wrote a number of books on the topic, and consented to an extraordinary interview in a film called The Fog of War<\/em>, all trying to get a grip on it; maybe he’s got one now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By JUDITH GAYLE | Political Waves Us old hippie types came face to face with a familiar name a few days ago; just one more of the steady stream of those passing into the Great Beyond. But this one provoked a heart-heavy remembrance. Many MANY of us appear to be hoping he’ll need sunscreen where … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}