The Echoes of War
A Conversation With Doug Casey
A Conversation With Doug Casey
Q: Doug, I hear you’ve been reading the obits recently – what’s on your mind?
Doug: Yes, I couldn’t help but note the long and generally favorable obits on Robert “the Strange” McNamara, at age 93. The obituaries ranged from glowingly positive to, at worst that I read, neutral. I was shocked and disgusted by these things. I considered the man to be a classic sociopath and a war criminal, among other things. He was one of the worst human beings ever to have lived.
Q: Don’t pull your punches, Doug…
Doug: Well, I have to say that I take his death a little personally. In life, I find that the things I regret most are not the things that I’ve done – although there are some of those – but more than that, it’s the things that I haven’t done. And one of the things I regret having not done was back in about 1995, when McNamara gave a speech at the Aspen Institute, promoting his book. I wanted very much to ask him a question. Usually, I’m pretty bold about these things, but this time, I just didn’t do it.
The question I wanted to ask him was this: “Mr. McNamara, how is it that after nearly destroying the Ford Motor Corporation, then destroying Viet Nam and almost destroying the United States, and then going on to be the president of the World Bank, where you made great strides towards destroying the world economy, how is it possible that today you can be held in high regard and stand up in front of this audience without being pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables?”
Q: So what happened? Did he leave before anyone could ask questions?
Doug: One of the few things I can say in McNamara’s favor is that he actually took questions. I believe I could have gotten a chance to ask my question. I honestly don’t remember why I didn’t do it. It was just one of those moments in which I didn’t do what I almost always do, which is to confront these people whenever I have the opportunity.
McNamara was actually an anti-libertarian in many ways. You know, he started his career as a statistical analyst evaluating the success of bombing raids in Germany and especially in Japan. He was a big promoter of raids on civilian population centers, like the carpet-bombing of Tokyo, in which 100,000 people died in one night, and it really served no useful purpose at all.
