Robert McNamara Passes Away
by Benjamin on July 8, 2009
A Young McNamara
Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, head of the World Bank until 1981 and the Washington Consensus, President of Ford and WWII strategist passed away on the 6 July 2009. A controversial figure who had an incredible impact on both development economics and economics in general, he will probably always be remembered as the person who first carpet bombed Vietnam only to go back an try to rebuild it. The British Guardian Newspaper have written a very good Obituary for a person who was so influential and so controversial.
On 1 November 1967 he [McNamara] expressed his reservations [about the Vietnam War] in a confidential memorandum to President Johnson. “I never received a reply,” he recalled later. “Four weeks later President Johnson announced my election as president of the World Bank and my departure from the defence department at an unspecified date. I do not know to this day whether I quit or was fired.”
Tags: Obituary, Robert McNamara, USA, Vietnam, World Bank
