McNamara: The Sequel

Apparently to McNamara's mortification, Errol Morris, whose film The Fog of War I discussed in my last column here, passes over his subject's thirteen-year stint running the World Bank, whither he was dispatched by LBJ, Medal of Freedom in hand. McNamara brandishes his bank years as his moral redemption, and all too often his claim is accepted by those who have no knowledge of the actual, ghastly record.

No worthwhile portrayal of McNamara could possibly avoid his performance at the World Bank, because there, within the overall constraints of the capitalist system he served, he was his own man. There was no LeMay, no LBJ issuing orders. And as his own man, McNamara amplified the blunders, corruptions and lethal cruelties of American power as inflicted upon Vietnam to a planetary scale. The best terse account of the McNamara years is in Bruce Rich's excellent history of the bank, Mortgaging the Earth, published in 1994.

When McNamara took over the bank, "development" loans (which were already outstripped by repayments) stood at $953 million and when he left, at $12.4 billion, which, discounting inflation, amounted to slightly more than a sixfold increase. Just as he multiplied the troops in Vietnam, he ballooned the bank's staff from 1,574 to 5,201. The institution's shadow lengthened steadily over the Third World.

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