McNamara was a really good auto company executive. When Kennedy hired him to run the Defense Department, he stayed a really good auto company executive. Unfortunately, the understanding of strategy and its implications eluded McNamara, and he blindly insisted on continuing to implement his program of trying to kill lots of enemy soldiers, thinking that this was the key to victory. Unfortunately for McNamara (and Rush Limbaugh, who’s famous for his “kill people and break things” definition of the army), killing soldiers isn’t the *goal* of the army, it’s one of the things the army does in furtherance of its objectives. Just killing soldiers mindlessly doesn’t really help any. That unfortunately is what we learned in Viet Nam, with a lot of pain for the participants (on both sides) thrown in so that we don’t forget the events quickly.

McNamara wasn’t an evil man, he just wasn’t able to see outside his sphere of influence and experience, and it cost him and the country a lot learning this.