By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

Through some thought process that I’ve lost track of, the ongoing atrocity called ISIS or ISIL got me thinking about two different Secretaries of Defense and two different leadership styles.

One of them is considered to be the architect of the war in Vietnam, which was a life-defining event for me and for many of my generation. Virtually every American of that era was directly affected or knew someone who was.

The other one ultimately became Vice President. More than any other single person, he bears responsibility for the war in Iraq, a life-defining event for a tiny portion of the “millennial” generation and the broader society.

The consequences of Americans’ disengagement from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and from those who risked or lost their lives in them are many and varied. But I think that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen eloquently summed them up in a farewell speech to graduating West Point cadets.

He said that the American people “do not comprehend the full weight of the burden we carry or the price we pay when we return from battle. This is important, because a people uninformed about what they are asking the military to endure is a people inevitably unable to fully grasp the scope of the responsibilities our Constitution levies upon them.”

While the historical differences between America in the 1960s and America in the 2000s are not the subject of my column, I think they help explain how such starkly different characters as Robert McNamara and Dick Cheney could have both been elevated to the position of Defense Secretary, and in Cheney’s case, Vice President.

Both men projected confidence in their leadership roles. It was, in fact, Cheney’s only virtue as leader, although he did it more effectively than any of his contemporaries.

But confidence can come from arrogance, or from the humility before the truth that yields deep understanding. Arrogance is always stupid because it comes with blind spots in which essential evidence may dwell. Humility always holds the possibility for new insight and error correction.

Robert McNamara had learned to respect and be guided by evidence, but failed to deeply question the ideological assumptions guiding his use of it. Cheney substituted ideology for evidence, and mobilized fraudulent evidence to support his ideological assertions.

Both of their failings contributed to the unnecessary deaths and suffering of millions. But McNamara’s approach admits the possibility of redemption. Cheney’s does not.

Robert McNamara managed his stellar academic performance, tenure as Harvard Business School’s youngest professor, planning of World War II bomber strategy in the Pacific, and achievements as a Ford Motor Company “whiz kid” and president by seeking out and analyzing available evidence. He is credited with instituting systems analysis in public policy planning and management.

But his love of data did not insulate him from human suffering, or his involvement in it. Talking about a March 1945 bombing raid, he told an interviewer, “In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo: men, women, and children.” And in a confessional that he wrote about his failures in Vietnam, he described the anguish that he felt when a Quaker war protestor burned himself to death, forty feet from his Pentagon window.

Nor did he deny that he was complicit in evil. Instead, he questioned, “What is morally appropriate in a wartime environment?…Recognize that at times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it.” This belief made his eventual understanding that the U.S. need never have gone to war in Vietnam all the more shameful to him, and his acknowledging it, a personal obligation.

Dick Cheney’s accomplishments had nothing to do with respect for evidence and everything to do with ruthless manipulation of opportunities and projection of calm and knowing certainty,

As W’s Saudi Ambassador Charles Freeman would later tell Rolling Stone magazine, “Cheney’s manner and authority of voice far outstrip his true abilities. He doesn’t understand that when you act recklessly, your mistakes will come back and bite you on the ass.”

Although he had obtained five draft deferments to avoid military service, Cheney became the senior Bush’s Secretary of Defense. But he failed to understand why the Gulf War that he presided over in that role had been successful, and why his boss chose not to invade Iraq.

So when, through characteristic means, he became Vice President, his only interest in evidence was to manipulate consensus on an Iraq invasion. But the sixteen agencies that comprise the “intelligence community” could assemble no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein was allied with al Qaeda and possessed weapons of mass destruction, as Cheney claimed.

So he and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created a separate and invisible intelligence capability, working out of a vault beneath the Pentagon. Its Deputy Director, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, later called it “a propaganda shop.” She testified to Congress that she had witnessed its staff, “through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis, promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.”

Deploying cooked evidence and confidently assuring the President, Congress, and the electorate that Iraqis would embrace Americans as liberators, democracy would follow, and oil revenues would pay for it all, Cheney and his coconspirators prevailed.

An essential difference between Robert McNamara and Dick Cheney is their capacity for empathy. Empathy is what makes conscience possible. Those who have no empathy are psychopaths.

McNamara’s commitment to evidence over ideology enabled him to recognize that the war in Vietnam had been a mistake before that view became popular among Americans. Unable to persuade President Lyndon Johnson, he resigned in early 1968.

My faith tells me that redemption is possible, and that it begins with confession of one’s sins. After years of soul searching, McNamara came to believe that his primary Vietnam failure was a failure of empathy. He wrote, “Our misjudgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.”

He contrasted that failure of empathy with the peaceful conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which he attributed to empathizing with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. And he did not limit failed empathy’s foreign policy implications when he wrote, “We misjudged then—and we have since—the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.”

If Dick Cheney is acquainted with his own soul, he hasn’t searched it much. In his memoir, he insists that he was right all along, and the Iraq War’s consequences are completely attributable to others who lack his wisdom and courage.

Confession makes not just redemption possible, but reconciliation. When Robert McNamara made his confession, he received a deluge of hateful response from people who had suffered the consequences of his actions.

But many others were moved. The mother of the Quaker who had immolated himself wrote, “To heal the wounds of that war, we must forgive ourselves and each other, I am grateful to Robert McNamara for his courageous and honest reappraisal of the Vietnam War and his involvement in it.” Ron Kovic, David Hackworth, and many others who had “borne the battle” agreed.

In today’s hateful politics, it’s unlikely that someone who advocates empathy could ascend to the Cabinet or Congressional leadership. Which brings us back to Admiral Mike Mullen’s invocation of “the responsibilities our Constitution levies upon” American citizens. Among them, is empathy.

Eleven Lessons

In his Academy Award winning Documentary, The Fog of War, Errol Morris organized his extensive interviews with Robert McNamara around these eleven life lessons:

• Empathize with your enemy.

• Rationality will not save us.

• There’s something beyond one’s self.

• Maximize efficiency.

• Proportionality should be a guideline in war.

• Get the data.

• Belief and seeing are often both wrong.

• Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning.

• In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.

• Never say “never.”

• You can’t change human nature.