McNamara´s folly

This is a disturbing presentation given by Hamilton Gregory, author of the book “McNamara´s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War”. I haven´t read the book and I never even heard of Project 100,000 until I accidentally stumbled on this clip on YouTube just this week.

Apparently, Robert McNamara, the US Defense Secretary under JFK and LBJ, decided to use “low-IQ men” as cannon fodder during the Vietnam War, due to manpower shortages. Neither college students nor National Guardsmen could be easily sent to Vietnam for political reasons. The low-IQ men, who had all failed the standard aptitude tests of the US military, were drafted instead. They were derogatorily known as “McNamara´s Morons” or the “Moron Corps” by the other soldiers.

Many of them really were mentally handicapped, some having as low IQ as 40. Gregory describes several absurd situation during the training of these men (he was one of their trainers) and how they couldn´t understand even the simplest task, such as throwing a hand grenade in an arch rather than a straight line. They were dangerous in the field, too. Gregory mentions a low-IQ guard who opened fire and killed an officer at point blank range, not understanding that he wasn´t a hostile. This man was subsequently murdered by the soldiers who had served under the officer.

McNamara believed, or claimed to believe, that the mentally handicapped soldiers would get their IQs boosted by the military training, for instance by watching video tapes (?!). Obviously, this never happened, even apart from the fact that video tapes were the last thing the military wanted to include in basic training. McNamara never apologized for his mistake. According to Wiki, McNamara´s strongly “quantitative” view of the Vietnam War gave rise to the expression “McNamara Fallacy”, which means to disregard all factors except those which can be easily measured (in this case the sheer number of troops, the body count of the enemy, and so on).

As I said, disturbing material in many ways.