After a successful stint at Ford, President [[John F. Kennedy]] appointed him Secretary of Defense. McNamara was one of the leading architects of the successful solution to the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]]. His strategy in Vietnam of wearing down the North Vietnamese with heavy loses proved ineffective. McNamara later said that the strategy he had employed was based on the faulty notion that the Vietnam War was not a Civil War but a global conflict. He was also an early supporter of the space program. | After a successful stint at Ford, President [[John F. Kennedy]] appointed him Secretary of Defense. McNamara was one of the leading architects of the successful solution to the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]]. His strategy in Vietnam of wearing down the North Vietnamese with heavy loses proved ineffective. McNamara later said that the strategy he had employed was based on the faulty notion that the Vietnam War was not a Civil War but a global conflict. He was also an early supporter of the space program. |