Hamilton Gregory

There's a quote from The Fog of War which I like a whole lot. "How much evil must we do to do good? Know that you will do evil, but try and minimize it." Well, Secretary McNamara, you just MAXIMIZED evil.

The genesis of Project 100,000, McNamara's program to lower standards for admittance to the military, was simple. As the Vietnam War heated up in 1965, more bodies were needed to man the line. Mobilizing the National Guard and reducing deferments for students would have political costs, as show more the children of the middle class and elites had connections to make their displeasure felt in Washington. The "brilliant" plan, as organized by McNamara and President Johnson over the objections of the entire military bureaucracy, was to dramatically reduce standards for the draft. Something like 350,000 men drafted were drafted, despite failing pre 1966 criteria, and they died at a rate three times higher than the average soldier deployed to Vietnam.

The army has long been in the intelligence business. Carson's article Army Alpha, Army Brass, and the Search for Army Intelligence (a great read if you have JSTORE access) shows that at the entry to WW1, when America faced the task of a thirteen fold expansion of the Army beyond it's prewar size, it turned to the nascent science of intelligence testing to separate out NCOs and officers from the mass of general recruits. In the 1960s, the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) was a standard part of the intake process. Only recruits who scored above a Category III, equivalent to IQ 92, could serve.

Project 100,000 erased that limit. McNamara argued that many low scoring troops were merely poorly educated, and it's true that in the upper range of Category 4 there were a number of people who had nothing intrinsically wrong with them, but simply hadn't been educated, who had the potential to be fine soldiers. But Category 4 and Category 5 included masses of people with profound developmental disabilities who would never make good soldiers.

Gregory went through Basic with several of "McNamara's Morons", as men drafted under the new lower standards were called. He had responsibility for one who was completely illiterate, and wound up in the Special Training company with many more, after developing near-fatal heat stroke on a training march. His personal story is heart-wrenching, and in the decades on, he collected every anecdote put to print about these men. As expect, they fared poorly in combat. You may not have to be a poet or a mathematician to carry a rifle, but quick thinking is necessary. Small-units depend on everybody pulling their weight, and McNamara's Morons were weak links, who either found a protector who kept from combat, or who became scapegoats for the rest of the platoon. In a final cruelty, McNamara argued that service would educate and improve these men, but many were discharged other than honorably, marking them as misfits and failures for the rest of their lives.

McNamara's Folly blends memoir and somewhat amateurish scholarship into a persuasive whole. This is not to say that Gregory is wrong, but as someone with letters after his name, I care about the difference between a collection of anecdotes, no matter how complete and compelling, and an actual research question. I would have loved to see some more systematic analysis of the origins of Project 100,000, and the careers of the men drafted under it. show less

Sometimes it is easy to get caught in a bubble of where you work and the people you hang out with. Books like these are nice, since they provide context and make you understand the world on a more holistic level. Most surprising were that the new minimum IQ qualifications for military service didn't seem that low to me - whereas before, the military required a score in the 31st percentile, it was lowered as part of Project 100,000 down to the 10th percentile. Although the author goes into show more the fact that a large number of recruits were let in through 'administrative acceptance' (and actually had scores even lower) - it was still surprising to me how stark a contrast there was in 31 vs 10.

I would only give 3.5 stars, however, because the second part of the book becomes repetitive very quickly and probably isn't worth a read. The author chooses to go into stories of individuals, without ever focusing on anyone for more than a few paragraphs. This makes it hard to connect with those described and results in what feels like a mass of stories haphazardly smashed together.

Overall would recommend reading, but only the first half (parts 1-3). The author does a good job of defining any military concepts or slang, which is nice for readers that don't have previous familiarity. show less

The first three parts are quite good, describing the personal account of the author and his experience with the low-IQ section of the US milliary. After that, the rest of the book is just short, disorganized anecdotes from people he interviewed years later. There's a lot of "not his real name" and "he declined to give specifics," which combined with the fact that these anecdotes simply rehash the author's experiences, don't lend much. It's an interesting read, but there weren't many show more takeaways other than "don't let idiots handle grenades." show less

A good supplement to the textbook used in my speech class. My students seem to like the "college viewpoint" found in the examples.