Robert McNamara

This page is an online tutorial on Saturn transits to the angles using the astrology chart of Robert S. McNamara. If you would like to read an article on this topic as well, click here. I would suggest reading it after you do the tutorial.

Also please read the second article in this series about Saturn/Pluto and power issues entitled Harvesting the Seeds of a New World Order (WorldCom/Bernie Ebbers).

Additional Resources:

mcnamara's books | books about vietnam | quotes on character
did he write it for the money? | blog talk: the bad and the ugly
defense dept analysis of term as secretary
eisenhower's domino theory principle
the article - old men are bastards

The Tutorial

Robert Strange McNamara was Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (1961-68) and has been held personally responsible for the Vietnam War by many Americans. After resigning from the Johnson administration, he went on to head up the World Bank (1968 -1988). Since 1995 when he wrote his memoirs, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, McNamara has been speaking out against war and the Vietnam War in particular in an unprecedented mea culpa to the American people.

See Robert McNamara's astrology chart. To brush up on aspects, visit here and keep the page open for reference throughout the article if desired.

This December 2003, Errol Morris released his 1 hour and 35 minute interview documentary with Robert McNamara entitled, Fog of War. The title is taken from a reference McNamara makes about how hard it is to figure out what's really going on in the middle of a war.

The interview with Robert McNamara is conducted using an "Interrotron". This is a device Morris invented that allows the person being interviewed to look directly in to the camera, thus creating a feeling of intimacy between subject and audience.

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Saturn transits manifest events in our lives

In his review of Fog in War for Entertainment Today, Brent Simon describes McNamara this way ...

"...McNamara led a professional life of virtually unrivaled observation, oversight and influence. As a witness to the crippling Depression of the 1930s, the industrialization of the war years, a crucial statistician in years of combat and the nation's youngest Secretary of Defense under President John F. Kennedy, McNamara was a participatory player in many of the crucial events of the middle of the 20th century."

Robert McNamara has Saturn in Cancer natally.
Saturn teaches through time. As the wheel turns, things happen.

Erol Morris draws 11 points out of more than 20 hours of material. These are the 11 points, not necessarily in order:

empathize with your enemy *
rationality will not save us *
acknowledge a higher power (I think that's what this one says ... I'm trying to verify it)
never apply military force unilaterally (also trying to confirm)
proportionality should be a guideline in war *
get the data *
belief and seeing are both often wrong *
be prepared to reexamine your reasoning *
in order to do good you may have to engage in evil *
never say never *
you can't change human nature *

McNamara's life makes an excellent study in the effectiveness of analyzing Saturn transits to the angles of the chart. McNamara's chart is excellent because:

he has lived so long (at 85, he is approaching his third Saturn Return!)
he lived most of 20th century history personally
his life took dramatic turns and there were significant outer changes in career and interests
he was a public figure with a high profile and much information is available, including his memoir, biographies and the documentary, Fog of War

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This is a diagram of how Saturn travels around the astrology chart. Conceptually, Saturn spends 2-1/2 years in each house but McNamara's chart is uneven. Saturn will spend a less than five years in the first and third quadrants and about ten years in the second and fourth.

McNamara's Saturn is in the first house at birth. Look for the red glyph for Saturn as the starting point

In tracking Saturn on the angles of McNamara's chart, we will see how a mature and complex person emerges from the life experience, choices and critical events that present themselves at these times of change.

As it went it for Robert S. McNamara so goes it for you! You, too, have these transits and you, too, are a complex and maturing individual. Saturn aspects an angle of the chart roughly every 7 years.

In addition, this article is intended to be an online tutorial for observing the effectiveness of Saturn transits to the angles of a chart and not a full chart interpretation.

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These are the angles of McNamara's chart:

Ascendant 0 Cancer
IC 9 Virgo
Descendant 0 Capricorn
Midheaven 9 Pisces

McNamara has 69 degrees between the Ascendant and IC but 111 degrees between the IC and the Descendant. Saturn will take 4 to 5 years through the first, second, third, seventh, eighth and ninth houses. It will take about twice that long (10 years) to travel across the fourth, fifth, sixth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth houses.

McNamara is born with Saturn in the first house. Pluto is there, too, right at the Ascendant plus two degrees. At two years old, when the Ascendant progressed to Pluto by solar arc, McNamara comments that he distinctly remembers witnessing the victory celebrations in San Francisco as World War I came to a close. He also remembers seeing people wearing their masks to prevent the spread of the deadly flu epidemic. (More people died of influenza in 1918 than were killed in the war.) Thus he had an early introduction to things Plutonic and deadly.

In his own words:

"My earliest memories [sic]of childhood is vivid in my mind: a city exploding with joy. The city was San Francisco and the date was November 11, 1918. I was two years old. The city, of course, was celebrating the end of World War I, but it was also celebrating the belief of many Americans but particularly of President Woodrow Wilson, that we'd fought and won a war to end all wars. How tragically wrong we were." -- [Robert S. McNamara, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense and James G. Blight, Professor of International Relations, Brown University at the Commonwealth Club]

McNamara is also being directed to his powerful North Node in Capricorn in the 8th house. He is destined to be a part of the establishment, pursue material power and be concerned with matters of great weight ... matters of life and death -- like the two just mentioned, "war" and "pestilence".

Let's explore a few possible meanings for Capricorn in the 8th house. One meaning would be getting material resources to people. Another would be lending or investing in redevelopment or reconstruction. Yet another might be rebuilding after disaster. There is also persevering in the face of impossible odds. Providing stability during transition. Materially supporting transformation. These are some of the themes we will see developing.

From the moment of birth, practically, McNamara had the two plagues of humanity staring him right in the face: plague and pestilence.

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Saturn first crossed the IC in 1920. I have no data available for events in McNamara's personal life. He was born into a family that struggled for money. He attended a one room school where he says he had an excellent teacher and competed for tops in the class with kids from other ethnic groups.

This transit is commonly called "the Dark Night of the Soul".

McNamara's father was an Irishman forced out of Ireland after the potato famine in the mid-19th century. He never finished the 8th grade and was considerably older than McNamara's mother, who completed high school. Of all the material I have read, there are no further mentions of his parents.

This is how McNamara describes his school years:

"In any event, I grew up in San Francisco and, you know, in a wonderful environment. I went to first grade there in a school that I could walk to. There'd been a slight baby boom in World War I, and by the time I got into the first grade in about 1922, there weren't any classrooms in the normal school buildings; they were full. So I literally went to school in a shack, a wooden shack, but we had a fantastic teacher. In the first grade she gave the class a test every month, and she reseated the class based on the results of that test. And there were vertical rows like this, and I worked my tail off to be in the first seat in the left-hand row.

"And I can remember this as though it were yesterday, and my competition were Chinese, Japanese and Jews. There were a lot of WASPs in the class, but I didn't worry about them. It was the Chinese, Japanese and Jews I worried about, and I worked my tail off five days a week to beat them. On Saturday and Sunday, I went and I played with my neighborhood classmates. They went to their ethnic schools. They learned their language, they learned their history, they learned their culture, they learned their values, and they came back on Monday determined to beat that damn Irish. I'm happy to say they rarely did." [GiaoDiem Newspaper, interview with Brian Lamb, C-Span, April 23, 1995]

McNamara mentions scouting as an influence in his life around the year 1928. He credits that with his desire to go into public service.

PLANETS BROUGHT INTO PLAY ASPECTING THE IC:
SUN AND MERCURY SQUARE IC
VENUS AND SATURN SEXTILE IC
MARS CONJUNCT IC - Mars is the planet making the closest aspect to the IC
URANUS QUINCUNX IC (just barely)
NEPTUNE SEMI-SEXTILE IC
PLUTO SEXTILE IC

WHEN SATURN CROSSES THE IC, THERE ARE POSITIVE ASPECTS TO THE YIN OR EMOTIONAL/FEELING PLANETS AND DIFFICULT ASPECTS TO THE YANG OR INTELLECTUAL, LOOKING ESPECIALLY AT THE QUINCUNX TO URANUS.. SATURN/URANUS TRANSITS SOMETIMES BRING RADICAL RESTRUCTURING THROUGH THE SUDDEN BREAKDOWN OF OUTWORN LIMITATIONS AND BARRIERS. THESE CAN BE INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL.

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Saturn crossed the Descendant in 1930, just as the Depression was beginning.

McNamara started college at Berkeley, living at home and paying $52 a year. To this day he lauds the educational system in the state of California. He met his wife the first week of school though they were not married until much later.

This is what he says about his undergraduate education:

"The primary major was economics. But in a sense, the two more important majors were philosophy and mathematics, and I say more important because I think -- I came from a family that almost never read a book, and I had a rather narrow focus of the world and ideas when I went to the University of California. It opened up for me the world -- values. This is what particularly the philosophy courses did -- moral values, ethical values. I was exposed to history, politics, international relations. It was an eye-opener, and I've never forgotten it." [GiaoDiem Newspaper, interview April 23, 1995]

McNamara was considered something of a mathematical genius. Although he stresses the importance of philosophy, one gets the idea that even at 85, he hardly knows the meaning of the word. The 11 points presented in the documentary are crudly put, like bullets in a PowerPoint presentation. One of them is "never say never". Perhaps this is the work of Morris, above all.

It is economics which is of paramount importance here although McNamara himself won't recognize this until his second Saturn Return when Saturn crosses his Ascendant in 1973. At that time he begins to fully work his North Node in Capricorn in the 8th house, initiating a dynamic phase of the World Bank and powering it into the paramount development agency on the planet.

PLANETS BROUGHT INTO PLAY ASPECTING THE DESCENDANT:
MOON SQUARE DESCENDANT - Moon and Neptune make the closest aspects to the Descendant
MARS AND JUPITER TRINE DESCENDANT
NEPTUNE QUINCUNX DESCENDANT
PLUTO OPPOSITE DESCENDANT

WHEN SATURN CROSSES THE DESCENDANT, THERE ARE NEGATIVE ASPECTS TO THE MOON, NEPTUNE AND PLUTO. THESE ARE TIMES OF GREAT INNER STRUGGLE. THERE ARE NO ASPECTS TO THE SUN/MERCURY OR VENUS/SATURN CONJUNCTS. IT IS AS THOUGH HE BECOMES A VESSEL FOR THE DARK COLLECTIVE AT THESE TIMES, REACHING FOR ANSWERS TO THAT CAPRICORN IN THE 8TH HOUSE.

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When Saturn crossed the Midheaven in 1936, McNamara graduated from the University of California at Berkeley Phi Beta Kappa. He courted and married his wife, Margaret, at that time. He then attended Harvard Business School and taught accounting at Harvard for a few years, the youngest assistant professor in the history of the school. His first child was born in 1941.

PLANETS BROUGHT INTO PLAY ASPECTING THE MIDHEAVEN:
SUN AND MERCURY SQUARE MIDHEAVEN
MARS OPPOSITE MIDHEAVEN
VENUS, SATURN AND PLUTO TRINE MIDHEAVEN
NEPTUNE QUINCUNX MIDHEAVEN
PLUTO TRINE MIDHEAVEN

WHEN SATURN CROSSES THE MIDHEAVEN, IT BRINGS NEGATIVE ASPECTS TO SUN/MERCURY AND MARS (CONFUSION ABOUT SELF EXPRESSION IN CAREER). ESPECIALLY TROUBLESOME IS THE QUINCUNX TO NEPTUNE IN THE SECOND HOUSE (WHAT ABOUT MONEY??) WE WILL SEE THIS ASPECT AGAIN WHEN HIS MEMOIRS ARE PUBLISHED, THOUGH HE VEHEMENTLY DENIES THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN FOR MONEY.

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Saturn crossed the Ascendant in 1944. World War II ends in Germany and begins in Japan. McNamara joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in '43 where he worked on logistical systems, analyzing data regarding fire bombings in Japan.

At this time, with Saturn on his Saturn/Venus in Cancer, he experiences his first Saturn Return. Like many born with Saturn in Cancer, he witnesses first hand a very sad moment for the Family of Man, the bombing of Hiroshima.

He and his wife both came down with polio in 1945. His case was relatively light but he was told that his wife would "never lift an arm or a leg off the bed again". (She recovered.)

McNamara joins Ford Motor Corporation in 1946. He had wanted to return to Harvard but could not afford to pay his and his wife's medical bills on an assistant professor's salary.

PLANETS BROUGHT INTO PLAY ASPECTING THE ASCENDANT:
MOON SQUARE ASCENDANT
MARS AND JUPITER SEXTILE ASCENDANT
NEPTUNE SEMI-SEXTILE ASCENDANT
PLUTO CONJUNCT ASCENDANT
THERE ARE NO ASPECTS TO SUN/MERCURY AND VENUS/SATURN.

THERE ARE POSITIVE ASPECTS FROM MARS AND JUPITER, GIVING HIM CONFIDENCE IN A PHILOSOPHICAL SENSE WHILE AT THE SAME TIME, THE CONJUNCT TO PLUTO AND SQUARE TO THE MOON DEMANDS A PSYCHOLOGICAL ADJUSTMENT WHICH MAY CONTRIBUTE TOWARD A GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF HIS CAPRICORN NORTH NODE IN THE 8TH HOUSE. THE PUBLIC GOOD CAN SEEM AT ODDS WITH PERSONAL DESIRES, LOOKING AT NEPTUNE IN THE 2ND HOUSE, I WONDER HOW OFTEN MCNAMARA REGRETTED HIS DECISION TO ENTER PUBLIC SERVICE FROM A FINANCIAL POINT OF VIEW. I ALSO WONDER, AS DID BRIAN LAMB, IF MCNAMARA WROTE HIS MEMOIRS FOR THE MONEY. CLICK HERE.TO JUMP AHEAD.

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Saturn crossed the IC for the second time in 1949. Unfortunately I have no data available for this transit. It is interesting in its absence, indicating that McNamara has not spoken or written publicly about this time in his life which is commonly considered the "Dark Night of the Soul". He has Saturn in Cancer and would find this especially difficult as it would echo the karmic wound when Saturn transits the 4th house.

I have written extensively about the possible meanings for Saturn in Cancer. Among other things, this combination suggests images of babies starving to death, orphans roaming streets destroyed by battle, families separated by war and famine, whole peoples forced to migrate over mountains or across oceans only to find a hostile environment awaiting them with insurmountable odds to enculturate. The Apache Trail of Tears comes to mind or Staten Island immigration during the 1800s.

An Irish woman evicted and made homeless
during the potato famine of 1846-50 [from Ireland archives]

The potato famine claimed as many as 1,000,000 lives. Read an interesting botanical commentary in The Botany of Desire -- how could this happen? For one thing, they didn't vary the types of potatoes they planted....
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Perhaps McNamara carried some of the family memories of starvation in Ireland during the potato famine. Irish history is some of the most tragic and pathos-filled on the planet. If this is the case, he has two compelling reasons to use his Capricorn North Node in the 8th house to relieve world hunger and disease. But that is still a few years ahead. People with Saturn in Cancer are caretakers for the Family of Man.

Irish family starving to death in potato famine 1846-50
[from Ireland archives]

PLANETS BROUGHT INTO PLAY ASPECTING THE IC:
SUN AND MERCURY SQUARE IC
VENUS AND SATURN SEXTILE IC
MARS CONJUNCT IC
URANUS QUINCUNX IC
PLUTO SEMI-SEXTILE IC

WHEN SATURN CROSSES THE IC, THERE ARE POSITIVE ASPECTS TO THE YIN OR EMOTIONAL/FEELING PLANETS AND DIFFICULT ASPECTS TO THE YANG OR INTELLECTUAL, LOOKING ESPECIALLY AT THE QUINCUNX TO URANUS.. SATURN URANUS TRANSITS SOMETIMES BRING RADICAL RESTRUCTURING THROUGH THE SUDDEN BREAKDOWN OF OUTWORN LIMITATIONS AND BARRIERS. THESE CAN BE INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL.

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Saturn crossed the Descendant for the second time in 1959. McNamara is appointed president of Ford Motor Company but leaves that position after just five weeks to become the youngest Secretary of Defense in the history of America under President John F. Kennedy.

At this point, McNamara is using his mathematics degree and little more. He is considered brilliant but cold, dictatorial and sometimes arrogant. He will fit nicely into the cabinet John F. Kennedy is putting together. As you recall, they were all noted for being young and brainy Harvard grads somewhat lacking in emotional maturity.

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Saturn crossed the Midheaven for the second time in March 1965. In March 1965 the first American troops, 3,500 Marines, were sent to Vietnam. McNamara later admitted that he knew "from 1965 on" that the war in Vietnam could not be won.

In 1965, a Baltimore Quaker named Norman R. Morrison immolated himself with gasoline and flame outside McNamara’s window at the Pentagon.

In 1967, McNamara sent a memo to Johnson in which he warned, "The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a costly distortion in the American national consciousness and in the world image of the United States." [Jim Forest, Sojourner's Magazine]

In Fog of War, Geoffrey Dunn explains for Metroactive Magazine, "[McNamara] breaks down ... when he recalls the impact of the Vietnam War on his family -- his wife and three children were opposed to the war -- and he goes so far as to acknowledge that the traumas associated with his tenure as secretary may have 'ultimately' even killed his wife. It is a painful and poignant moment, but McNamara feels compelled, even when stricken with grief, to footnote that moment with the disclosure that they 'were some of the best years of our life' and that 'all members from my family benefited' from his days in Washington." No one believes this.

We are beginning to see a split between McNamara's brilliant intellect and his potentially deep compassion and emotion. Pluto and the Ascendant straddle the midpoint of Sun/Mercury in the 12th trine Uranus and Saturn/Venus in the 1st. Personally, I found this statement in the movie shockingly matter-of-fact.

McNamara resigned in 1968 and was appointed head of the World Bank. Click here for World Bank archives and a summary of his achievements.

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Saturn crossed the Ascendant for the second time in 1973. This marked McNamara's second Saturn Return and the beginning of his second term as head of the World Bank. Like many people he had completely changed his career by this time. Let's look at some of the things he accomplished in his second round of Saturn.

In 1974 McNamara established the Onchocerciasis Control Program which halted transmission and virtually eliminated Riverblindness throughout eleven participating countries in Africa.

McNamara established the World Bank as the strongest player in the world development game. At about that time, he made what was seen as a landmark statement.

"'Governments in developing countries,' he said, 'should redesign their policies so as to meet the needs of the poorest 40 per cent of their people -- and relieve their poverty directly.' The cornerstone of the new development strategy was thus an explicit attack on poverty -- albeit one so mounted as not to damage economic prospects. Its economic slogans were: 'redistribution with growth', and 'meeting basic needs'. [Unicef.org The 70s: Era of Alternatives by ]

The current president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, made these comments at a tribute dinner for Robert McNamara in 2003:

"All of us associated with the World Bank honor Bob [McNamara] and recognize that it was he who transformed the institution from being a "bank" into being the world's premier development agency. When he assumed the presidency of the Bank, there had been no recent loans to such critical countries as Indonesia or Egypt, nor to the great majority of the poorest nations of Africa. He changed that."

PLANETS BROUGHT INTO PLAY ASPECTING THE ASCENDANT:
MOON SQUARE ASCENDANT
MARS AND JUPITER SEXTILE ASCENDANT
NEPTUNE SEMI-SEXTILE ASCENDANT
PLUTO CONJUNCT ASCENDANT

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Saturn crossed the IC for the third time in 1978. At about this time Robert McNamara makes an important statement to a group of bankers about poverty in the world, possibly from the very bottom of his soul. Any statement he made at this time would echo his karmic wound, Saturn in Cancer.

"There are only two possible ways in which a world of 10 billion people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly, or the current death rates must go up... There is no other way... There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, war can accomplish it very quickly and decisively. Famine and disease are nature's ancient checks on population growth, and neither one has disappeared from the scene... To put it simply: Excessive population growth is the greatest single obstacle to the economic and social advancement of most of the societies in the developing world." -- Oct. 2, 1979

Margaret McNamara died in 1981. Robert McNamara retired from the World Bank in 1981. Shortly after that, the Bank had serious problems. Many think it was due to McNamara's policies.

PLANETS BROUGHT INTO PLAY ASPECTING THE IC:
SUN AND MERCURY SQUARE IC
VENUS AND SATURN SEXTILE IC
MARS CONJUNCT IC
URANUS QUINCUNX IC
PLUTO SEMI-SEXTILE IC

WHEN SATURN CROSSES THE IC, THERE ARE POSITIVE ASPECTS TO THE YIN OR EMOTIONAL/FEELING PLANETS AND DIFFICULT ASPECTS TO THE YANG OR INTELLECTUAL, LOOKING ESPECIALLY AT THE QUINCUNX TO URANUS.. SATURN/URANUS ASPECTS BRING SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT AND/OR LIBERATION.

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Saturn crossed the Descendant for the third time in 1988. McNamara served on many boards and has been associated with a number of nonprofit organizations including The Brookings Institution and The Overseas Development Council.

The idea for his Memoirs takes form in 1992-3.

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Saturn crossed the Midheaven for the third time in 1995.

Between 1995 and 1998 McNamara participated in six sets of talks held in Hanoi that brought together U.S. and Vietnamese scholars, policy makers and former military officers, representing a major reappraisal of the war. Other participants were Nicholas Katzenbach (former deputy secretary of state), General Vo Nguyen Giap (ex-North Vietnamese defense minister) and Vietnam's retired foreign minister Nguyen Co Thach.

In 1995 McNamara published his memoirs, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam speaking out against war and the Vietnam War in particular.
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McNamara's book begins with a guide to correct pronunciation of the names of the North Vietnamese officials, maintaining that if you can't pronounce their names properly, you can't hope to understand their point of view.

A second book , Argument Without End came in 1999.
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And then Wilson's Ghost in 2001.
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In Wilson's Ghost, Robert McNamara and James Blight write:

"We are not practicing in an international context what we preach … -- which is democratic decision-making. We are not omniscient. We say that we believe that better decisions result from a process that [involve s]… all the affected parties, but [we are] hypocritical. Often we proceed without seeking, or listening to, advice from those with common values and common objectives. If we cannot convince them of the merit of our proposed action, we should question the wisdom of our decision."

These are bitter and disturbing words to hear as we are currently pursuing a war for which we could not gain approval, save for Spain and England.

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Saturn is crossing the Ascendant at the present time as McNamara approaches his third Saturn Return.

March 21, 2003: Over 200 people pay tribute to Robert S. McNamara at the World Bank. President Wolfensohn said these words:

"Bob McNamara is my friend. He is also someone whom I have long respected and admired: for his extraordinary abilities, his passion, for his achievement in bringing to the world's attention the urgent issues of development, and above all, for bringing real action to the fight against poverty. President John F. Kennedy called him 'the smartest man' he ever met. President Leopold Senghor called him 'a poet of action.' He is one of those rare human beings whom, whatever they do, make a pivotal contribution."

Here we see a full integration of the planets on either side of the Ascendant. "The smartest man" = Sun/Mercury in Gemini trine Uranus in Aquarius. The "poet of action" is Saturn/Venus in Cancer.

Fog in War appears in movie theaters around the nation and Robert McNamara's 11 points are delineated.

February 12, 2004: Former US defense secretary Robert Mc Namara attended a two-day Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs that opened in the provincial metropolis on Thursday. The subject of the conference is ‘Avoiding an India-Pakistan Nuclear Confrontation’. [The Pakistan Daily Times]

PLANETS BROUGHT INTO PLAY ASPECTING THE ASCENDANT:
MOON SQUARE ASCENDANT
MARS AND JUPITER SEXTILE ASCENDANT
NEPTUNE SEMI-SEXTILE ASCENDANT
PLUTO CONJUNCT ASCENDANT

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Conclusion - the article

?OLD MEN ARE BASTARDS?
A Study of Saturn with Pluto

As Pluto crosses the halfway point through Sagittarius and hones in on Capricorn, which it will enter in January 2008, issues of a new world order come into focus. I believe that an understanding of Robert McNamara's chart can assist in an understanding of the principle of transference of power within a society (or a world). Not only has Robert McNamara been on the big screen lately (the documentary Fog in War has just been released this spring), his North Moon Node is in Capricorn in the 8th house, a close cousin to the energies of Pluto in Capricorn. His life is a microcosm, if you will.

President John F. Kennedy called Robert McNamara "the smartest man" he had ever met. President Leopold Senghor of Senegal, a founding father of modern Africa, called him "a poet of action." Barry Goldwater described him as "an IBM machine with legs." And Larry Winters. a Vietnam veteran and poet, called him an "old bastard." Robert McNamara was the principal architect of the Vietnam War, arguably the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history and many Americans like Winters hold him personally responsible.

Robert S. McNamara is a controversial individual whose life was writ large across the 20th century. He was born in 1916, just two years before the conclusion of World War I. His father, who may have been in his 50s when McNamara was born, fled from starvation during the Irish potato famine in the 1850s, crossing the Isthmus of Panama on a mule to begin a new life in California. If you are unfamiliar with this tragic event, the Irish potato famine, check out some websites. It will turn you into a Buddhist. .

McNamara credits Eagle Scouts at age 12 and 13 with instilling in him a desire for public service. In the early 30s, he put himself through Berkeley, majoring in economics, but also enjoying math and philosophy. Later he attended Harvard Business School and was hired to teach accounting as the youngest assistant professor in Harvard's history. Also at about this time he began a very happy marriage with Margaret Craig.

In 1944 McNamara entered World War II when he joined the U.S. Army Air corps as a statistician, analyzing fire bombings of Japan under the direction of General Curtis LeMay. In 1945, both McNamara and his wife got polio. His case was light but his wife's was critical. Both recovered and McNamara took a job at Ford Motor Company. He would have preferred returning to Harvard but couldn't pay his medical bills on the salary of an assistant professor.

McNamara worked his way up in Ford Motor Company, experimenting with safety features such as the safety belt and trying to produce cars based on an analysis of what consumers were actually willing to buy. In 1960 he was appointed president of the Ford Motor Company and five weeks later, tapped by newly elected President John F. Kennedy for Secretary of Defense.

After the traumatic assassination of President Kennedy, McNamara stayed on with the Johnson administration. McNamara first committed American troops to Vietnam in 1965, later admitting that even at the time, he knew the war could not be won. McNamara says Johnson bears ultimate responsibility for carrying on the war which was against his better judgment.

In 1965, a Baltimore Quaker named Norman R. Morrison immolated himself with gasoline and flame outside McNamara's window at the Pentagon.

In a few years time, according to Deborah Shapley in Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara, the Vietnam War began to take its toll. "McNamara himself was a broken man" she writes. "He was given to sudden fits of crying in meetings, and colleagues began to worry about his mental health. After Johnson talked with McNamara's wife in August 1967, he told an aide, "We just can't afford another Forrestal." (referring to James Forrestal, the 1940's defense secretary who committed suicide.

McNamara's family paid an awful price for Vietnam. His children were roughly college age during the war and all three of them opposed it as well as his wife. His wife and son each got ulcers. Years later when his wife died of a rare cancer, McNamara maintained that the ultimate cause might have been the "deep trauma" of the war. He now says that all the members of his family benefited by the experience. No one believes this.

McNamara differed with Johnson in policy over Vietnam and left in 1968 to head the World Bank for 13 years. His tenure made the World Bank the most viable development agency on the planet; however his leadership became controversial when the Bank began to experience difficulties in the early eighties. In 1973 McNamara began an initiative to eradicate riverblindness in 11 countries in Africa, an achievement of which he is very proud.

In 1981, Margaret McNamara died and Robert McNamara retired. After several years, he began to speak out about the Vietnam War and wrote the first of a series of books, his Memoirs in 1995. That same year McNamara met with other Vietnamese and American leaders from the war era who gathered in Hanoi to discuss, in retrospect, what happened in Vietnam and whether things could have worked out differently.

In December 2003, Erol Morris' documentary entitled Fog of War was released, which is essentially 1 hour and 35 minutes of almost uninterrupted dialogue by Robert McNamara presented as 11 lessons from his life (chosen by Morris). I would not call it a mea culpa but a justification. To date, McNamara has been reluctant to meet personally with Vietnam War veterans.

In beginning to look for the man in the chart, I would say that everything with Robert McNamara seems to involve the way he thinks. "The McNamara mind as the voice of authority is established as a power not to be trifled with," said Robert L. Kocher of LaissezFaire eMagazine, "and is capable of seeing clearly and powerfully manipulating things from a distance through statistical and abstract analysis. In his system his intellect is not tested against anything but his own intellect, or other sympathetic intellects. He still fights the realization that there is a world other than that of his own restricted experience. His message is: I'm brilliant, I knew a lot of important top level people, and I'm right."

McNamara's Sun/Mercury trine to Uranus in Aquarius gives him this kind of brilliance. Indeed all the planets above the chart indicate a mental mastermind. Sun/Mercury in Gemini can be a signature for emotional immaturity as well. Many of the members of Kennedy's cabinet, as well as Kennedy himself, could be and have been accused of this flaw. The optimistic and philosophical planet Jupiter also sits high up in the chart in the 11th house. This is the McNamara that the public sees.

Below the horizon in the chart are the yin planets, including a sensitive Virgo Moon in the vulnerable 4th house. Mars is below weakly in Virgo in a cadent house. Saturn occupies the first house in Cancer. This combination is noted for nurturing humanity and caring for the most vulnerable in the human family under nearly impossible conditions. I have written extensively about Saturn in Cancer characteristics elsewhere on my website to celebrate those who are currently experiencing their Saturn Returns. To learn more, click here.

Below the horizon is the part no one sees. There is Robert McNamara, the sensitive child of a desperate Irishman who has watched many of his relatives nearly starve to death. Though McNamara does not speak of it - the moreso because he does not speak of it -- plainly Saturn conjuncting Venus in Cancer depicts a bleak childhood of material and emotional deprivation. Certainly Robert McNamara is a carrier for his father's memories of starvation, desperation and loss.

An interesting configuration in this chart is that Pluto and the Ascendant are at the midpoint of the Gemini planets in the 12th and the Cancer planets in the 1st. It is as though the operations of Pluto will force this man through a series of intense, transformational experiences to better integrate his mind (Gemini) with this emotions (Cancer).

Whenever Saturn transits the Ascendant or Descendant, as well, the theme of Saturn/Pluto echoes McNamara's North Moon Node in Capricorn in the 8th house. You might consider this combination the signature of "what is humanly possible under duress". Further it will often be the fate of one with Capricorn in the 8th house to be able to work only with what one is given or "left with" by others or has readily available. This is not a signature of creativity and expansion, but one of resourcefulness and survival, grit and perseverance in the face of limitation. The ultimate esoteric purpose of this energy is to eliminate absolutely everything which is not essential in life and to use to the fullest that which is. Capricorn in the 8th house takes resources seriously and presses the limits of both inner and outer supply and demand. Since McNamara chose to work with this energy at a global level, we will consider the larger events of his life as they compare and contrast with this ideal.

Pluto is at 2 degrees Cancer. McNamara's Ascendant progressed by solar arc to Pluto when he was two years old. McNamara has a vivid memory of watching adults celebrating the end of World War I in San Francisco. At the same time, he was forced to wear a mask to play outside, in the hopes of warding off the 1918 influenza which was then sweeping the world. It would seem that Pluto's first nod in the chart brought to this bright, alert and sensitive child, dark impressions of pestilence and war. Woodrow Wilson, one of the negotiators of the "world peace" in 1918 remained a lifetime hero for McNamara. The title of McNamara's third book, published in 2001, is, Wilson's Ghost.

Who, then, is Robert McNamara? Is he an emotionally immature wastrel of lives and resources who endangered the mental and physical health of his own family in lust for power? Is he a tyrannical Mastermind with a "kiss up, kick down" mentality? Is he the Eagle Scout public servant who faithfully administered the policies of two presidents, clearly loving them both very deeply? Or is he a cold, clever and calculating Harvard statistician whose theories did not compute with reality?

The time trusted way to discover a person's true nature is to track the transits of Saturn around the angles of the chart as life-changing choices and events spin out into manifest reality where we can see them and give them proper weight. In doing this we discover the power of the North Node as an indicator of maximum mature direction in life and the South Node as the energy that "sets the stage" or propels into action.

McNamara's North Node is at 29 degrees Capricorn in the 8th house. His South Node is opposite that at 29 degrees Cancer in the 2nd house.

Let's examine McNamara's chart in this manner.

The angles are:

Ascendant 0 degrees Cancer
IC 9 degrees Virgo
Descendant 0 degrees Capricorn
Midheaven 9 degrees Pisces

These are the major events that occurred as Saturn crossed these angles:

1920 - 4 years old, no known events

1930 - the Great Depression begins; gratefully attends college at state expense

1936 - graduated college Phi Beta Kappa, married Margaret, taught at Harvard

1944 - FIRST SATURN RETURN: World War II, helps plan fire bombings of Japan, jokes that he and General LeMay would be tried for war crimes if they had lost the war; almost loses his wife to polio

1949 - working at Ford, no outer or inner event noted

1959 - appointed President of Ford Motor Company in late 1960, tapped 5 weeks later for Secretary of Defense by Kennedy administration, beginning service in January 1961

1965 - Sent first troops in to Vietnam admitting later he knew their efforts were doomed - General LeMay retires

1973 - SECOND SATURN RETURN: McNamara has been at the World Bank for five years. By this time, the World Bank has increased its lending at a near exponential rate - in its first 20 years it loaned 10.7 billion, in McNamara's first 5 years it backed projects worth 13.4 billion; his second term is beginning

1978 - speaks about overpopulation and poverty as World Bank president

1988 - McNamara has "retired" and now serves on many boards and non-profit organizations

1995 - attends Hanoi conferences to learn from mistakes in Vietnam, publishes Memoirs, speaking out about the War

THE PRESENT - THIRD SATURN RETURN: tribute by World Bank, documentary film, Fog in War

When I read a chart, I look to the North Node for the person's chosen life path. Every planet and aspect in the chart will somehow support the person's process and progress in reaching toward that Node. Through the process of Saturn revolutions of the chart, I think we can see the maturing process as McNamara worked toward a better understanding of his North Node in Capricorn in the 8th house.

At first McNamara was interested in building something for himself or "making something of himself" in a world that has been torn apart through World War I and the Great Depression. His family, too, has suffered tragically in the past from lack of basic resources. Many of his father's relatives almost starved to death. McNamara's father finished only to the 8th grade. His mother completed high school. It was clear to him, he has said, that he was to make more of his life than they. Capricorn gave him the perseverance and resourcefulness to accomplish his goals. The 8th house guaranteed that it would be "from nothing."

Always the optimist and often quite shallow, this man with Sun and Mercury in Gemini was probably reluctant at first to take on the enormous responsibilities of Capricorn in the 8th. Is there anything more daunting in the panoply of astrological possibilities? It took time for him to mature into the capacity to use that energy responsibly and wisely.

Death and destruction are 8th house themes. McNamara's involvement with World War II put him near some of this 8th house power and permitted him to see the destructive cost of war in terms of material and human beings, but he seems to have stuck to crunching numbers. His experience prepared him logistically for Vietnam but it does not seem to have prepared him morally, or at least that is the complaint of many Americans. Just as World War II concluded, McNamara and his wife came down with polio one week apart in an impossible coincidence. McNamara's case was light but his wife's condition was seriously critical for quite some time.

At Ford, McNamara was part of a group called the "Whiz Kids". He bypassed an opportunity to return to academia (Harvard) ostensibly because of medical bills but this was the "right" choice anyway. Being at Ford Motor Company moved him closer to that Capricorn in the 8th. house as he became part of what Eisenhower was pleased to call "the military industrial complex." McNamara's ingenuity and acuity came, as always, from his Sun/Mercury conjunct -- he was the "kid" or the puer aeternus -- and the trine to brilliant Uranus in Aquarius. Even at 85 you can see this eternal youth in him. He is as lively as ever mentally and becomes electrifying when talking about things in the past that he enjoyed.

One way McNamara used his Capricorn North Node responsibly at Ford was to test cars for safety. If you see Fog in War, think Capricorn in the 8th when you see human skulls thrown down the stairwell. McNamara claimed responsibility for making many safety improvements. He also committed to producing an automobile that served the identified needs of consumers, quite a concept for the heretofore impractical Ford company.

McNamara's financial and living habits seemed to be rather austere, befitting his North Node in Capricorn. Instead of living in Gross Pointe or another fancy Ford suburb, the McNamara's chose to raise their children in Ann Arbor, described as a laidback intellectual community.

As the wheel turns, and McNamara was presented the opportunity of serving in President Kennedy's cabinet, the McNamara's lowered their financial situation considerably as they headed for Washington and a big dose of Capricorn in the 8th … presidential proximity and power over the vast human and material resources of the Pentagon.

Through his failure in administering the Vietnam War, McNamara was compelled to move into an area where he could invest and rebuild human and material resources instead, becoming president of the World Bank. The 8th house is about "other people's money". Can you think of a more suitable occupation for someone with Capricorn in the 8th than heading up the World Bank?

At the next turn of the wheel, Margaret McNamara died and Robert McNamara retired. In a few years, he began speaking publicly about Vietnam. McNamara is machinelike in his discussions of Vietnam though he tears up easily over the death of John Kennedy and the sacrifices demanded of his family during his tenure as Secretary of Defense. Footage also shows him tearing up at his forced "retirement" ceremony, conducted by Lyndon Baines Johnson.

In his later years and heading towards his third Saturn Return, speaking out about nuclear war and the need for disarmament is an excellent and responsible use of his most mature Capricorn and 8th house powers.

Finally, let's take a look at what happens when Saturn transits his North Node at 29 degrees Capricorn, which it has done three times in his life -- (1) February 15-24, 1932; (2) December 26, 1961 through January 3, 1962 and (3) January 30-February 7, 1991.

(1) On the first pass in 1932, McNamara was 16 years old. That year Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial hit its all-time depression low (41.22), 1,161 banks failed, nearly 20,000 businesses went bankrupt and 21,000 people committed suicide. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany the following year.

(2) In 1961-62, McNamara was 45. He had been Secretary of Defense for a year when he recommended his President go ahead with the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a project Camelot inherited from the Eisenhower administration. When McNamara left office three years later, he told reporters that his principal regret was his recommendation to Kennedy to proceed with the Bay of Pigs operation. The consequences of this misstep came home to roost in 1962 when nuclear missiles aimed at the United States were detected not far off the coast of the U.S. sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Secretary's second brush with nuclear possibilities after World War II

(3) In 1991, according to his statement in an interview with GiaoDiem Newspaper, McNamara was warming up to the idea of writing his Memoirs.

Capricorn in the 8th house can also suggest power struggles within the establishment or hierarchy. McNamara became a hated man in many segments of the American population. Those in the military and veterans of the war have been vocal in their mistrust and bitterness toward him and his policies, both then and now.

Larry Winters, a Vietnam veteran, wrote this poem to Robert McNamara in Poets on the Line, Vol 6 of Echo Communications Group eMagazine, www.echonyc.com/%7Epoets/Vol6/winters.html .

The first line in Robert McNamara's book is:
"This is a book I planned never to write."
I wonder what he planned to do?
Reminds me of my father telling me 20 years later
he never really planned to beat the shit out of me.

Old men are bastards.
They act like bastards most of your life
and before they die they tell you they're sorry.

Abraham started it when he took his boy up the mountain.
tied him down held a knife over his head.
Then he made up some crap about God, and let the boy go.

Thanks old man.
This is a poem I planned never to write.
But you wrote your book.
I wish you had found a ram on that mountain you old bastard.

The bitter and unforgiving tone of this communication portrays the enmity a young man can feel toward an older man who wields callously and coldly over him the power of life and death. Abraham in the Old Testament might be the ideal personification of this unreflecting patriarchal energy and to Winters, McNamara fully embodies these traits as well. This is an issue between young men and old men, but the trouble is, of course, all men one day become old.

Let's look again, more deeply, at the forces shaping young Robert McNamara and the inner and outer events which propelled him into the realm of the patriarchs. After all, he was a "Whiz Kid" once himself.

Paradoxically, Saturn transits to the South Node can dramatically release someone from past life karma or present it again "writ large" for review. A person may be pulled deeply back into past life lessons or powerfully propelled toward the unknown and fertile territory of their North Node. It depends on many things about the person's soul and path in life.

Saturn transited McNamara's South Node three times so far: (1) in October of the year he was born; (2) July 26-August 2, 1946; and (3) September 8-18, 1975. Let's look at each of the transits separately.

TRANSIT #1: Regarding the transit in 1916, there is little data from McNamara's early life which may bear testimony to its bleakness. Only four months old at the time Saturn transited his South Node, he may have had colic or food allergies, as so many babies with Moon in Virgo do. This may have caused his very young mother to feel overwhelmed and his very old father to reject him at some level. This is conjecture.

TRANSIT #2: There were three critically important events in 1946 which contributed to McNamara's later interest in 8th house topics such as war, nuclear disarmament and world crisis.
1. In 1946 as conflict intensified between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Winston Churchill, age 72, coined the phrase "iron curtain" and perceived the onset of the cold war, a phrase used for the first time two years later. Churchill's influence at this time was tremendous as he began to fan the flames of hysteria about Communism. McNamara was to spend many years of his life involved in the repercussions of the Cold War.

2. France recognized Vietnamese independence but refused to leave Indochina. These events set the stage for Eisenhower in 1954 to present his infamous "Domino Theory Principle", the illogic and errors of which ultimately compelled the U.S. into war in Vietnam. McNamara was to spend many years of his life involved in the repercussions of the Vietnam War.

3. In 1946, after displacing the native inhabitants of the Bikini Atoll island in the Pacific, the United States experimented there with the atom bomb. McNamara was later to speak often about the perils of nuclear war.

TRANSIT #3: At the third transit in 1975, the last American troops left Vietnam as North Vietnamese troops completed an invasion of South Vietnam and united both countries under Communist rule. The final death toll of the war was roughly 1.3 million Vietnamese and more than 58,000 American lives. McNamara, safely ensconced at the World Bank, must have felt this public admission of failure very keenly. It was he who instigated the "body count" by the way.

Plainly the events which occurred at Saturn transits to the South Node had tremendous bearing on the deepening and direction of McNamara's life.

Saturn transits to the angles of the chart often dramatically outline the major events of a person's life while the transits to the South and North Moon Nodes give an underlying significance to these events and highlight for us the process of the person's psychological and spiritual growth. If we are ever to know someone through their chart, these are the means of compassionate revelation.

Who, then, was Robert McNamara? One of McNamara's favorite pieces of advice is "Answer the question you wish you'd been asked." so I'm going to answer the question, instead, "Which old man is the real bastard?"

Is it 44-year old Robert McNamara, the youngest Secretary of Defense in the history of the country, sending 18, 19 and 20 year olds to their death?

Or is it 72-year old Winston Churchill, whose bellicose nature and fiery rhetoric were legendary and whose influence was without measure in 1946, when he defined or perhaps doomed the western world to the "Cold War" over Communism?

Or is it 70-year old Dwight David Eisenhower, adored and charismatic champion of World War II, who handed a hot potato and a bag of dominoes to poor witless 43-year old John Kennedy, sealing the fate of 58,000 young Americans half his age?

Where does it begin and where does it end, this often bitter legacy from old men to young?

A rigorous dialogue with the energies of Capricorn in the 8th house is not easy. McNamara struggles with this when asked to comment on the war in Iraq. "Today he declines comment on Iraq out of the same sense of bureaucratic loyalty, [that led him to remain silent on the Vietnam War after leaving the Johnson staff]" says Samantha Powers in the New York Times. She continues, "To the suggestion that dissent is often the highest form of loyalty, he responds, 'I think it's irresponsible for an ex-secretary of defense to comment, particularly if the comments are critical - about a president who is in the midst of a war with tens of thousands of American lives at risk, and is dealing with very, very delicate issues and relationships with other nations and with the U.N., and therefore I haven't and I'm not going to.' [[Samantha Power, December 14, 2003, "War and Never Having to Say You're Sorry", The New York Times]

"To attribute a motive of "bureaucratic loyalty" to McNamara in this instance is to do him, I believe, a gross injustice. Instead I would suggest that he was taking Capricorn like responsibility for the power of his words in an intense and volatile situation. In choosing between a sin of omission and a sin of commission, he might well have found himself in that place which is ruled by the Lords of Limitation and Denial, Saturn and Pluto, better known as a rock and a hard place. Having learned firsthand the power of words in the fiery/inflammatory rhetoric of Churchill and the descriptive metaphor of Eisenhower which took on a life of its own (dominoes in Southeast Asia), the prudent choice may well be silence. As is so often the case with the 8th house, it's not what you say, it's what you don't say that counts.

The second area in which McNamara tested his Capricorn-in-the-8th-house mettle - besides war and nuclear war - was lending for reconstruction on a global level. McNamara's undergraduate degree was in economics. He approached his tenure at the World Bank as if economics could solve every problem in the world. It was part of his crusade against communism to tackle absolute poverty but for the keen observer there may have been other motives. Let's take a look at this.

Whereas McNamara's North Node in Capricorn in the 8th house would lead him to believe that economics could be the ultimate tool for world domination (!), there are other factors at work deeply hidden within his nature that may explain the irrationality of some of his decisions and the poor results he achieved.

Robert McNamara has a very troublesome Neptune in the 2nd house. The 2nd house is a difficult place for watery, nebulous Neptune. With this placement there can be delusions about money -- what money is, what it represents and what it can or cannot accomplish. McNamara frequently stated that money meant little to him. When Brian Lamb of GiaoDiem newspaper asked him pointblank in 1995 if he wrote his Memoirs for money, the motive suggested by his chart -- he replied":

"Oh, my God, no. My God, no. You know, long ago, I mention in the book, that money has never been a motivating factor for me…."

He goes on for another couple of paragraphs but you get the idea.

Now, I know that some of my readers are NewAge people who don't care about money either but for the rest of us, this is a strange attitude in a material world but it is very Neptunian to say that you don't care about money. It is something more than a few of my NewAge clients have lived long enough to regret.

And since we cannot be two different people when we act in life, this philosophy (I'm sure unconscious on McNamara's part - Neptune always is) affected some of his decisions in life and at the World Bank.

McNamara's Neptune at 0 degrees Leo makes an out-of-sign conjunction to his South Node at 29 degrees Cancer. At critical times in his life, McNamara may have seen himself as some kind of delivering angel, ironically going soft just when he should have stuck to his hard line accounting. Although McNamara did - or tried to do - great good while he was at the World Bank, it experienced difficulties just one year after he left, many believe due to his policies over the past 13 years as president.

Until McNamara's tenure, no one had considered alleviation of poverty to be a function of the World Bank. Although he rationalized his decision intellectually, this may have been his Neptune "speaking". McNamara stated, "There must be policies designed specifically to reduce the poverty of the poorest 40 percent of the population in developing countries. This is not just the principled thing to do, it is also the prudent thing to do. Social justice is not only a moral obligation it is also a political imperative."

Natally, McNamara's Neptune is sextile the weak Moon in the 4th, semi-sextile Pluto at the Ascendant and makes a square to Jupiter in the 11th. It is also the closest planet aspecting the Ascendant. The combination of Moon, Neptune and Pluto is triggered when Saturn crosses the Descendant. Saturn squares the Moon, makes a quincunx to Neptune and opposes Pluto. McNamara's "dark night of the soul" is dark indeed. (Saturn crossing the 4th house is traditionally called "the dark night of the soul".) At the same time there is a trine from Jupiter. This would not be the first time a trine from Jupiter made a person "fat, dumb and happy" just when they should have been most suspicious and cautious.

Saturn's crossing of the Descendant indicates in this chart times of great inner struggle. There are no aspects from Saturn to the Sun/Mercury or Venus/Saturn conjuncts that straddle the Ascendant and Pluto for natural release of that energy. It is as though McNamara becomes a vessel for the dark collective. The dark collective when it involves Cancer might mean starving babies, genocide, the "hot" effects in humans that follow radiation, nuclear war, etc... At the very least, this combination of planets could bring confusion, depression, despair and even morbid fears, pathology and paranoia.

The combination of Moon/Neptune/Pluto is difficult for anyone but especially for a man, and most especially for a man who prides himself on a brisk kind of intellect. After all, this is the man who thinks good management conquers all. He has one leg up into the 8th house but not the other. Good management is a joke in the face of the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

I believe that McNamara made choices when Saturn was on his Descendant that would force him to learn this lesson firsthand. When Saturn first crossed the Descendant, he witnessed the demoralizing and life threatening aspects of the Great Depression.

In 1959 when it crossed, he left Ford Motor Company to take the position as Defense Secretary. His first reaction when offered the position by Kennedy's brother-in-law, Sargeant Shriver, was probably the "correct" one. "I'm. not qualified!" he protested to Sarge. But the irrational forces of Moon/Neptune/Pluto had tricked him into his fate. What would have happened had he accepted the original offer to serve as Secretary of the Treasury instead or had declined all together?

When Saturn crossed the Descendant in 1988, McNamara would have been looking back on the death of his wife (in 1981), a mixed legacy at the World Bank and his responsibility for failure and tragedy in Vietnam. I could find no outer event at that time, but shortly thereafter he began work on his Memoirs. In this context it makes sense that he does not seem to consider himself personally responsible for Vietnam . His message, if you listen to it carefully, is really that no one person alone could ever be or should ever be held responsible for events of that magnitude. All must be involved, all must care and all must contribute. This is a strong Capricorn in the 8th house message.

Economics -- when used as a powerful political incentive or deterrent -- certainly the way McNamara used it -- is an 8th house function. For example, all bids for loans at the World Bank had to include in the project provisions for birth and population control. Many of the Third World countries who borrowed from the bank now complain that its policies tried to force them to become like the United States and under McNamara, like every other Third World country as well.

Margaret McNamara gave her husband a bit of philosophy that he loves:

"We shall not cease from exploring and at the end of our exploration, we will return to where we started and know the place for the first time." -- T. S. Eliot

It would seem that when all is said and done, Robert McNamara wound up back in college trying to master economics.

True to his North Node in Capricorn in the 8th house, Robert McNamara wrestled with some of the most powerful aspects of organized society and the current world order as the World Bank became the preeminent development agency on the planet. At 85, he is continuing to participate in world debate regarding these issues and he is doing so responsibly. In this sense, he is fully living his chart.

The lesson we may learn from McNamara's life is that the transference of power, from one world order to another, from one "old bastard" to the next, must become a time of more critical examination. McNamara's well meaning but somewhat reckless policies for the World Bank seem now to have been based on deeply unconscious colonial paradigms. Some of the best wisdom gleaned by Winston Churchill and Dwight David Eisenhower about the U.S.S.R., communism and Southeast Asia was swallowed whole by John F. Kennedy, Robert S. McNamara and Lyndon Baines Johnson, who sent men half their age halfway across the world to die for nothing.

There could not be two better men than Churchill and Eisenhower, none more learned, respected, courageous and committed. But if we are to learn from the universe when we see Saturn and Pluto combined -- such as McNamara's North Node in Capricorn in the 8th or the transit of Pluto through Capricorn which we are anticipating in 2008 -- the message must be to deeply question authority. To reword slightly a statement I made toward the beginning of the article, the ultimate esoteric purpose of energy that combines Saturn and Pluto is to eliminate absolutely everything which is not essential in life and to use to the fullest that which is. This requires a very critical assessment of what has gone before.

Tom Boro and Beth Deters remark in the Yale Daily News:

The stakes pinned to his story -- threat of compound nuclear destruction -- summon gut emotions, and the story itself captures all attentive minds. As McNamara says, "if people do not display wisdom, they will clash, like blind moles, and then annihilation will commence." So pay for your ticket, and pay attention please. Every person who would call him or herself educated should take two hours to bear witness.

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"[Erol Morris, the producer of Fog in War] said he first became interested in Mr. McNamara because of an 'endless fascination' with the extent to which 'people who engage in evil believe in some real sense that they are doing good.' Mr. Morris seems reflexively drawn to the gray zones of human morality. If 'real Iagos' permeated the planet, the filmmaker rightly notes, life would be simpler, and in the end, probably safer. But the story gets more complicated when a man like Robert McNamara — who is not only debonair, but introspective and self-critical — comes along.'If evil is somewhat more ineluctable, it also becomes somewhat more problematic,' Mr. Morris observes. 'What is it? Where is it? Is it in some of us? Is it in all of us?'" [Samantha Powers, "War and Never Having to Say You're Sorry", December 14, 2003, The New York Times]

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"Today he declines comment on Iraq out of the same sense of bureaucratic loyalty. To the suggestion that dissent is often the highest form of loyalty, he responds, "I think it's irresponsible for an ex-secretary of defense to comment, particularly if the comments are critical - about a president who is in the midst of a war with tens of thousands of American lives at risk, and is dealing with very, very delicate issues and relationships with other nations and with the U.N., and therefore I haven't and I'm not going to. [Samantha Powers, "War and Never Having to Say You're Sorry", December 14, 2003, The New York Times]

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The vision of our own magnificence alongside the incomprehensible monstrosity of the enemy - the "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" (John F. Kennedy) dedicated to "total obliteration" of any shred of decency in the world (Robert McNamara) - recapitulates in close detail the imagery of the past half century (actually, well beyond, though friends and enemies rapidly shift, to the present). Apart from a huge published literature and the commercial media, it is captured vividly in the internal document NSC 68 of 1950, widely recognised as the founding document of the Cold War but rarely quoted, perhaps out of embarrassment at the frenzied and hysterical rhetoric of the respected statesmen Dean Acheson and Paul Nitze; for a sample, see my Deterring Democracy, chap. 1. [Noam Chomsky, Counting the Bodies, Spectre eMagazine]

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"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. ... Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." -- Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the 1960s

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OLD MEN ARE BASTARDS by Larry Winters

Old men are bastards.
They act like bastards most of your life
and before they die they tell you they're sorry.

Abraham started it when he took his boy up the mountain.
tied him up and held a knife over his head.
Then he made up some crap about God, and let the boy go.

Thanks old man.
This is a poem I planned never to write.
But you wrote your book.
I wish you had found a ram on that mountain you old bastard.

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Quote from interview with Brian Lamb for GiaoDiem Newspaper, April 23, 1996:

"This is from Curtis Westphal, retired Air Force colonel, Austin, Texas, USA Today a couple days ago. I warn you this is strong. 'McNamara ranks with Hitler and Stalin as a perpetrator of crimes against humanity. Now he has torn open Vietnam's wounds throughout this country. Any profits from his book should be labeled reparations and should go to families who lost loved ones and to disabled Vietnam veterans. He should not profit from the tragedy he caused.'"

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Excerpt from Interview with McNamara, GiaoDiem Newspaper, April 23, 1995

LAMB: Well, let me ask it differently. Did you do this [write your Memoirs] to make money?

McNAMARA: Oh, my God, no. My God, no. You know, long ago, I mention in the book, that money has never been a motivating factor for me. Now, people say I'm wealthy, and, you know, in the sense that my children are well-educated, that I have a nice house, sure. But, in the sense of wealthy, no way. It never mattered to my children. We moved to -- the book mentions this. It wasn't that I was trying to stick my finger in the eyes of my fellow auto executives, but, my wife and I wanted to bring our children up in an academic atmosphere, not in the wealthy suburbs of Detroit in which the auto executives lived, Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe. So, we moved to Ann Arbor, and we lived in a modest house.

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McNamara's Books
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IN RETROSPECT: THE TRAGEDY AND LESSONS OF VIETNAM
Former Secretary of Defense McNamara's controversial indictment of American policy in Vietnam was a Publishers Weekly bestseller for 12 weeks. [REVIEW FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AT AMAZON.COM]

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ARGUMENT WITHOUT END: IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS TO THE VIETNAM TRAGEDY
Erroneous mindsets, mutual ignorance and misunderstandings between Washington and Hanoi drove the escalation of of the Vietnam War, concludes former Secretary of Defense McNamara in a challenging report full of revelations both fascinating and appalling. Based on six sets of talks held in Hanoi between 1995 and 1998 that brought together U.S. and Vietnamese scholars, policy makers and former military officers, this major reappraisal of the war is presented as a critical oral history. Among the meetings participants were McNamara, Nicholas Katzenbach (former deputy secretary of state), General Vo Nguyen Giap (ex-North Vietnamese defense minister) and Vietnams retired foreign minister Nguyen Co Thach. During the talks, McNamara writes, he was amazed to learn that Hanoi saw U.S. peace initiatives as part of a sinister plot to establish a permanent colonial regime in Saigon. Washington, misperceiving North Vietnam as a communist puppet bent on conquering all of Southeast Asia, let a mind-boggling number of opportunities slip by that might have averted war or brought a negotiated settlement. We learn that elements within Hanoi's top leadership wanted to accept a neutral Saigon coalition government; we are told that key escalation points (e.g., the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin attack) were not ordered by Hanoi to target Americans, as Washington assumed, but were decentralized decisions made for essentially local reasons. While it would be easy to dismiss this book as a self-flagellating exercise in hindsight, its unprecedented testimony by key players on both sides makes it an invaluable sequel to McNamara's 1995 bestseller, In Retrospect. Photos not seen by PW.

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WILSON'S GHOST: REDUCING THE RISK OF CONFLICT, KILLING, AND CATASTROPHE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
In the 20th century, 160 million people died in war and political violence, the bloodiest century on record. But, warn the authors, unless there is a radical change in the conduct of international affairs, the 21st century could see far more carnage. Drawing on the Wilsonian tradition in American foreign policy, former Secretary of Defense McNamara and Brown University international relations professor Blight (the two also coauthored Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy) offer two imperatives the U.S. should follow: a "Moral Imperative," to make it a major goal of U.S. foreign policy to avoid the violence of the previous century, and a "Multilateral Imperative," to disavow the unilateral use of U.S. economic, political and military power when confronting foreign crises or challenges. A moral imperative does not mean violence will never occur, but with such an imperative in place leaders will be far more cautious than in the past in resorting to violence. For the U.S., the moral imperative must be tied to a multilateral imperative. The U.S. is indeed powerful and must lead, but it is not omnipotent, say the authors. Multilateral action can help ensure that the U.S. does not act precipitously, in an ignorant and arrogant fashion. The authors amplify on these imperatives in separate vignettes on the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, where they were applied, and on the Vietnam War, where they were not (McNamara was a participant in both). Finally, the authors address in detail three major problems confronting U.S. foreign policy bringing Russia and China fully into the world community, reducing communal or ethnic violence, eliminating nuclear weapons. Deftly written and cogently argued, this is one of the best recent books on foreign policy. [REVIEW BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY FROM AMAZON.COM]

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Books about VietNam
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CHOOSING WAR: THE LOST CHANCE FOR PEACE AND THE ESCALATION OF WAR IN VIETNAM
When the first American Marines marched into Vietnam in March 1965, historical consensus holds, they were there because there was no alternative. President Johnson's hand had been forced by the right-wing hawks and the Communists. The general public wholeheartedly supported defending South Vietnam, as did our allies in Europe.

That's not really the case, argues Fredrik Logevall, in Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam. His provocative thesis -- that Kennedy, Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, and Bundy chose to escalate American involvement when the war could have been avoided -- is well supported by careful archival research and newly declassified documents. Logevall focuses on what he calls "The Long 1964"--18 critical months between August 1963 and February 1965, at the end of which President Johnson made the decision to "Americanize" the war. Despite many opportunities to negotiate a settlement, the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations were opposed to early negotiation -- in part because they were worried about being seen as "soft on Communism" before the 1964 presidential election. Where this book is most interesting -- and , in the long run, most valuable -- is in Logevall's careful study of the conflict and American policymaking in international context. Looking at how the war played in London, Paris, Ottawa, Tokyo, Moscow, and Beijing -- not just in Hanoi and Washington -- reveals that even our allies had grave doubts about the probable outcome of a war. Both our allies and our enemies understood that "the Vietnam conflict's importance derived in large measure from its potential to threaten their own political standing -- and their party's standing -- at home." Compelling and controversial, Logevall's book is an excellent addition to the literature on the Vietnam War. --Sunny Delaney

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THEY MARCHED INTO SUNLIGHT
Nearly everyone knows the official story of the Vietnam War: the war was the worst military mistake the United States has ever made, although the government would be hesitant to admit it. But most people do not realize that U.S. citizens were also waging battles among themselves during the Vietnam War. While soldiers fought in vain in a foreign land thousands of miles away, civilians at home fought a sort of civil war. David Maraniss, author of They Marched Into Sunlight, happened to see the connection between war afar and at home and wrote a book about it. To make this connection even more visible, Maraniss writes about a battle (Operation Shenandoah II) and student protest (at the University of Wisconsin) that occurred on the same day: October 17, 1967. After introducing and giving background information about the many characters in this book, Maraniss describes Operation Shenandoah II, which was fought in the Long Nguyen Secret Zone of Vietnam. A battle that was supposed to be a confident victory for the Black Lions, a battalion of the First Infantry Division, turned into a devastating ambush by the Viet Cong. Sixty-one U.S. soldiers died this day, and nearly as many were injured. The fortunate men of the Black Lions who happened to survive became different men. Through personal accounts and interviews, the reader learns that the confident became scared, the fighters became jaded. ...

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Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina
Horst Faas and Tim Page's Requiem is a portfolio of work by combat photographers who died in Vietnam and Indochina. The photographers came from many countries. Some were famous, such Robert Capa and Sean Flynn; others will be remembered only thanks to this stunning book. Among the photographs presented here are some that everybody old enough to remember the war has seared into their memory: Larry Burrows's famous image of a first-aid station south of the DMZ, where a wounded black marine reaches out to his white brother; Huynh Thanh My's wrenching photographs of suspected Vietcongs' being tortured by government troops; Dana Stone's elegiac portraits of American soldiers marching to their deaths in the A Shau Valley. Requiem is a masterwork, a grim testimonial to a war that seemed as if it would never end--but that has too quickly been forgotten.

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The groundbreaking publication Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side is an intense collection of images, many never seen before, from the cameras of North Vietnamese photographers. Each included photographer has a chapter highlighting his personal stories and captivating pictures. The stories are riveting and sometimes ironic: one revolutionary photographer falsified identification cards for Communist fighters, another traveled side by side with guerrillas, while another barely escaped a bombing campaign only to be forever haunted by the loss of his film and equipment. With almost no resources, a serious lack of film, and outdated equipment, these committed photographers used will and determination in order to record history. From film processed under a night sky with homemade chemicals to making one roll of film last for years, each individual tale is a testament to the power of perseverance. Some of the pictures are haunting (a devastated landscape with the intense flare of napalm, an emergency surgery in a mangrove swamp), while others capture a seemingly staged Communist resolve (smiling soldiers with little children, classic hero poses shot from below). This book offers an important pictorial viewpoint and fills in many gaps from the popular Western media coverage of the war. --J.P. Cohen

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STOLEN VALOR: HOW THE VIETNAM GENERATION WAS ROBBED OF ITS HEROES AND ITS HISTORY
This is a very controversial book about whether or not people are entitled to their status as veterans, decorations, etc. [REVIEWS FROM AMAZON.COM COULD NOT BE REPRODUCED AS THEY WERE TOO ACERBIC]

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