This page accompanies an online tutorial on Saturn transits to the angles of the chart using the life and astrology chart of Robert S. McNamara for an example. If you would like to follow through with the tutorial, click here.
Also please see the second article in this series on Saturn with Pluto entitled Harvesting the Seeds of a New World Order (WorldCom/Bernie Ebbers).
Other resources:
mcnamara's
books | books about vietnam
defense
dept analysis of term as secretary
eisenhower's
domino theory
the tutorial
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, 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.
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? Some of McNamara's best 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 box 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. Perhaps unconscious (karmic?) memories of misery, starvation, despair and helplessness overcame his better judgment at times. 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. Try managing the Four 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.
McNamara's
Books
click here to buy directly from amazon.com
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]
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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SECRETS
Ellsberg's transformation from cold warrior and Defense Department analyst
to impassioned antiwar crusader who released the Pentagon Papers to the
New York Times in June 1971 makes a remarkable and riveting story
that still shocks 30 years later. Avoiding, for the most part, self-justification
and self-aggrandizement, he clearly relates the experiences that led him
to reject as arrogant lies the premises six presidents presented to the
public and Congress to secure support for the Vietnam War. He describes
the disjunction between what he saw during visits to Vietnam in the early
and mid-'60s, driving through dangerous Viet Cong-held territory, and
what was told to the press and public. And he recalls his first reading
of the classified documents later known as the Pentagon Papers, which
exposed the motives, in his view unprincipled, behind American involvement
in Vietnam. Ellsberg creates page-turning human drama and suspense in
both his descriptions of his early experience accompanying U.S. combat
missions in Vietnam and his days spent underground evading an FBI manhunt
after the Times's publication of the Papers. Another strength of this
memoir is Ellsberg's vivid recollections of meetings with prominent policymakers,
from Henry Kissinger to Senator William Fulbright, that re-create the
deep tensions of the Vietnam era. Ellsberg raises serious ethical questions
about how citizens, politicians, the press and officials act when confronted
with government actions they consider immoral and perhaps illegal. Ellsberg's
own answer is history. [REVIEW BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY FROM AMAZON.COM].
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VIETNAM: A HISTORY
Vietnam: A History is a masterfully written history of America's
involvement in Vietnam - certainly one of the two best single-volume histories
(along with A Bright Shining Lie, by Neil Sheehan) of America's
most regrettable war that I've read. Written by Stanley Karnow, a former
Southeast Asian correspondent for "Time" and "Life"
magazines, and "The Washington Post," this book is a comprehensive
and fascinating look at the Vietnam war, from its underlying causes at
the end of World War II, to the final takeover of South Vietnam by its
Communist neighbor, North Vietnam, in April 1975. Karnow delivers with
crisp and precise prose an account of the Vietnam War which is both fair
and objective. He analyzes the conflict from both the political and military
standpoint, and is unsparing in his criticism of errors made by political
and military leaders on all sides of the conflict. Three areas of this
book were especially interesting to me: first, the author's account of
the conflict between the French and Viet Minh, and how the French were
defeated at Dienbienphu in 1954; second, how the U.S. government formulated
its Vietnam policy under the Kennedy administration, and how that policy
ultimately failed; and third, how Richard Nixon, upon becoming President
in 1969, changed America's Vietnam policy and began the process of "Vietnamizing"
the war. (Karnow's candid description of how the Kennedy administration
initially supported South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, then tacitly
approved of the 1963 coup d'etat which resulted in Diem's murder is fascinating.)"Vietnam:
A History" is an essential book for the reader interested in gaining
a good understanding of the war and its causes. Highly recommendable reading!
[REVIEW FROM AMAZON.COM]
DISPATCHES
Over the past
15 years I have read more books on the Vietnam war than I care to remember...
but this one is in a class of its own and I come back to it time after
time. If you are new to books on this war then this is perhaps not the
place to start as some knowledge and terminology is assumed. If you are
looking for a historical account, this isnt for you either because its
not a history lesson as such. If you are looking for a 'quintessential
story' with a definite start and finish linked by a series of interconnected
scenes, this isn't for you either because this book is so much more than
that. What Michael Herr does is beyond my powers of description... but
he takes a pile of chaos and puts it on the page and somehow makes it
work. This isn't about waving patriotic flags and beating chests and getting
medals for being the only one to survive a suicidal rush at a machine
gun. This is about the people involved, the mayhem they faced, the confusion
of the whole deal and ultimately the great sadness and loss of war. Its
raw and beautiful and easy to read. If you want to learn about the realities
of the Vietnam war and are prepared to step outside to box, buy this and
don't look back. [REVIEW FROM AMAZON.COM]
What others have said about this article:
July 6, 2004: I just read the McNamara article. Fascinating. Do you know anything about his children, other than they opposed the war. It must have been hell, knowing the war could not be won and continuing to try and do Johnsons bidding. I will have to read your other articles...did one person write these or several? I just found this looking for stuff on McNamara after watching Fog of War...this was a treat as I love astrology.
