"We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"

Robert McNamara wrestles with the moral cost of strategic decisions in war by recalling the firebombing of Tokyo and the scale of civilian death it inflicted. His focus is less on historical detail than on the ethical framework by which such acts are judged. When Curtis LeMay acknowledged that the same actions would be seen as criminal had the United States lost, he was exposing an unsettling asymmetry: victory often confers moral absolution, while defeat invites condemnation. McNamara refuses that bargain, asking why outcome should determine ethics.

The passage challenges complacent notions of “military necessity” by confronting the principles of just war, distinction, proportionality, and necessity. Area bombing that incinerates entire neighborhoods blurs the line between combatant and civilian, raising doubts that the ends could justify the means. If moral standards are contingent on who writes history, then they are not standards at all but reflections of power. McNamara’s provocation is to insist that ethical judgment should not depend on who prevails, but on criteria applied consistently, regardless of outcome.

It is also an indictment of the bureaucratic logic that can normalize extreme violence when framed as strategic efficiency. The passage implies a demand for humility: policymakers must acknowledge that even successful operations can be morally devastating, and that effectiveness is not equivalent to righteousness. It underscores the need for institutions and norms, laws of armed conflict, impartial accountability, capable of constraining the impulses of wartime leaders, whether they win or lose.

Finally, it is a plea for moral clarity amid the fog of war. McNamara suggests that genuine responsibility requires facing the human consequences of choices made under pressure and uncertainty. Victory does not erase those consequences. If morality has any meaning in wartime, it must be anchored in principles that survive the verdict of history, and the seductions of success.