If there were Michael Jackson-style wristbands fixed to attendees at Robert McNamara's memorial service, they would be emblazoned with names of Americans missing in action in Vietnam.

The one-time Secretary of Defense will be forever remembered as chief architect of that still-haunting conflict. But there was so much more to the man's dark legacy. As Jon Taplin notes this week in TPM:

McNamara had gotten his reputation for a "right-sizing" turnaround at the Ford Motor Company. I am sure that when Jack Kennedy brought him into the Pentagon, he was thinking the same techniques could be applied to the bloated bureaucracy of the Defense Department... Will the tragedy of the Military Industrial Complex bloated influence continue to haunt us and our children for another generation?

McNamara and his generation of post-World War II "systems men" helped install that enormous - and enormously expensive - arrangement between government deep pockets and defense industry employers that President Eisenhower so balefully termed "the military-industrial complex". At one time a seeming necessity, the set-up lashed our country to a highly technological research and development spree that enjoyed its boom years from just before our nation's entry in World War II until the end of the Cold War in Europe in 1991.

It was impelled, of course, by creation and strategic evolution of nuclear weapons. But in this country, the defense industry's massive chunk of resources, capital and attention was driven also by our "Pearl Harbor Complex" - resolution that the nation would never again be taken by surprise as it was by Japanese destruction of our Pacific Fleet in 1941. After all, in a nuclear age, when entire cities could be destroyed with a single bomb, there would be few chances at a bounceback after an unforeseen attack.

What churned Eisenhower's stomach as the Complex matured and fattened was its rapaciousness - and its growing indispensibilty. It simply employed too many tax-paying people to be junked, reversed, or even scaled down. Dedicated to building vastly lethal arms that hopefully would never be deployed, it had found nevertheless its space in the American commonplace.

At first, the end of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia gave hope the American war machine would finally be stilled, or, at least, downsized. But because of that very prospect, almost immediately, America began looking for a new global opponent that could be arrayed for our citizenry as the new scourge, the fresh, dreadful foe that must be bested with the full might of our imaginative power. A few years after the iron curtains began coming down, this nation was turning the Mideast into a military staging area, and wars against Islamic foes were fought by the U.S. for the first time.

There is another factor that makes the Muslim world such an attractive opponent, of course, and that's the strategic and tactical advantage such a contest affords Israel. In all the Mideast wars engaged by America since 1991, the American Israeli lobby has been a strong and consistent cheerleader. We now have stationed, in the middle of the Middle East, an American army soon to be trimmed - but not withdrawn. With America holding Iraq, Israel faces no threat of standard military attack. The lion of the Levant is free to roam, roar and piss on any tree in the neighborhood.

In a strange - laughably bizarre, really - confluence of America's twisting obligations, we've been pushing a "missile defense" network for eastern Europe... to guard against Iranian nuclear missiles. It doesn't matter that the International Atomic Energy Agency says it can find no evidence of an Iranian program, or that Iran has made absolutely no threats against Europe.

This fools no one, of course. Eastern Europeans are against the scheme for the same reason as the Russians - they see it as a move to restart the Cold War. The Russians don't like the idea of "anti-missiles", since chief components of such a system are... missiles... and defensive or offensive capabilities are a matter of decisions by headquarters and the turn of a dial.

Remember Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative? Star Wars? This was the beyond-cutting-edge weapons system that would zap enemy rockets from the sky with super lasers. Remember ideas about interceptor missiles based on orbiting launch platforms? The Space-Based Kinetic Kill Vehicle? Remember "Brilliant Pebbles"?

These are the kinds of gold-mine boondoggles our defense industries want back. These projects didn't disappear because of poor test results or criticism they never would work. Oh, there was plenty of that, alright, but they weren't unplugged until the Soviet Union became Russia, until Karl Marx and his revolutionary template colonized the dustbin of history. They faded because big, expensive weapons need a big, threatening enemy to fend off, and the U.S. didn't have a superpower nemesis anymore.

Imperial expeditions to secure petroleum or Israel's hegemony only squander so much taxpayer gelt. What's needed is a big, honkin' nuclear power to face off. China won't do - they hold too much of our IOUs; that's why our media won't be crying crocodile tears over all those folks killed in Xinjiang riots this week. Naw - far better to concentrate on that cooling street battle in Iran over contested Presidential elections; why, just a few days ago, we were being told it was the end of the Islamic Republic. 'Member?

Russia is the perfect foil. It's a familiar one, after all. And the West never has forgiven Vladimir Putin for kicking out the despised Oligarchs. This greasy gang snapped up Russia's vast natural resources - in deals fronted with Western money - during the disgraceful reign of boozy Boris Yeltsin. Getting rid of these creepy corruptocrats, Putin became the most popular Russian leader since Alexander Nevsky. Very soon after this unforgivable attempt to make Russian business and government just a little less slimy, American politicians began assailing again the big Asian Bear. Putin was accused of everything from the Beslan schoolhouse massacre to staging at least one spectacularly public assassination with radioactive elements - a killing that has very, very curious connections to Western politics and a collection of Oligarchs.   

If our economic meltdown last summer taught us anything, it's that our credit-based economy can't be sustained. We need to stand back and take a second look at how we do business, at how we live.

And it's time to rethink the staggering cost of being so well-armed, so militant. Our military-industrial complex costs us more than dollars and cents. To maintain it, we must periodically exercise its product... and people die. We've been bristling for a fight since we were caught unaware on that misty Sunday in December, so long ago.

Maybe it's time to stand down.

And let's begin by freezing schemes to re-launch the Cold War.