Author: Matthew Davis / Source: Big Think
- During the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara began a program called Project 100,000.
- The program brought over 300,000 men to Vietnam who failed to meet minimum criteria for military service, both physically and mentally.
- Project 100,000 recruits were killed in disproportionate numbers and fared worse after their military service than their civilian peers, making the program one of the biggest—and possibly cruelest—mistakes of the Vietnam War.
For many people, joining the military is a way to lift oneself out of poverty, find better opportunities, and get a shot at a better life. It can provide a way to pay for the exorbitant cost of college, job training, a sense of discipline and purpose, all in exchange for a few years of following orders, risking one’s life, and potentially taking others’.
It’s a tradeoff, to be sure, one that not everybody is comfortable with. But for those with the aptitude and the desire, it might be a tradeoff worth taking. The problem in that last sentence, however, is that desire and aptitude don’t always go hand in hand. Sometimes, both are absent entirely. That certainly was the case with Project 100,000.
Lowering standards
AFP/Getty Images
American soldiers get off helicopters during the operation “Double eagle” against a Vietcong position at Bon Son, south Vietnam, 07 March 1966.
Cruelly nicknamed McNamara’s Morons, Project 100,000 was an initiative started under—you guessed it—Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War. In this project, over 320,000 men were either drafted or volunteered for service, nearly all of whom failed the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which is used to determine basic eligibility for military service.
Project 100,000 inductees placed in the lower 10th to 30th percentiles of the test, referred to as Category IV. Normally, candidates who place in Category IV are deemed unsuitable for military service and are told to return to civilian life. Project 100,000, however, was an experiment to see whether military entry requirements could be lowered.
Ostensibly, the project’s goals were to combat poverty. Lyndon B. Johnson had recently begun his War on Poverty program. Thanks to the G.I. bill and other veterans’ programs, military service can be a great way to get out of poverty. But this was a nice…
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