Through mapping the sociological origins of Palestinian doctors: their birthplace, class and family origin, early educational background, and university education, this chapter shows the social transformations of Palestinian communities during the late Ottoman and Mandate periods. It traces the development of the professional classes, from landed, mercantile, and religious notability, which converted, and sometimes supplemented, existing economic and cultural capital into professional education. It argues that throughout the Mandate period, the social origins of the professional community diversified to include families and individuals who gained mobility through sociocultural and economic capital. The chapter also looks at secondary and higher education as a meeting ground for the formation of lifelong professional and personal networks on a regional scale, as doctors were one of the only groups educated outside Palestine. The chapter builds on quantitative analysis of biographical data of about 400 doctors who worked in Palestine. Sources include biographical dictionaries, biographies and autobiographies, and various educational and employment lists.

McNamara’s appreciation of the military problems in Vietnam was intimately connected to economic developments in Washington. A continued balance of payments deficit and an unsettled domestic economic picture heightened the administration’s sense of vulnerability. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) exerted new pressure on the Military Assistance Program (MAP) that funded operations in Vietnam. With Dillon, McNamara worked on a Cabinet Committee on the Balance of Payments that recommended significant troop redeployments around the world. The JCS and State Department stymied their efforts. In this context, McNamara met with the famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who was especially critical of the growing commitment in Vietnam. McNamara chose a counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam because it was cheaper as it relied on local forces. As Galbraith and others recommended, McNamara moved to downgrade the relative importance of South Vietnam to US security and to emphasize that the conflict was an internal insurgency. He used the pressures on the MAP to accelerate the phaseout of the US presence in South Vietnam.