On September 29, 1972, a passenger on the ferry to Martha's Vineyard recognized McNamara on board and attempted to throw him into the ocean. McNamara declined to press charges. The man remained anonymous, but was interviewed years later by author Paul Hendrickson, who quoted the attacker as saying, “I just wanted to confront (McNamara) on Vietnam.”
Sadly, the war criminal responsible for millions of civilian deaths and hundreds of thousands of military deaths, did not meet justice on that day. Rather, he died peacefully in his sleep this morning, a benefit that he denied to his victims. He did not perish in torment, his flesh consumed by the flames of napalm. He was not subjected to the Bell Telephone Hour like many of the prisoners of American forces, his testicles connected to a hand-cranked electrical generator. He did not spend months or years tortured as a POW.
No, McNamara lived to the comfortable age of 93. He had the opportunity to sell his memories for cheap absolution, while never truly acknowledging anything more than that mistakes were made. Mr. McNamara must not escape the lasting moral condemnation of his countrymen,” The New York Times said in a widely discussed editorial, written by the page’s editor at the time, Howell Raines. “Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late.
McNamara was one of the so-called “Best and the Brightest” dissected by David Halberstam. Even the ultimate technocrat later admitted that before he helped launch the war of aggression against Vietnam he had no idea that the Vietnamese had been expelling invaders for a millenium. McNamara represented the arrogance embodied by that other ancient war criminal, Henry Kissinger: I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.
In the end, of course, nothing McNamara, Kissinger, or any other American could do could mold Vietnam to fit American interests. There will be other days to wonder whether we will learn that same lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan. For now, we can join in Clarence Darrow's observation: I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
Is so enticing to those who think evil can be fine-tuned and directed like a surgeon’s scalpel – forgetting every time that Pandora escapes from the box at the first infinitesimal crack in the seal.
Leaving us to mourn the fates of the young lost to the hubris of scoundrels time and again:
…unless some lives are saved by its passing. I take a rather utilitarian view of it all (in the Singer sense, not the “utility” sense). I just dont believe in vengeance, and justice had clearly already (unfortunately) given him a pass (and I dont believe in an afterlife).
I just see nothing gained by his death. Nobody saved or brought back or vindicated or redeemed. Frankly, the passing of Michael Jackson gives me more relief, as he was, by many accounts, a child predator who could easily have victimized more children. MacNamara’s time as a victimizer, on the other hand, was long past.
Nothing gained here. The damage was already done.
I wish there were some take away lesson about how the country could be handling the latest crop of “McNamaras” from the Bush years now drifting into retirement and obscurity.
is a classic example of justice denied.
We are the society where only the big lies are believed and the biggest crimes are the least likely to run up against the rule of law. The most powerful and well connected criminals, particularly those responsible for mass murder or atrocities in the name of the U.S.'s most irrational fears, are more likely to receive a book deal than to receive a booking.
Well said Jack.
Every MacNamara sound bite I heard yesterday made me want to swear at the arrogant prick, regardless of whether it was from the 70s or the 90s. So full of himself, such a control freak, so sure he was right, he wasted thousands of American lives and millions of Vietnamese ones.
This is his legacy.
And this is the one few remember.
NanuqFC
In a Time of Universal Deceit, TELLING the TRUTH Is a Revolutionary Act. – George Orwell
Lt Sharon Lane in roughly 9 yrs and 9 mos. I remember standing next to the statue at least once a week,sometimes twice,reading the 110 names listed at the bottom and thinking what a waste of so many lives.
Thanks for the memories – and the wrecked youth for a generation. My Name is McNamara, I’m the Leader of the Band. Phil Ochs?
Yes, McNamara wrecked a generation and its beliefs in the lies that it had been taught. I have friends on that black wall in D.C., older brothers of friends that died for nothing, compelled into the draft which Cheney avoided and Bush hid from, and learned what America was sniffing tear gas protesting vietnam and Cambodia, where a close friend’s older brother died at only 19, drafted into the army right out of high school. McNamara should never have been allowed to get away with, as Bush/Cheney are now. A whole generation wrecked because of what he did.
And he gets a book deal out of it. Slainte is righ.
I’ve always been stunned by the level of hurt that the conflict caused for older folks. The dad of a good friend of mine from high-school assaulted Henry Kissinger in an airport, and according to this someone tried to throw McNamara off a ferry. I suppose not having lived through it I can never fully understand the dynamics at work, but are there any books that any of you know of that talk about the crimes of our leaders from that era? My perception of Vietnam comes from the generally dry, abstracted perspective of history books…