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by Greg Palast
July 13, 2009
Excerpted from “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” (Penguin 2003).
It’s been a good week. Robert McNamara’s dead and my book, Armed Madhouse, was released in translation in Vietnam.
I don’t blame McNamara for losing the war in Vietnam. After all, the good guys won. I do, however, blame him for losing World War II.
In 1995, in Chicago, veterans of Silver Post No. 282 celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their victory over Japan, marching around a catering hall wearing their old service caps, pins, ribbons and medals. My father sat at his table, silent. He did not wear his medals.
He had given them to me thirty years earlier. I can figure it exactly: March 8, 1965. That day, like every other, we walked to the newsstand near the dime store to get the LA Times. He was a Times man. Never read the Examiner.
[...]
see
Gareth Porter: McNamara deceived LBJ on Vietnam
McNamara Dies at 93: A Look at His Legacy With Howard Zinn, Marilyn Young & Jonathan Schell
Filed under: Dandelion Salad Posts News Politics and-or Videos 2, History, Politics | Tagged: Palast-Greg, Vietnam, Robert McNamara
[...] How McNamara Lost World War II by Greg Palast [...]
Wow! I didn’t realise that he was recently deceased.
There’s a brilliant must-see documentary ( if you are into military history and the ethics of warfare in general ):
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/
The reason why I like it is because the journalist asks whether McNamara thought that the bombs should have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and McNamara is brutally honest about his answer.
McNamara looks haunted by the past.
Thanks, Andrew. I posted it on DS:
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/the-fog-of-war/