Some spouses, parents, siblings, and good friends of those lost in Vietnam probably silently cheered today on the news of Robert McNamara's death. For some who cannot forgive or forget, they are glad he lived so long with his guilt over the prosecution of the Vietnam War; for others, they are just glad that he has finally left the earth. As one who was high school and college-age during the late 60s and early 70s, the war and all its ramifications were the defining events of my youth. I did not have anyone close to me die in that horrific conflict, but the entire country, young and old, was touched and almost torn apart, by it. At its center was the Secretary of Defense who, although he much later revealed that he had misgivings at the time, proclaimed each day to the nation that there was light at the end of the tunnel and victory was just around the corner. Johnson and McNamara probably could never have imagined that they would slip into such an abyss of tragedy as one lie led to another and eventually broke the heart and spirit of our country.
Historians have disparaged Warren Harding and James Buchanan, but their descendants are off the hook now for having the "worst president ever" as their progenitor because George W. Bush has now assumed that moniker; the same can be applied to Robert McNamara ever since Donald Rumsfeld assumed the office of Secretary of Defense. Seriously, Lyndon B. Johnson could have gone down in the history books as one of our great presidents for the courageous stand he took on civil rights and his New Society legislation. Instead, he died a broken and brokenhearted man, reviled by many and tortured by the legacy of a failed effort and almost 56,000 Americans dead and a nation that had lost, not only its innocence, but also its spirit of hope.
Perhaps, the real tragedy for our nation is that we do not learn from our mistakes. Who could have imagined that we would have repeated so many of the Vietnam errors in another small country called Iraq. This latest conflict does not parallel Vietnam is many ways, but in one important way it does. We started our aggression against North Vietnam because of the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, which appears to have been a pure fabrication, just as we toppled the Saddam regime over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. The prevarications, obfuscations, smoke screens, and indeed the 'fog of war' were sadly nothing more than lies to the American people, and that caused the downfall of both Rumsfeld and, a more than half-century ago, a brilliant, but flawed Robert McNamara.