The Washington Post‘s editorial (7/7/09) on the death of Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara managed to outdo even the New York Times‘ victim-erasing obituary. The Times cited the number of invading troops killed by McNamara’s war of aggression while ignoring the vastly larger number of Indochinese deaths—but for the Post, neither the aggressors nor their victims are as important as the “agonizing” that the architect of the war went through. As the editorial concludes, “The true McNamara’s War, as it turned out, was longer than Vietnam, and was fought mostly within himself.”
It’s a given that the Washington Post empathizes and identifies with the denizens of official Washington. But it takes a real moral narcissism to suggest that the real tragedy of Vietnam is that “Mr. McNamara was never forgiven by many of his bitter enemies from the Vietnam days.”
What can you say about McNamara’s “anguish”?
Only that I wish there were indeed a hell, where he’d be eternally forced to look into the eyes of a child whose parents were murdered by his “values and intentions”.
Maybe then he’d finally understand the difference between soul-searing remorse and self-indulgent “regret”.
And if he did, I’d wish his soul peace.
Robert McNamara is gone.
Henry Kissinger should be indicted and tried in the Hague for war crimes against the People of Vietnam.