Commentary: 100,000 reasons to shed no tears for McNamara

Excerpt:

The more charitable, politicians for the most part, have declared that at least McNamara, three decades after his war and Jack Kennedy's war and Lyndon B. Johnson's war ended so badly, had confessed to errors and apologized in his 1995 book IN RETROSPECT.

His acknowledgement that he'd known what the U.S. government was doing in Vietnam was wrong but for 30 years couldn't bring himself to publicly admit that truth, could hardly comfort the parents, children, widows, siblings and friends of the 58,249 young American men and eight young American women who were killed in his war.

Nor were they much comfort to the huge number of Vietnamese — some say two millon, others three million — who were killed in the war an unbelieving McNamara still prosecuted vigorously and defended strongly.


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