I once thought that Secretary of Defense McNamara was simply amoral, but after hearing him speak in the 90\u2019s at Swarthmore, I know it\u2019s something far worse. He claims to recognize the\u00a0Vietnam\u00a0War as\u00a0a moral issue and \u201cfeels\u201d for people\u2019s loss and is \u201csorry\u201d for what happened, but offers no apology for sending thousands to their death for what he knew was a lost and mistaken cause. See material below from the NYTimes obituary of July 7, 2009 and \u201cThe Fog of War\u201d interviews of 2003.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we\u2019re going to stay in there, if we\u2019re going to go up the escalating chain, we\u2019re going to have to educate the people, Mr. President.\u201d (McNamara)<\/p>\n
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Interviewer (from text of The Fog of War): When you talk about the responsibility for something like the Vietnam War, whose responsibility is it? McNamara: It\u2019s the president\u2019s responsibility (This sounds a lot like how we the victors self-righteously condemned the losers during our Nuremburg Trials.\u00a0 \u201cHitler did it all. I was just following orders.\u201d Only McNamara is the Nazi.) Interviewer: After you left the Johnson administration, why didn\u2019t you speak out against the Vietnam War? McNamara: I\u2019m not going to say any more than I have.\u00a0Interviewer: Do you feel in any way responsible for the War? Do you feel guilty? McNamara: I don\u2019t want to go any further with this discussion. It just opens up more controversy.<\/p>\n
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Regarding the self-immolation of Norman Morison beneath the McNamara\u2019s Pentagon Window:
\nMcNamara: \u201cHe held a child in his arms, his daughter. Passersby shouted, \u2018Save the child!\u201d He threw the child out of his arms, and the child lived and is alive today. His wife issued a very moving statement: \u2018Human beings must stop killing other human beings.\u2019 And that\u2019s a belief that I shared. I shared it then and I believe it even more strongly today.\u201d<\/p>\n
(What! He has the gall to identify his concern for killing with that of Norman Morrison\u2019s? McNamara sees killing and war as necessary. Morrison absolutely does not. But even then, McNamara has to get in a dig about \u201cSave the child.\u201d This makes it sound like Norman was prepared to burn the child, which would be seen as terrible and hypocritical by all.\u00a0 In fact, he had put the child safely aside BEFORE immolating himself.)<\/p>\n
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\u201cWere those who issued the approval to use Agent Orange criminals? Were they committing a crime against humanity? Let\u2019s look at the law. Now what kind of law do we have that says these chemicals are acceptable for use in war and these chemicals are not. We don\u2019t have clear definitions of that kind. I never in the world would have authorized an illegal action. I\u2019m not really sure I authorized Agent Orange? I don\u2019t remember it?\u201d I once thought that Secretary of Defense McNamara was simply amoral, but after hearing him speak in the 90\u2019s at Swarthmore, I know it\u2019s something far worse. He claims to recognize the\u00a0Vietnam\u00a0War as\u00a0a moral issue and \u201cfeels\u201d for people\u2019s loss and is \u201csorry\u201d for what happened, but offers no apology for sending thousands to their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peace","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m very proud of my accomplishments, and I\u2019m very sorry that in the process of accomplishing things, I\u2019ve made errors.\u201d and \u00a0\u201cWhat makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?\u201d\u00a0 (With this last statement, he’s saying that morality is basically meaningless in war. He\u00a0believes\u00a0that moral qualms\u00a0cannot apply for\u00a0warfare, when the highest good is to accomplish the mission,\u00a0and thus anything is acceptable that\u00a0could lead to that end.\u00a0I believe that officials who knowingly\u00a0appoint\u00a0such a man\u00a0to a high\u00a0office\u00a0 are equally responsible for the crimes that are committed.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"