The doves are pleased that [Robert McNamara] finally concedes that 'our blundering efforts to do good' turned into a 'dangerous mistake,' as Anthony Lewis put the matter long after corporate America had determined that the game was not worth the candle. As the doves had by then come to recognize, although we had pursued aims that were 'noble' and 'motivated by the loftiest intentions,' they were nevertheless 'illusory' and it ended up as a 'failed crusade' (Stanley Karnow). McNamara has now 'paid his debt,' Theodore Draper writes in the New York Review, finally recognizing that 'The Vietnam War peculiarly demanded a hardheaded assessment of what it was worth in the national interest of the United States,' just as the invasion of Afghanistan 'peculiarly demanded' such an assessment in the Kremlin. Draper is outraged by the 'vitriolic and protracted campaign' against McNamara by the New York Times. 'The case against McNamara largely hinges on the premise that he did not express his doubts' about 'whether American troops should continue to die' early on, but the Times did not either (though Draper did, he proudly reminds us). Could there be another question?

History·Policy·Ethics·Vietnam