When I was editor of The Hill, one young reporter told me about the emotional reaction of her father, a former Naval officer in Vietnam, to McNamara's memoir. I have reprinted it here.
Michael Sigman | Posted 08.13.2009 | Media
The most risible language contortions this side of Dick Cheney's tortured definitions of "torture" surround mavericky Sarah Palin, whose regular butchering of the English language rivals that of George W. Bush.
Jodie Evans | Posted 08.09.2009 | Home
We all need to raise awareness about these inhumane, unjust military practices funded by our taxes.
William E. Jackson Jr. | Posted 08.09.2009 | Politics
Ford took McNamara to task on several points, but on none more severely than McNamara's complaint that "there were no Vietnam experts" to whom top policymakers could turn for advice.
Mike Malloy | Posted 08.08.2009 | Politics
McNamara's killing spree was without limits, without restriction, completely outside the rules of war so carefully crafted by the world's "civilized" societies.
Jonathan Kim | Posted 08.08.2009 | Entertainment
Most of The Fog of War "lessons" reflect the powerful and painful humility of a man who knows he has made grave mistakes with graver consequences.
Byron Williams | Posted 08.08.2009 | Politics
While it's an oversimplification to suggest McNamara was the primary artisan of Vietnam, we cannot diminish his tragic contribution to the war.
Greg Mitchell | Posted 08.08.2009 | Politics
Norman Morrison, a Quaker from Baltimore, handed his infant daughter off to a bystander, doused himself with kerosene and set himself ablaze under McNamara's window at the Pentagon.
James Denselow | Posted 08.07.2009 | Politics
Certainly Bush's rewriting of his Iraq legacy will be helped by his decision to reverse his earlier policies, abandoning the idealism of the top-down reinvention of Iraq, for reality-based pragmatism.
Robert Scheer | Posted 08.07.2009 | Politics
Whatever his better nature, it was the stark evil he perpetrated as secretary of defense that must indelibly frame our memory of him.
Gordon Goldstein | Posted 08.07.2009 | Politics
Never before has an American political figure so passionately evaluated his own failings or so determinedly sought to understand the lessons of a tragic war.
Marie Wilson | Posted 08.07.2009 | Home
McNamara once said: "I try to separate human emotion from the larger issue of human welfare." This was his false divide between head and heart, buoyed by the codes of masculinity.
Alec Baldwin | Posted 08.07.2009 | Politics
No, I am not moving to Connecticut to run against Joe Lieberman. I am sure that Democratic Party leaders in that state will take care of themselves.
Kenneth C. Davis | Posted 08.07.2009 | Living
For anyone who needs a refresher course on America in Vietnam, here is a short reading list from among the thousands of books written about the war.
HuffingtonPost.com | Sam Stein | Posted 08.07.2009 | Politics
The death of Robert McNamara at the age of 93 has re-ignited a debate about the legacy of the man and the event with which he is most often associated...
McClatchy | David Lightman | Posted 08.07.2009 | World
WASHINGTON -- Robert S. McNamara, the Kennedy-Johnson-era defense secretary, will be most remembered as a man instrumental in sending hundreds of thou...
Greg Mitchell | Posted 08.07.2009 | Politics
One of the most dramatic, and in some ways revealing, incidents in the long life of McNamara occurred in 1972 -- when a young man, attempted to heave him off the Martha's Vineyard ferry.
McClatchy | Joseph L. Galloway | Posted 08.06.2009 | Politics
Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell. McNamara was the origi...
HuffingtonPost.com | Jason Linkins | Posted 08.06.2009 | Politics
It's very difficult to get taken seriously in the media today, unless you were strongly beating a drum in favor of the Iraq misadventure. Getting it right still comes with consequences: a diminished share of the pundit-hole. Getting it wrong still comes with rewards.
Joseph Nye | Posted 08.06.2009 | Politics
Part of me will never forgive him for the consequences of his mistakes in Vietnam. But another part respects him for his efforts to come to terms with his actions and to help a younger generation to learn.
Avery Corman | Posted 08.06.2009 | Politics
I was struck by McNamara's appearance on that platform, imperious, deferred to, a celebrity, or something else, a member of royalty playing with his soldiers and toys.
Will Bunch | Posted 08.06.2009 | Politics
Even after McNamara spelled out everything that went so horribly wrong in Vietnam, he lived long enough to see a new generation of the self-appointed "best and brightest" in Washington pay absolutely no mind to the lessons of our recent past.
HuffingtonPost.com | Jason Linkins | Posted 08.06.2009 | Politics
One of the things that is likely to prevent former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara from receiving the same wall-to-wall coverage in death that Micha...
AP | ANNE GEARAN | Posted 08.06.2009 | Politics
WASHINGTON — Robert S. McNamara, the brainy Pentagon chief who directed the escalation of the Vietnam War despite private doubts the war was win...
AP/Huffington Post | Posted 08.06.2009 | Politics
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Robert S. McNamara, the cerebral secretary of defense who was vilified for prosecuting America's most controversial war and then de...
Al Eisele | Posted 08.25.2009 | Politics