"The moral case against the damage done to the Vietnamese population and landscape by U.S. firepower and Agent Orange defoliation is compelling. But the U.S. effort in Korea was even more devastating, and the U.S. efforts in World War II included the incineration of German and Japanese cities by conventional and atomic bombing. To the historian, the case that the Vietnam War was a unique atrocity in itself is hard to make" [emphasis added].

Vietnam was, indeed, not "unique," and our collective refusal to acknowledge that fact allows for the continuation of our bizarre imperialism. Far from rebutting the leftist position, Lind shows, in this devastating paragraph, that the left never went far enough in their criticism.

If there is one thing Americans love it’s a good scapegoat. There is nothing quite like projecting our collective pathologies onto another person and then watching them burn for what all know are our own crimes.

Ironically, McNamara could point fingers with the best of them. Till the end of his life he stoically justified his technocratic decisions. If the title weren’t already taken, his biography could be called “Mistakes were made, but not by me.”

He did his best but unfortunately, American foreign policy isn't to be run like a large corporation. If his name were Kennedy we would judge him a hero instead of a heel. He no more made the war machine more evil than Speer did for the Germans or any number of the invisible Soviet autocrats during WW II. At least he had the soul to come clean about his part in what we did, moreso than any of our erstwhile foes or allies. I think he can rest.

More informed people should blame the Rostow brothers (Walt & Eugene) who were unrepentant defenders of everything we did until their deaths.

with international agreement that a referendum would offer svn the chance to join the north peacefully.

when it became clear that the communists would win a vote, america welched on the agreement. the war was an active choice of the american government, probably because they feared having to listen to republicans say they 'lost' vietnam, just as they 'lost' china.

so the vn war was a crime from inception. the way it was prosecuted was even worse. lbj and nixon would have hung, if law was backed by power, for they did things that got germans hung at nurnberg.

mcnamara was the point man of 'capitalism' for want of a better label. the head of the department of defense is the director of military affairs, and he should have hung, beside lbj and nixon.

kennedy, like obama, was a white knight to the electorate publicly. like obama, the reality was quite different. but the quaint electoral customs of america ended his reign before he could do much damage, so i give him a 'pass'.

the importance of vietnam today is the perspective it should put on american military history, and current operations in the middle east. america is and long has been, an aggressive imperial power, not restrained by any law, custom or simple human decency when the wishes of the elite command action

That's more then anybody associated with the train wreck in Iraq will ever take responsibility for.

"Needless to say, to denounce McNamara, the implementer of Kennedy-Johnson policy, as a war criminal, without denouncing Kennedy and Johnson as war criminals, too, was as absurd as denouncing Himmler for the Holocaust but not Hitler."

I have a problem with this statement. There is a critical difference between the McNamara-Kennedy/Johnson situation and the Himmler-Hitler one which the author ignores. Kennedy and Johnson have not been condemned as harshly as McNamara because the Vietnam War is not the only thing they are remembered for and judged on. Johnson's domestic record was outstanding, particularly in civil rights. In the view of many (including myself), his achievements on the domestic front outweigh his failure in Vietnam. While Kennedy did not achieve nearly as much as Johnson, he captivated the American people (and most of the world) with his style and charisma. McNamara's problem is that he was a key figure in the great failure of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations--Vietnam--while at the same times playing no role in the achievements these presidents enjoyed. He had no role whatsoever in civil rights or Camelot. This is why it's much easier to condemn him than it is to condemn Kennedy or Johnson.

Himmler and Hitler, by contrast, both left legacies that were completely negative, disastrous, and monstrous. It's not as if Hitler, while still being responsible for the Holocaust, managed to leave behind a prosperous Germany that was much better off than when he came to power, while Himmler's only role in the Third Reich was the Holocaust. Hitler was an utter disaster for Germany as well as for the rest of the world. Therefore, there is no reason to judge him less harshly than Himmler (indeed, he is rightly judged even more harshly since he was the leader of Germany).

There's a part in the Pentagon Papers that crystallised my feeling about Vietnam. It describes a cabinet-level meeting in the autumn of 1963 where the pros and cons of supporting a coup against Diem were discussed. It was felt that neither the Diem government nor any potential replacement was likely to provide success against the regime in the North. Given this, Robert Kennedy asked why the US was in Vietnam if both courses led to failure.

That right there is the essence of Vietnam to me. The fundamental question - namely, would the endeavour further the West against communism - was assumed from the get-go and never really re-examined.

Robert McNamara knew the war was a mistake, yet he went along and wasted all those lives anyway.

For that he should burn in Hell, right next to Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, forever.

i think this is in Wikipedia. what we might wonder about from the current position is why North Korea is not really China's problem? I mean if Mexico was shooting missiles over the Gulf of Mexico, would the US be involved?