'Scuse me - is there some view other than it was a miserable mistake made by fucking pinheads leading to the loss of 58,000 American lives after we betrayed our best WWII ally against the Japanese in Indochina by allowing the French to re-colonize?

Is there any doubt whatsoever we promised in the Geneva Accords to hold elections in 1956, and then when John Foster Dulles found out Ho Chi Minh would get 80% of the vote we called off the elections?

Is there any doubt that the pretext for this illegal undeclared war was the rigged Tonkin Gulf incident - an attack that NEVER happened?

WTF, Lind, are you retarded?

I can't think of anybody else in American history whom liberals, conservatives and moderates all joined in denouncing.

Fred Phelps.

Yeah, I remember Robert McNamara. He was the Democratic Party equivalent of Donald Rumsfeld. I volunteered for the military within two months of high school graduation, although back in 1966 yours truly - like all those whose Daddy's weren't "connected" - was predestined for the draft. Gung-Ho at first, that mindset gradually eroded as I studied the disconnect between what the U.S. government offered as truth and what was the truth. By the time my four year enlistment was over, I had evolved into a person dedicated to doing whatever I could to prevent armchair warrior politicians from jamming our country into another mess like that one. Then they did it again in 2003. Another "Optional Invasion" - this time Iraq. My closet has shirts and slacks manufactured in Viet Nam, bought off the rack at JC Penny's, Macy's, Marshall's and Wal-Mart. The only reason I bring that up is because a million bright, young American fellows (and some ladies) left their lives, body parts and sanity in that very foreign place. The same place that 40 years later is a source of cooperation with the USA, open friendship and cheap labor - and not because we "Won". For what, exactly, did the USA commit 10 years of its youth, wealth and reputation to the far-off Republic of Viet Nam? The answer: To make a point. Arguably, the most expensively made point ever, although the current Mid-East conflicts are set to challenge that sordid mark. So this guy McNamara is now gone from life. Really, just another famous person's departure for whatever is on the other side. But I do wonder if, in his last cognizant thoughts, McNamara pondered the legions of America's youth that he and his politician pals - including Johnson and Nixon - sent to endure horrific experiences in Viet Nam, all to make "a point". Regrettably, most folks today have attention spans measured in seconds, having been trained by the corporatist mass media to blindly obey reactionary impulses, rather than thoughtful investigation aimed at forming educated conclusions. Moronic sloganeering has replaced honest debate. Thus, I've come to the realization that nothing really ever changes except the players.

Thank you for the clarification. Please accept my apology.

Wow, does Viet Nam still ever carry strong opinions and feelings. Mr. Lind has made an attempt to think this through and I think he's generally in the right ball park. I was wearing the military glasses at the time and so see it through those lenses. I knew a lot of people who were there making the on-site decisions based on what they saw and knew in the field.

The military struggle is supposed to support the political struggle not the other way around. If you do not shut down the enemies ability to prosecute their own objectives you cannot win the political war through diplomacy or negotiations. We see this today in Iraq and Afghanistan and it was the great lesson (forgetten but re-learned for Desert Storm) that came out of the Viet Nam war experience.

By 1968, the array of restricted targets still allowed Hanoi to operate at 90% capacity, import war material through Haiphong harbor and send it south with veritable impunity. This existed despite four years of raining bombs at numbers exceeding WWII.

By 1972 under a new administration which removed target restrictions including mining of the harbor, war material production, electrical production, refineries, and imported materials came to a near standstill. It was then and only then that diplomacy and negotiations of any substance began.

In any serious engagement with the North Vietnamese, including the Tet Offensive, American military forces prevailed. It was the political war that we lost and Mr. Lind makes that point well.

I found more unsetteling than any of Mr Lind's half truths and equivications the glaring factual vacuum at the center of his thinking. Michael Lind can be excused for not holding Robert McNamara responsible for anything he might have done in his official capacity if Mr Lind has no idea what the Seceretary of Defense actualy does. Until this dawned on me I was at pains to explain how Mr McNamara's unfortunate reputation could be understood as another victim of the antiwar movement as Mr Lind suggests. It is a cinch that as a result Mr Lind might also like to declare that Donald Rumsfeld is the hapless "scapegoat" of a similar "leftwing" conspiricy.

The real mystery here is who at salon.com is responsible for

editing rancid tripe of this kind? This particular article is a fine example of exactly what the future of journalism looks like in a postliterate society. Perhaps the reputation of the erudite Mr Lind will fall victim to the very conspiricy he seeks to rescue Mr McNamara from. Many of the incredulous replies to this post might be said to have a conspiratorial tone of agreement. mmmmmm Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win!

Here is a much better article about McNamara by Fred Kaplan: http://www.slate.com/id/2222288/

Michael,

When you say that "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", you miss a fundamental irony.

McNamara was intimately involved in planning the bombing campaigns against Japan and agreed with General Curtis LeMay that if they had been on the loosing side, those raids would have been called a war crime.

So I would respectfully suggest that it is McNamara's role which means that "to the historian, the case that the Vietnam War was a unique atrocity in itself is hard to make."