Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Robert McNamara Dead at 93

I missed this poignant bit of news yesterday. Robert McNamara, SecDef under JFK and LBJ, died at the age of 93.

This is the man, you'll recall, who was the chief architect and most gung-ho supporter of the US massive intervention in Vietnam. But tragically, according to his later "second thoughts" revelations, he became resigned early on to the fact that it was a hopeless task, an unwinnable war.

Got that? That goddam McNamara knew -- he fucking knew! -- that we were doomed, and figured it out that we had been doomed from the very start of that ignoble misadventure.

Never mind that...he STILL kept sending troops there.

Including yours truly. And many of my friends who had misfortune to die there, or leave body parts there, or be cursed in their later years by the damaging effects of Agent Orange poisoning.

Thanks, Bob. Thanks for everything.

And I'm sure that a large number of those 58,000+ who died in Vietnam would be thanking you too. If they could. They never got the chance to attain those "golden years" of which you seem to have been served more than your share...

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