A Little Eerie

From 2Millionth Web Log

Being all of three two years old when Robert McNamara concluded his tenure as SecDef I can only feel by proxy the sort of wrath David Halberstam held towards him in the form of his successor Rummy...though, as far as I can tell, the latter has yet to engage in any sort of soul searching beyond vague regrets about abandoning the Geneva Conventions. In contrast, McNamara seemed to evince some measure of doubt and/or sorrow, and, if nothing else, the Pentagon Papers (sigh--full disclosure: have the book but have never read more than a few pages), anyway, the Pentagon Papers, at least when released, were the smoking gun that exposed the lie that was the Vietnam War.

Still...that was quite a hell of a price paid by a LOT of people in order to save the collective face of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, including that of Mr. McNamara himself. And, even sadder, it was a lesson of history not merely unlearned, but actively ignored--hubris doesn't get much worse.

By now, I've come to realize that heaven and hell are merely constructs of the mind, but if there was any truth to the concept(s), wouldn't it be appropriate for McNamara--or Bush, Cheney, Rummy, et al--to be judged by the very people they sent off to die in the most horrible of ways?