Photo: Harvey Georges/Associated Press
Robert McNamara died this past Monday. For anyone who doesn’t know, he was an extremely influential secretary of defense under Kennedy and Johnson, and played a crucial role in sending the US to war in Vietnam. While he helped send tens of thousands of Americans to their death, along with millions of Vietnamese, he does seem to have learned his lesson. A McNamara quote that you can find in this NYTimes article (from “The Fog of War“) should be on every president’s wall:
We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political, and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better re-examine our reasoning.
Both the NYTimes article and “The Fog of War” are worth checking out…
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Imagine if Laura Bush would have devoted more of her precious time to teaching W how to read… Unimaginable, I know.
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