Reassessing ‘McNamara’s War’ : At 78, the Vietnam War’s architect looks back on the still divisive conflict

What are we to make of Robert S. McNamara now? At 78, the former secretary of defense, steely architect of the nation’s most controversial war, weeps easily. He is a widower with family relationships irretrievably damaged by his public life, and he is still fighting his personal Vietnam War.

Twenty years ago this month Saigon fell, destroying the last hopes that the loss of 58,000 American lives could help prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam. If the collapse of the U.S.-supported regime validated the warnings of the millions of Americans who so vocally opposed involvement in a prolonged conflict far from American soil, it has given little comfort to those now mostly middle-aged men and women. Neither has it provided them refuge from the continued scorn and hatred of many of their political leaders.

McNamara left office seven years before Saigon fell, already convinced that the war was unwinnable. But only now, in his book “In Retrospect,” does he try to admit his mistakes and explain his long silence. “I have grown sick at heart,” McNamara writes, “witnessing the cynicism and even contempt with which so many people view our political institutions and leaders.” Vietnam, Watergate and other events are responsible. But if America’s political leaders have made mistakes, he contends, they were “mostly honest mistakes” and we have learned from them. He quotes the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus: “The reward of suffering is experience.”

But if, alas, it is far too rare for leaders to step forward as McNamara has done (Richard Nixon expressed no contrition for his Vietnam decisions, nor has Henry A. Kissinger), McNamara fails to justify his own lack of candor and silence in the 1960s, when by publicly speaking out he could have made a big difference. Even in purging himself, McNamara remains secretive and less than forthcoming, taking refuge in the dry lessons of hindsight: Don’t misjudge the nature of conflict, he writes; don’t underestimate the power of nationalism, and don’t act unilaterally unless U.S. security is threatened.

This is more confession than expiation. As such, other words from Aeschylus come to mind: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”