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"Mac the Knife"

The death of Robert McNamara at 93 brings to the fore, once again, a man who was so much aligned with the disastrous Vietnam War.....and the controversy which arose when he seemed to recant his original position on the war. Bottom line McNamara probably said too little, too late. The carnage the War brought is, as many now consider, not dissimilar to the failures of the recent Iraq War.

The Age reports:

"Robert McNamara, who died this week aged 93 having been defence secretary to two American presidents, was the architect of US involvement in Vietnam and its most vehement advocate.

In 1995, however, he revealed to general astonishment that he had been fired for privately opposing the war. But the fact that he did not speak out until long after the conflict had ended ensured that he remained a morally ambiguous figure.

Under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, "Mac the Knife" became a hate figure on university campuses throughout the Western world as the Vietnam War tore American society apart in the 1960s."

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