Nine years ago, Robert McNamara and Bob Kerrey shared a dramatic moment on stage at the Lied Center for Performing Arts
DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Monday, July 6, 2009 12:00 am
Nine years ago, Robert McNamara and Bob Kerrey shared a dramatic moment on stage at the Lied Center for Performing Arts.
McNamara, the policymaker whose actions sent a young man to a war based on false assumptions and often sustained by official deceit.
Kerrey, the young man who lost part of his right leg leading a Navy SEAL raid in Vietnam when he was 25, returning to the United States disillusioned and, for a time, broken.
"Mr. McNamara," Kerrey said, "for whatever it's worth, I stopped hating you long ago. I respect and admire you for your courage to confront your past."
McNamara had acknowledged in a 1995 book that policy decisions he and others had implemented in conducting the war were "wrong, terribly wrong."
Oddly, McNamara did not respond to Kerrey's personal statement during their joint participation in a 2000 E. N. Thompson Forum discussion about Vietnam.
But the night before, during an interview in Lincoln, McNamara said the war in Vietnam could have been avoided.
"Killing human beings is not inevitable, but will occur if we do not act more wisely," McNamara said.
The United States blundered into the Vietnam war largely because it did not understand Ho Chi Minh or the Vietnamese, he said.
Policymakers accepted the myth of a "domino theory" that insisted Asian nations would fall like dominoes into a Soviet or Chinese empire if South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese communists, McNamara said.
With a touch of annoyance, McNamara brushed aside a question that night as to whether he felt guilty about actions he took during the war.
Concentrate on the future, he said.
The United States needs to do a better job of developing foreign policy expertise and diplomatically engaging with potential adversaries, McNamara said, to overcome "the foundation of ignorance" that leads to unnecessary wars.
North Korea was the nation specifically on his mind that night nine years ago.
Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or at dwalton@journalstar.com.