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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: one_less who wrote (145785)	9/16/2004 3:19:47 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (2) of 281500

I think for McNamara it was knowing that millions needlessly died on his watch because we could not come to terms with the fact that we had made a mistake by going to war in Vietnam -- and that is where the strongest similarity lies with Iraq. By the way, when I say we made a mistake, we actually made a series of interconnected mistakes. It is not, as you have implied, that critics of the war do not see the US as having a legitimate role to play in relation to Iraq and the spread of democracy. It is, as McNamara said, the mistake of acting unilaterally that set us up for failure -- and failure is the only thing worse than leaving Iraq as it was with Saddam. I want Iraqis to be free -- and they are not. I want democracy to have a chance in Iraq, but as we are conducting ourselves it does not. I want the "thugs" you decry to be driven from power and out of town -- but instead their power grows. McNamara saw the destructive power of key policy mistake, and the even more costly effects of escalation of commitment to a bad decision. He has the deaths of millions of people on his conscience.

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