Return to Emory Report home pageRobert S. McNamara's long overdue memoir In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam has sparked considerable controversy among Vietnam veterans and students of that ill-begotten war. But I can't understand why. Certainly McNamara is straightforward and honest in his recounting of the chaotic and confused decision-making process that led us into the maw of military defeat (much more so, say, than William Westmoreland's shamelessly self-serving A Soldier Reports or the murky memoirs of Dean Acheson), and he is, I think, unquestionably sincere in his expression of the guilt, pain and remorse he has endured as a consequence of his personal complicity in the unfolding of America's greatest military debacle. Still, I find it hard to believe that any of the book's so-called "revelations" will come as a surprise to anyone at all knowledgeable about the conduct of the war.
For example, McNamara's admission that by 1967 the Johnson administration had privately surrendered all hope for a military victory in Vietnam should not raise many eyebrows. By 1968, certainly, the futility and aimlessness of the American war effort had become tragically apparent to "hawks" and "doves" alike. Indeed, the only publicly expressed objective of the war, the chimerical "peace with honor," appeared only toward the end of the Johnson administration, and it would be the subsequent internecine debate over what might constitute an acceptable notion of national "honor" that would fuel our continued involvement in Vietnam with its attendant and ever increasing cost in human lives. The moral vacuum at the core of the American policy in Vietnam became glaringly obvious to the young men who would be called upon to serve there, many of whom, like Bill Clinton, had the ethical conviction and just plain good sense (and good fortune) to dodge the draft.
But what of those of us who went? After all, it is purportedly from Vietnam veterans that McNamara and his book have received the most vociferous criticism. My response, first of all, is that no veteran, or group of veterans or veterans' organization can possibly represent all of us. We're simply too diverse. Still, Hollywood and television, the principal architects of American popular culture, have long insisted on viewing the Vietnam veteran as a type, as a collective representation that has already moved through several planes of development. For example, the Green Berets, who were the most publicized of the American "advisers" to the South Vietnamese military during our early years of active involvement there, were largely the creation of John F. Kennedy and as such tended to be seen as a new breed of American warrior whose rigorous, highly specialized training made him not only a consummate killer of the enemy but also a true friend of the civilian population in the area of military operations. The Green Berets achieved their popular apotheosis in Sergeant Barry Sadler's hit song, "The Ballad of the Green Berets," and in the John Wayne movie spawned by it.
With the introduction of large units of American ground forces in 1965 in the wake of the episode involving U.S. destroyers and North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin (still fuzzy even after McNamara's recounting), the G.I.'s now entrusted with fighting the war were popularly portrayed in the same terms as their counterparts in World War II and Korea had been, i.e., as all-American hometown boys doing their patriotic duty. However, as the circumstances surrounding the war began to darken and dissent at home increased, the public image of the American soldier in Vietnam underwent a corresponding transformation. By 1969 at the latest he had become a grungy, dope-smoking malcontent equally capable of shooting his own officers as well as helpless civilians, an image only sharpened by the revelation of such atrocities as occurred at My Lai. Even after the final withdrawal of American troops in 1973, the Vietnam veteran continued to be viewed by the media as a tightly-wound potential psychotic, a walking powder keg ready to explode at the smallest provocation. Just think of Sly Stallone's role in Rambo.
Somewhere around the dedication of the Vietnam Memorial in 1982, however, the Vietnam veteran's collective public persona underwent yet another significant change. As communities around the country began to fall all over themselves in embarrassed haste to provide long overdue "welcome home" to their veterans in the form of parades and other ceremonies of public apology and abasement, the Vietnam vet was elevated to a superior moral position as ultimate victim of the war. Now the former soldier, who was once considered morally suspect for his acquiescence in going to war, is now viewed as the judge of last resort in condemning or absolving those responsible for America's conduct of the war. And it is from this privileged point of ethical elevation that the Vietnam veteran is currently (and popularly) being seen sitting in stern judgment of Robert McNamara's mea culpa.
But as I've said before, no one can speak for the Vietnam veteran, much less pass judgment from his perspective. Instead, the evolution of the publicly conceived image of the Vietnam veteran that I've just outlined seems to be the result of a collective projection of changing societal attitudes regarding the war that enables that society to escape having to accept responsibility for it.
The truth of the matter is that the Vietnam war was fought by conscripts drawn largely from America's lower socio-economic classes but still broadly representative of American society as a whole, especially when one factors in the junior officer corps and noncombatants. I dare say that the majority of these, had they had access to the kind of political influence available to Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle and many others, would have used it without hesitation. As it was, for most of those who did end up in Vietnam, active military service was simply their last possible option after passing the draft physical, failing to gain admission to the reserves or National Guard and deciding that, for whatever reason, neither Canada nor jail was a viable alternative. Needless to say, Vietnam veterans talk a lot about being pawns in the inexorable game of history.
But if American foreign policy makes history, then history is made by men like Robert McNamara and not by the anonymous citizen soldiers who do their bidding largely because they are afraid not to. About 50,000 of those soldiers died in Vietnam along with untold hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and many more will carry the scars of their experience to their graves. McNamara says that, in retrospect, he made a lot of mistakes and he's sorry for them. His memoirs are clear evidence that he has suffered the burden of his guilt and that he expects no expiation. Instead of treating him as a scapegoat, Vietnam veterans would do well to recognize and claim him as one of their own.
Lucas Carpenter is associate professor of English at Oxford College.
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