elegy for Robert McNamara

Thanks for the note under the "I want the raw truth, etc." statement. Otherwise I would not have known who he was. I looked him up in my dictionary and this is what it has to say about him: Mc·Na·ma·ra [màkn? márr?], Robert (1916–) U.S. business executive and public official. He left the presidency of Ford Motor Company to serve as secretary of defense (1961–1967) during the Vietnam War, which he championed while in office. He was later president of the World Bank (1968–1981). Encarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999,2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Then I reread your poem and these lines struck me the hardest: 7 years of aimless shrapnel and escalation in a children’s cut tongue dump; camouflaged men with eyes like rosary beads split into atoms: one sane, the other mad. architect, like Speer, of a war against innocence, against dry huts instead of ones on fire. This is a very powerful and informative write, and I thank you for the education. Although I hate thinking about the Viet Nam war, I believe what you have stated needed saying. Always, Cat

It's only when we can think of one another, friend or foe, as frail and fallible beings that we no longer demonize. That's the beginning of compassion. Thank you for writing about McNamara... a name I grew up with. At least the veterans of the recent wars are not being forgotten. ~A "It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." Mahatma Gandhi

I'll freely admit that I know nothing of Mr. McNamara. However, your write about him was so moving, and so freely giving of spirit that I almost had tears in my eyes. A strong beginning, and the energy and power continued right on through. I have to agree with Cat that the lines she mentioned were the most powerful ones inside the write. ~Jess K. ----------------------- "Why worry? There should be laughter after pain. There should be sunshine after rain. These things have always been the same. So why worry now?" - Dire Straits

I absolutely missed the death of Robert McNamara. The man who wanted to be good but found the wrong turn. Before Vietnam he also set the bomb targets against Japan during World War II. Some 60 Japanese cities were carpet bombed with incendiary explosives, just as the RAF and USAAF were doing in Germany. I never hear much criticism of McNamara for that role, although his British counterpart, "Bomber" Harris, was left off the lists at war's end due to the unsavouriness of bombing civilians. And, aside from supplying the USSR with tens of thousands of everything from trucks to radios (Canada even sent them 1200 tanks), there was little that the remaining allies did, in relation to Germany, which truly carried the war forward other than the bombing. (Normandy, coming a year after the Battle of Kursk, was uneventful in determining the outcome of the war. It did, however, set up the post-war competition of ideologies.) I do think that there is some credit deserved for taking risks among the paradoxes, especially for anyone aspiring to be a decent human being. Was that what made him stay with President Johnson despite the latter's chronic upping of the war ante? Of course, America by then had irrevocably spurned Ho Chi Minh's 2 September 1945 overtures concurrent with creation of Democratic Republic of Vietnam and America was paying 80% of the French costs of fighting the Viet Minh from 1950. By the way, McNamara made a terrific tell (almost) all documentary in the last years of his life that is really worth seeing. Moving away for the subject to the technique, I think the last line is a redundant cliche, since it is the metaphor of both the poem and McNamara's life. And I think that McNamara is our metaphor, for if we cannot find grace for him that kept a faith premised on an imperfect hope, how do we find grace for ourselves when the time most assuredly arrises. I like to think that I wouldn't have been McNamara and yet I have the faint sense that, on a small scale, most of us are. There are many very good lines in this poem. I, like Caitlin, like the following: 7 years of aimless shrapnel and escalation in a children’s cut tongue dump; camouflaged men with eyes like rosary beads split into atoms: one sane, the other mad. architect, like Speer, of a war against innocence, against dry huts The following is also good, despite the fact that it makes me uncomfortable: Still–I think of you in the days when you were still a man, still looking forward to your next meal, as a child playing, moments of shame and awkward fumblings of love. Perhaps that is enough. I’d like to think so. GB, I am very glad that you marked the occasion with your poem. Brian