Book: Because Our Fathers Lied

What do you do when you're the son of one of the most hated men of the 20th Century? This is the dilemma facing Craig McNamara, son of "the architect of the Vietnam War," Robert McNamara.

So far, this memoir is a bit less than satisfying.  You see, McNamara made it a point to separate his family life from his professional life.  Over and over Craig says "I don't know what my father was feeling," and "if it bothered him, we never discussed it." Craig spent his childhood in boarding schools for the rich, only seeing his parents on holidays. He was not only not close to his father, it seems he knew him even less than the rest of us because the family studiously avoided discussing "his work."

McNamara was an evil fuck precisely because he knew, early in the War, that the war was unwinnable. He knew he was sending innocent draftees to senseless deaths for no reason. He was a monster of the first tier, and never paid any price for his crimes against humanity.

His son's attempts to come to grips with his father's legacy is heartbreaking, but (at least so far) unsatisfying.

Chapter 14, toward the end of the book, begins with this sentence:

Craig McNamara wrote:

I've kept a journal for most of my adult life.

This beggars the question why there are so many gaps in this memoir.  Over and over he says "I can't remember if my father ever visited me" or "I don't remember what I was thinking when I did this."  Up until now I wrote this off as faulty memory and a memoir written without any research or self-reflection.

Now I'm suspecting it's as duplicitous as his father, preferring silence and avoidance over confrontation about choices made that are no longer defensible.

I had to watch "The Fog of War" after finishing the book. Craig mentions watching it with his father, and learning some compassion for the difficult decisions he had to make.

But here's the thing. The movie is a total whitewash job, a rewriting of history to make McNamara feel better about himself. He can say now that Johnson was wrong to escalate the war... but he helped him do it. He can say civilian casualties were counter to the aims of the war... but he helped make them more efficient.

McNamara was a numbers man, all about efficiency and statistics. He made war more deadly, and he was happy about it. He never once jumped out -- at the time -- and questioned the MORALITY of killing more civilians. To him success was all numbers numbers numbers.

Nowadays, he blames everyone else.

But he was a war criminal then, and he's still one today.