McNamara Memoir Admits Vietnam War Was "Terribly Wrong" - Confession Comes 20 Years Too Late for 58,000 Dead Americans

Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara publishes “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” admitting that the Vietnam War was “terribly wrong” and that he knew it all along. McNamara writes: “We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.” He argues the U.S. should have withdrawn in 1963 when fewer than 100 Americans had been killed, and acknowledges that policymakers “had not truly investigated what was essentially at stake” when taking the country to war.

The memoir becomes a number one national bestseller but provokes overwhelming negative reaction. Journalist David Halberstam argues that McNamara is “guilty of something even more serious than war crimes—the crime of silence while some thirty or forty thousand young Americans died…after he changed his mind on the war.” McNamara was Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 during which 58,000 American troops died. He was such a fiery advocate that Vietnam became known as “McNamara’s War,” making his belated admission particularly galling to veterans and families of the deceased.

McNamara’s preface reveals he “planned never to write” the book, hesitating “for fear that I might appear self-serving, defensive, or vindictive…Perhaps I hesitated also because it is hard to face one’s mistakes.” He states: “I have grown sick at heart witnessing the cynicism and even contempt with which so many people view our political institutions and leaders”—cynicism his own systematic deception helped create. The 20-year delay in acknowledging errors that cost tens of thousands of American lives and millions of Vietnamese lives demonstrates how architects of disastrous policies evade accountability, admitting mistakes only when confession carries no personal cost or legal jeopardy.