Those We Do Not Speak Of

It's astounding how many editorials, columns and cartoons assessing Robert McNamara's legacy fail to mention the existence of Vietnamese people, considering he helped kill over two million of them. David Broder of The Washington Post displays this callousness perfectly:

It was not until 1995, when he was again a private citizen, that McNamara published an apologetic memoir, revealing for the first time that he had harbored the gravest doubts about the war that took 58,000 American lives.

Were any other lives taken or did the North Vietnamese incur zero casualties with their impenetrable network of hand-dug tunnels? Broder goes on:

Opponents of the war said that if McNamara had made the reason for his "resignation" public at the time, Johnson might have been forced to end the war -- and thousands who died over the next seven years might have been saved.

To pay disproportionate attention to American casualties is expected of the media. To claim the death toll of the last seven years in Vietnam is measured in the "thousands" is simply inaccurate and inhuman. Does Broder or his editors think they have any responsibility to accurately characterize the death toll of a major war? Perhaps only the 4,000 American deaths are worth mentioning in the Iraq War.

Polls always show Americans are clueless when it comes the number of civilian deaths in countries we invade. Maybe they read The Post.