With the death of Robert S. (for Strange! seriously) McNamara, I've seen a few online pieces comparing the Iraq War's own Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, with the infamous "architect of Vietnam". In the future, will Rumsfeld be universally reviled, as McNamara evidently was? I don't think so. Sure, there are similarities: both presided over wars that were seen as disasters of planning and of execution, both were notorious micro-managers, both had put their stamps on war plans. But whereas Kennedy and Johnson were never able to sell their quagmire (sorry, but I'm legally obligated to use that word, since this is about Vietnam) to a skeptical and eventually outraged public and press, Bush, Cheney, and the neocons did a fantastic job of duping a complacent public and a lapdog press corps.
Sure, there will be moments when Rumsfeld feels the wrath of the public [aside: explain to me what a multi-millionaire is doing riding the bus? Part of me is impressed that he's willing to take public transportation, part of me wonders if he's really just incredibly cheap]. But I think that those moments will be few, compared to the many public excoriations that McNamara faced. And while I admire that this father confronted Rumsfeld at that bus stop, I wonder how much good it does, other than making the guy feel better (after his blood pressure returned to normal). Rumsfeld was already an old man, long-bereft of any idealism or sense of justice after various roles in government, when he assumed his last government post - very different from McNamara, who was 44 when he became Secretary and was, by all accounts, broken by the War.
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