On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Jon Johanning wrote:
> Whether the director intended it or not, he seems to have set up the
> whole film to portray McNamara as a moderate -- Le May is referred to
> several times as a personification of the extreme hawk faction McNamara
> was constantly (according to him) battling against. He says, of his
> role as Vietnam War DefSec, that he was resisting pressures that would
> have led to another world war or even a nuclear war.
Another point gone over is the JFK versus LBJ one - you know, the "JFK would have never sent hundreds of thousands of troops in" theory. McNamara is partisan of this theory, and the film presents this argument as well, playing LBJ recordings where LBJ says he would have been more hawkish where JFK was dovish in Vietnam and so forth.
There has been a lot of discussion of this point over time, but especially recently. The latest Nation (that I bought anyway) has it's letters section totally devoted to Morris's letter about Alterman's column
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031215&s=alterman
disputing the "JFK dove against LBJ hawk" idea, and Alterman's response to it.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040126&s=exchange
James K. Galbraith wrote an article for the Boston Review where he went with the JFK dove idea.
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html
Chomsky responded to this, saying there wasn't much evidence for this:
http://bostonreview.net/BR28.6/letters.html
Then Galbraith rehashed the argument again in Salon
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/22/vietnam
Oliver Stone also went for the JFK dove idea in Vietnam (implying JFK was killed for being a Vietnam dove) in his movies.
I myself tend to agree with Chomsky and Alterman over McNamara, Galbraith, Stone and company. Being that JFK was shot, it is more of a historical "What if?" guessing game than anything however.
Wow, 5 links in 1 message, I am turning into Michael Pugliese.
-- Lance