This was initially published on Greater Democracy

In Shakespeare’s famous eulogy of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony proclaims, “The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interréd with their bones.” The actions of so many of the veterans of the Vietnam conflict are a great illustration of this. When John Kerry came back from Vietnam, he testified about the evil that men had done, in hopes of curtailing this evil. Some veterans reviled Kerry for this, and still attack him.

Many people still have a difficult time finding the good in the Vietnam conflict, and Vietnam veterans are long over due recognition for the good that they have done. Bill Clinton’s lauding of John Kerry saying ‘Send me’, is a great step in addressing this lack, especially coming from a person who avoided serving in Vietnam. John Kerry, appearing on stage with fellow veterans and ‘reporting for duty’ moves this step forward.

So, it is ironic that those who revile Kerry for his efforts to bring the troops home thirty years ago are resorting to focusing on the evil in an effort to hide the good. John Kerry has called on us to honor all that is good in what the Vietnam veterans have done and it is very disappointing that people who would benefit most from such a call are doing exactly the opposite.

Another person who is remembered by many chiefly for the evil he did is Robert McNamara. McNamara was Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administration, and much of the Vietnam conflict took place on his watch. When I was in college in 1980, McNamara came to speak at the college. Many people wore black armbands to protest his presence, looking back at his role in the Vietnam conflict, as well as his role in the nuclear arms race.

Today, I received an email from Jock Gill reminding me of another side of Robert McNamara that is part of the good that is to oft forgotten. In 1966, McNamara, then still Secretary of Defense, delivered this speech in Montreal. McNamara stated, “There is still among us an almost eradicable tendency to think of our security problem as being exclusively a military problem.”

These words still ring true, 38 years later. McNamara, after leaving the Johnson administration went on to be head of the World Bank. While some might view the World Bank as being a vehicle of global corporatism and question its successes, at least McNamara put his money where his mouth is, and tried to find ways of breaking the thought pattern that security is exclusively a military problem.

Yet even in the 2004 Democratic Presidential debates, the ‘Peace Candidate’ seemed stuck in this thought pattern. We all, repeatedly heard, “U.N. In, U.S. Out”. While I recognize the need to defend people rebuilding a country, and I wish it were a much more international effort, it seems as if a better call might have been “Peace Corp (Or AmeriCorps) In, Marine Corp out”, or perhaps even better “AmeriCorps in, Halliburton out”.

Robert McNamara and John Kerry both learned important lessons from Vietnam. Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it, and I sure hope that we can all learn from them.