TWO LOST SOULS
In 1967 a little known group out of Gary Indiana won the Apollo Theater's Amateur Night contest, which in those days was the American Idol of black entertainers. As their reward for winning the prize, the Jackson Five got the privilege of performing 4-5 shows a day for the next week for the princely sum of $1,000. We all know how that worked out for the group.
In that same year another career was coming to an end of sorts. Robert McNamara, then Secretary of Defense and the man vilified fairly or unfairly as the architect of the Vietnam War, had come to see that there was "no reasonable way" to win the war and that the best course of action would be to freeze troop levels and begin turning the war over to the South Vietnamese government.
President Lyndon Johnson said thank you very much and in early 1968 reassigned McNamara to run the World Bank, a position McNamara held for the next 12 years. During all that time he never commented publicly about the war. Only when he published his 1995 memoir, "In Retrospect" did he speak of the misgivings and missteps that continued to haunt him long after the last boots had left the ground in Vietnam.
For millions of people around the globe Michael Jackson was an iconic and controversial figure who had an enormous influence on his fans during a career that spanned 4 decades. For others he remains an enigmatic figure whose inner life will never be fully understood.
Robert Strange McNamara also led a life filled with achievement in public and private service. He had an enormous influence on the millions of young men on both sides of the Vietnam War. His failure to reveal his inner conflicts while he could still have influenced public opinion will also never be fully understood.
The world will always remember Michael Jackson's tormented genius. The world should never forget Robert McNamara's tortured soul that anguished in private over a war gone wrong. Both men deserve to rest in peace.
July 8, 2009
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Michael Jackson
Robert McNamara
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