I agree with you that the NY Times piece did spend way too much on McNamara’s “moral struggle” over the loss of US troop lives, which is not only not true, but it ultimately acts as a distraction to the larger issue of what motivates US foreign policy, since the murder of innocent civilians is the norm and on a massive scale. Both the NY Times and the GR Press, like most mainstream media, have internalized the notion that US foreign policy is at least benign, but most often completely humanitarian.

As an aside, I feel that the Times piece overemphasized McNamara’s “remorse” over his role in world events. In the documentary “The Fog of War,” I was struck and repulsed by how neutral McNamara was in assessing himself. Just because he’d churned over the events of his life doesn’t mean that he profited from that. He seemed, in fact, to have emerged with the conviction that everything he’d done was really more the result of other people’s actions, decisions, or the course of events.