Quakers and the Anti-War Movement during the Vietnam War (1963-1975)

No one has epitomised this dilemma more than Robert McNamara, whose steely tenure as US secretary of defense under both President Kennedy and Johnston is still the subject of awed conversation. Imagine the sang froid of the present incumbent, Donald Rumsfeld, and then square it. He presided over the Pentagon during both the Cuban missile crisis and during the great build up in Vietnam when he initiated the concept of 'body counts' to measure the progress US forces were making. He obviously did sleep at night, despite his self-confessed 'moral tension', until one day on 2 November 1965, a young Quaker, a father of three, burned himself to death within 40 feet of McNamara's office window. This act, McNamara, later confessed, took him to 'the breaking point'. McNamara wrote: 'Norman Morrison's action dramatised for me the tremendous discrepancy between the moral imperative – the prohibition on the killing of other human beings that I had subscribed to all my life – and what was occurring daily in Vietnam.' From that tragic moment on, McNamara changed gears. He continued to run the war but he devoted more of his attention to negotiations. At his initiative a month after the suicide, the USA decided on a 37-day bombing pause. In the end, McNamara quietly resigned. Looking back he admits, 'We thought we were acting in the interests of mankind, but the cost in lives was far greater than we or others had predicted.'

Then came the afternoon of November 2, 1965. At twilight that day, a young Quaker named Norman Morrison . . . burned himself to death within 40 feet of my Pentagon window. He doused himself with fuel from a gallon jug. When he set himself on fire, he was holding his one-year-old daughter in his arms . . . . I reacted to this horror by bottling up my emotions and avoiding talking about them with anyone - even my family . . . there was much Marg and I and the children should have talked about, yet at moments like this I often turn inward instead - it is a grave weakness. (page 216-217) I thought I had forgotten about you until a few days ago, but there you were, large as life on the television screen for two solid hours. And as I watched and listened, you brought it all back and once again I was flaming mad. So I got your book, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam," and read it to see if I could go beyond the anger and put it all in perspective. But as I read I couldn't shake the memories, the songs and the rhetoric - passionate and untidy on one side, and cool and deceptive on the other - the murders at Kent State, My Lai, the despair, and sadness, and much else: It all came flooding back. And, as I read on, you helped me recall exactly why so many of us had been so outraged by you and others in the administration during that shocking war, the aftermath of which is still here, and in many other places: the wreckage of young men pacing about in hell, old men now, who can't even derive any comfort from the thought that it was all worth it. The Vietnam War wasn't a "mistake," at least not in the way that you designate it - a series of 11 neatly articulated "blunders." To be sure, one of the things that held so many thousands, maybe millions of us, in a state of stupefaction at the time of gross escalation was that you and your advisers apparently had made no concerted attempt even to look at the history, geography or culture of the country that you were systematically destroying. Yes, all finer considerations aside, that was a blunder. In your zeal it seemed to us that you had completely overlooked what in topographical and logistical terms was apparent from the start. As the French had already shown you: This was a war you could not win. To give credit, you admit that now.

Having studied philosophy and ethics at Berkeley and Harvard, McNamara is a rationalist, one committed to critical thought and ethical thinking. Hence, his third point that there is something beyond oneself. Yet, McNamara never seems to make the leap beyond ruthless intelligence to deep compassion. In 1944, working as the statistical guru of war efficiency, he acknowledged the fighting brilliance and leadership capacities of a man much of the world considered insane in the Vietnam era -- General Curtis Lemay, he of the "bomb them back to the stone age" comment. It was Lemay who showed McNamara how "efficency" worked when the latter was trying to understand why 20 per cent of B-19 sorties were aborted. Men would take off and get "sick" until Lemay took the lead plane. Anybody who did not follow would be court-martialled. He says that "belief and seeing are often wrong." He often saw what he wanted to see. He fell prey to seeing geopolitics through the simplistic lens of the Cold War, hence the "domino theory:" if the U.S. did not stop Vietnam from going "communist," the whole of Asia would go. Years later, when visiting Vietnam he understood what any "Asia hand" could have told him: the Vietnamese would never cede their independence. They saw the Americans as the new imperialists, unworthy successors of the French and the Chinese. American myopia had devastating consequences for the world. Lesson number nine is that "in order to do good you have to engage in evil," McNamara cites two leaders in American war culture, General Sherman and the aforementioned Curtis Lemay. The former refused the entreaties of the mayor of Atlanta who begged him not to torch the city during the Civil War. "War is hell," Sherman reminded him, as he lit the match. Curtis Lemay, a man who seemingly had no qualms at all about his death-dealing, by the mid 1960s, had become a savage caricature. In this context, McNamara raises a long forgotten incident during the Vietnam years: the horrifying self immolation of American Quaker Norman Morrison, who at the last moment spared his own child from the flames he had lit. No mention here of the countless Buddhist monks who torched themselves to make the same statement. "War is difficult for sensitive people," McNamara concludes. In this segment, we see the real heroes of that era -- the protestors, the 50,000 people, who marched on the Pentagon in a bid to halt the war. In a touching moment, McNamara, refuses to discuss his family and probably the terrible personal price they paid.

[Paul Hendrickson] met [Robert Strange McNamara] in 1984, interviewing him for a four- part profile for The Washington Post. Those articles convinced McNamara that Hendrickson was an adversary, and he declined requests for further interviews. Hendrickson is adversarial. Like [David Halberstam], he indicts McNamara for "the crime of silence." By late 1965 or early 1966, McNamara has said, he knew the war in Vietnam could not be won militarily. Still, he continued to preside over a massive buildup of American forces. Even after he left the Pentagon, he held his tongue. Into this narrative Hendrickson weaves five other tales. This gallery includes James C. Farley, crew chief on Marine helicopter Yankee Papa 13, whose heroism was caught on film in a 1965 Life magazine; Norman R. Morrison, a Quaker pacifist who set himself on fire below McNamara's Pentagon office; Marlene Vrooman Kramel, an Army nurse whose Vietnam service left her plagued by mysterious tumors and bloody dreams; Tran Tu Thanh, a Vietnamese-American whose family was scattered by the war; and an artist who, in the book's gripping prologue, tried to hurl McNamara from a ferry headed for Martha's Vineyard.

A series of busts at the Fresno Art Museum represents people who practiced self-immolation during the 1960s. PHOTOS BYJOHN WALKER/THE FRESNO BEE Above: Artist [David Settino Scott] sculpted "[Alice Herz]" in honor of Alice Herz, an American Quaker and peace activist who immolated herself in 1965 in Detroit in protest of the war in Vietnam. Left: Sitting at right is a red sculpture of Buddhist monk [Thich Quang Duc], whose sacrifice in 1963 led a movement to show how unpopular the South Vietnamese president was. PHOTOS ARE SPECIAL TO THE BEE This sculpture is included in David Settino Scott's "A Pure Working," through June 5. Self-immolation was more an act of love than nihilism, Scott says.