Regarding the July 9 editorial "McNamara's tragedy and triumph": Some Vietnamese political commentators have pointed out Robert McNamara's naive snobbery concerning the Vietnam War while he was U.S. defense secretary. A look through history shows that Western political and military leaders like to count only on impersonal factors such as mathematical formulas or technology. They fail to see the power of the human spirit that can turn into fanaticism.

One shouldn't think that possession of nuclear weapons, or even control of barely imagined universe-annihilating anti-matter, means victory. One cannot defeat the human mind with artificial intelligence either. The more BS confessions I read by retired U.S. military and political leaders like McNamara, the more indignant I feel toward their hypocrisy and deadly naivete.

Why did the communist regimes in the West (Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union) collapse so quickly while those in the East (China, North Korea and Vietnam) still challenge the free world? The reason perhaps is that the Eastern spirit has prevailed against the Western spirit — not necessarily that capitalism has defeated communism.

hideo kaito