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McNamara, huh?

Well, I guess he's as good a scapegoat as any.

I'm reading a book
decades after the fact
which places all the blame on him:

the author seeking a tiny bit of fame
by putting everything on a new culprit.
Hell, sooner or later,
someone's gonna blame it all on Lee Harvey Oswald.

And I,
born as the war was finally ending,
sit back with the book and chuckle

appreciating it
not for the insight it gives about a war
so long ago
and far away

but for what it says about all of you

You tortured, sophisticated Babies of the Boom
and you self-assured, short-sighted parents of such

All of you who worry and fret about Generation X
and wonder why we keep laughing

Let me tell you who I blame:

I blame every fool who bought into Truman's vitriol
I blame everyone who ever saluted MacArthur

I blame every hippie who refused to compromise
when compromise was our only hope
I blame every compromising jackass
who thought that being against the war
was the same thing as stopping it

I blame everyone who refused to try dope
and everyone who tried it
and never stopped

So how do you not understand
why your children,
exposed to every kind of moral failure,
have so little respect
for what you call success?
You idiots
started a war here
to stop one over there
and it still didn't work

How can we not make fun of you?

And don't even get me started on the Vietnamese and the French.

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