Senator Edward Kennedy has died at 77 after a long battle with a brain tumor. The Massachusetts Democrat was a dominant force in American and foreign politics for almost 50 years. The Nelson Mandela Foundation in South Africa praised Kennedy for making “his voice heard in the struggle against apartheid at a time when the freedom struggle was not widely supported in the West.” Jeb Sharp looked at Kennedy’s role in ending apartheid.
>>> BBC obituary
Have Your Say: read comments from around the world about Kennedy’s legacy
A life in pictures

Boston Globe obituary

The possible presidential implications of the CIA interrogations probe; also, the story of a former student democracy activist in China; plus, remembering Ted Kennedy’s fight against apartheid.

Senator Edward Kennedy was one of the strong voices against the US-led war in Iraq. We feature an exchange he had in 2005 against then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld…and we look back on Kennedy’s legacy later in the program.

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KATY CLARK:  In Washington and around the nation, today was a day to pay tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy.  He died last night at the age of 77.   President Obama interrupted his vacation in Massachusetts to read a statement.  He called Kennedy “the greatest senator of our time.”  Kennedy’s long political career was full of memorable events.  We’re going to highlight one of them right now.  It was a moment in 2005 when Kennedy sparred on Capitol Hill with then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.  Kennedy was a forceful opponent of the war in Iraq.  And, as this clip shows, he was a vocal critic of Rumsfeld’s handling of the conflict.

SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY:  So you basically have mismanaged the war and created an impossible situation for military recruiters and put our forces and our national security in danger.  Our troops deserve better, Mr. Secretary.  I think the American people deserve better.  They deserve competency and they deserve the facts.  In baseball, it’s three strikes, you’re out.  What is it for the Secretary of Defense?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD:  Well, that is quite a statement.  First, let me say there isn’t a person at this table who agrees with you that we’re in a quagmire and that there’s no end in sight.  The presentations today have been very clear.  They have been very forthright.

SENATOR KENNEDY:  Mr. Secretary, I’m talking about the misjudgments and the mistakes that were made, the series which I mentioned – disarming of the Iraqi army — those were judgments

that were made.  And there have been a series of gross errors and mistakes.  Those were on your watch.  Those were on your watch.  Isn’t it time for you to resign?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD:  Senator, I’ve offered my resignation to the President twice, and he’s decided that he would prefer that he not accept it.  And that’s his call.

CLARK:  Rumsfeld did resign as Secretary of Defense, in December of 2006.  Later in the program, we’ll hear about another chapter in Senator Kennedy’s career – when he spearheaded legislation to impose economic sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime.

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Senator Ted Kennedy died last night at the age of 77 after a year-long battle with brain cancer. The World’s Jeb Sharp looks back on the legacy of the man called the “liberal lion of the Senate.”

>>> BBC obituary
Have Your Say: read comments from around the world about Kennedy’s legacy
A life in pictures

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  Tributes to Senator Edward Kennedy continue to pour in today from around the globe.  He’s being remembered as a masterful lawmaker, eminent statesman and the patriarch of the Kennedy clan.  Kennedy is best known for his focus on domestic issues, such as healthcare and education, but his influence was felt on the international scene as well.  Kennedy became a voice for ending the war in Vietnam, a conflict that started in earnest during the administration of his brother, John F. Kennedy.  Though Senator Kennedy initially supported the war, by 1968 he called it, “a monstrous outrage.”  Here’s Senator Kennedy speaking in 1972.

SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY: We’ve got a responsibility to see that this war ends, and I don’t think it does the American people — what is equally important is the Vietnamese people any good to have a continuation of the violence and the killing which is taking place today.  I think the president ought to call for an immediate cease fire in the DMZ, and to go back to the peace negotiations in Paris and to insist that we’re going to end this war.  That’s what he pledged the American people, but still the war goes on, still the killing goes on.

KATY CLARK: Kennedy was also a strong proponent of the Northern Ireland peace process.  The Senator played a leading role here in supporting Irish Nationalists in Northern Ireland.  In 1997 he met with Sinn Fein leader Jerry Adams.  It was Adams’s first visit to the U.S. after the IRA restored its cease fire.  Senator Kennedy spoke at a joint press conference in Washington.

SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY: All of us have seen what violence has meant in Northern Ireland over the period of the past years and also what the cease fire and the possibilities and the prospect for peace can mean in Northern Ireland as well.

KATY CLARK: Edward Kennedy also fought to end apartheid rule in South Africa, and he championed legislation to bring that about.  The World’s Jeb Sharpe takes a look back.

JEB SHARP: Those who knew him say Ted Kennedy’s opposition to apartheid was a natural extension of what he stood for.  He found apartheid morally repugnant and he wanted to see it dismantled.  The anti-apartheid movement in the U.S. took off in 1984.  The following year Kennedy visited South Africa to see conditions there for himself.

SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY: And while I’m here in that spirit of open inquiry and cooperation, I must say to you quite frankly that I also come with an abiding commitment to basic human values.  High among those values are a belief in the fundamental equality of all people, a belief in the right of all individuals, regardless of the color of their skin, to social and political justice, and a deep opposition to the entire concept of apartheid.

JEB SHARP: Later that year Kennedy introduced legislation to impose economic sanctions on South Africa.  The Anti-Apartheid Act became law in 1986, after Congress overrode a veto by President Ronald Reagan.  Randall Robinson was a prominent anti-apartheid activist at the time.  He says Kennedy was absolutely key to its passage.

RANDALL ROBINSON: What we did that resulted in the overriding of Ronald Reagan’s veto, the first time in the 20th century that a foreign policy veto of a sitting president had been overridden by the Senate, that could not have happened without Ted Kennedy.  He was not just a major force, he was the essential, he was the indispensable force.

JEB SHARP: Robinson is now a professor of human rights law at the Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University.  He says those U.S. sanctions spelled the beginning of the end for apartheid.

RANDALL ROBINSON: It could not sustain without American investment, American companies, American technology, American weapons support, all of that.  We underpinned that system.  What Senator Kennedy did was to pull that to a full stop, really, in the last analysis, and that went around the world and made a difference in every Western capital.

JEB SHARP: So how did Kennedy pull off the legislative feats he’s so well known for?  Robinson says in this case it was a kind of magic.  Kennedy knew how to bring people together across the aisle, and he had a casual way of relating, that put people at ease, without showiness or bombast.

RANDALL ROBINSON: The magic can’t be found in the things he did; the magic was in the fashion with which he did these things.  And it was a fashion that made everyone involved quite comfortable,  and quite fulfilled,  and quite easy in the sort of collective harness to drive this movement to fruition.

JEB SHARP: Former Senator Lowell Weicker was one of the Republicans who was instrumental in getting the sanctions legislation through.  He says a big part of Kennedy’s skill came down to having his facts right.

SENATOR LOWELL WEICKER: Ted always had a total mastery of the subject matter.  He was far and away the most prepared Senator that I ever dealt with when I was there.  And you know that when you walk into the room and talk with him.  You’re not just talking with a politician that has some vague philosophy; he understands the situation and tries to plumb all the areas of information so that he comes forth with a complete answer.

JEB SHARP: In the case of South Africa, Kennedy worked hard to find out what the people affected by apartheid wanted.  He communicated constantly with members of the African National Congress, so much so that Weicker said it was as if Kennedy were working the issue from Pretoria, not Washington.  The ANC issued a statement about Kennedy today, praising him for his work against apartheid.  ANC spokeswoman Jessie Duarte says he is well remembered there, including for his 1985 visit.

JESSIE DUARTE: He was here to talk about the rights of people to a regime who did not respect any sorts of rights of any people and in fact had just implemented a state of emergency.  So it was an important visit.

JEB SHARP: Duarte and many others around the world sent heartfelt condolences to Kennedy’s family today, almost as if to say, “We know he was beloved there in America, but don’t forget his contributions to our lives as well.”  For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World, a co-production of the B-B-C World Service, P-R-I, and W-G-B-H, Boston. One of the architects of the Vietnam War died today, Robert McNamara was 93 year old. He passed away this morning at his home in Washington. Robert McNamara had a varied career, but his legacy lies in the advice that he gave two US Presidents. McNamara was the Secretary of Defense for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The World’s Jason Margolis has this remembrance.

JASON MARGOLIS: Robert McNamara had a long and distinguished career. He was President of the Ford Motor Company. He ran the World Bank, where he expanded programs to combat poverty. But McNamara will primarily be remembered as an architect of the Vietnam War. Presidential historian Robert Dallek says at first, McNamara honestly thought that American forces would overwhelm a small undeveloped country.

ROBERT DALLEK: The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said convictions are a greater enemy of truth than lies. And that’s what I think operated with, happened with McNamara. He had this conviction that they could manage this war, Johnson believed this. They just didn’t think they could lose that conflict. Who the heck were they fighting?

JASON MARGOLIS: Dallek says by 1967, however, McNamara came to understand that the war in Vietnam was a quagmire. And this realization got to him. His boss couldn’t help but notice.

ROBERT DALLEK: Johnson was troubled by how uneasy and upset actually McNamara seemed to be over his continuing service as Secretary of Defense. And Johnson said to some people, he was afraid that McNamara was having some kind of collapse or breakdown. So he was as eager to push McNamara out, as McNamara was eager to go.

JASON MARGOLIS: McNamara later said he wasn’t sure if he quit or was fired as Defense Secretary. McNamara was a brilliant man, but he also didn’t seem to completely understand his enemy. And it showed.

BUI DIEM: His attitude is very, very insensitive about the Vietnamese people.

JASON MARGOLIS: Bui Diem served as the South Vietnamese ambassador to the US from 1966 to 1972.

BUI DIEM: We South Vietnamese people, we think that when the US intervene in Vietnam, it would be more, well human, if I can use that term, to think in terms of the suffering of the Vietnamese people too and the consequences of the US intervention in Vietnam.

JASON MARGOLIS: Many Americans also hold McNamara in part responsible for the deaths of 58 thousand US troops. McNamara felt compelled to act in Vietnam though, to contain the threat of communist expansion. McNamara also helped build up the nation’s nuclear arsenal to thwart the Soviet Union. Here he is speaking in 1963. That was the year after the Cuban missile crisis brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

ROBERT MCNAMARA: I don’t regard the present communist leaders as wholly reckless. But recent experience in Cuba, and on a lesser scale in Berlin, has not persuaded me that I can predict with any confidence the sort of challenges that communist leaders will come to think prudent and profitable. If they were to again to miscalculate, as dangerously as they did last year at this time, it would be essential to confront them wherever that might be, with the full consequences of their decision.

JASON MARGOLIS: Later in life, McNamara spoke frequently about how close much of the world had come to annihilation. Steven Miller of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs says McNamara came to believe that nuclear weapons served no military purpose.

STEVEN MILLER: Because the level of destruction was be so great. The implications and consequences would be so massive of any even limited use of nuclear weapons that they were essentially useless devices. And that’s one of the reasons why he became more and more passionate as his life went on about nuclear arms control.

JASON MARGOLIS: This stance reflects a tension between McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, and the man in his twilight years. In 1995, McNamara published a memoir, largely accepting responsibility for the failings in Vietnam.  Many saw the book as admirable, others were less generous. A New York Times editorial said McNamara offered the war’s dead only a prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late. For the World, I’m Jason Margolis.

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LISA MULLINS: Errol Morris directed a documentary film about Robert McNamara. The Fog of War came out shortly after the war in Iraq began. The film consisted primarily of interviews with McNamara. Morris says he and the former defense secretary were not an obvious pairing.

ERROL MORRIS: Like many people who grew up or came of age during the 60′s, I most certainly was not a friend of Robert McNamaras. He was an anti-war demonstrator, at both University of Wisconsin and at Princeton. Although it’s a little bit after the time that he was Secretary of Defense. But certainly, Robert McNamara was the face of the Vietnam War. Rightly or wrongly, when we think about that war, we think about him. And, making the film, a surprise, because I came to like him. My feelings about the war, I should add, really haven’t changed over the years. I feel as strongly about it as I did 40 years ago. But my feelings about McNamara, the man, certainly changed.

LISA MULLINS: Was it what he said, how he conducted himself?

ERROL MORRIS: I often was asked, this about the film, did he ever show genuine remorse for what he had done? Had he ever apologized? I think that the entire film itself is an expression of remorse, and much of his activities in the last part of his life was his unending attempt to deal, to grapple with his past, to come to terms with it. And I don’t believe he ever did. Maybe, that kind of thing, given the enormity of the issues involved could never really happen. I do truly believe that there was something noble about his attempt, even if it was ultimately a failure, to try to come to an understanding of what had happened, and the role that he had played in the escalation of the war, in the 60′s.

LISA MULLINS: The role that he played, that he saw himself playing, was quite different from the way his critics saw him. How would you describe Mr. McNamara’s view of his own role in Vietnam?

ERROL MORRIS: One of the ongoing controversies is whether it was McNamara who was the hawk, and Lyndon Johnson the dove. Whether it was McNamara who coerced the President into escalating the conflict. I truly believe on the basis of much evidence that has come out in the last 10, 15 years, that it was much closer to the opposite. That it was not McNamara lying to the President of the United States, it was McNamara serving that President.

LISA MULLINS: Meaning that McNamara did not hold all the cards, but his policy was followed.

ERROL MORRIS: If there is a tragedy in his story, it’s the tragedy of a man torn between following the two Presidents he served, and grappling with his own feelings of right and wrong. I myself do not share that view of McNamara that he was a technocrat devoid of human feeling, devoid of moral concern. I just simply do not believe that was true. It’s very easy for us to divide the world into good and evil, much, much harder to look at people, the reasons that they had for what they did, their own attempts to grapple with their history. I find McNamara, I still find him, an unendingly complex and interesting figure.

LISA MULLINS: The subtitle of your movie, The Fog of War, is 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. Can you summarize one or two of the lessons that perhaps you learned, and that you’d like us to take away?

ERROL MORRIS: Perhaps it’s an ambivalent lesson for me. Can we really expect to learn from the past? Well, we can’t, unless we make that effort. One of the strange, perhaps the strangest thing for me in making this movie, was making it at a time when the United States was about to go to war. And, here are these 11 lessons. And they’re as relevant to that conflict as they were to Vietnam. The grotesque thing was that we seem to be repeating all of the errors of the past, all over again. Maybe this is the cynical part of me, but I started re-phrasing famous Santayana quote, those who are unfamiliar with the past are condemned to repeat it. My version was, those who are unfamiliar with the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

LISA MULLINS: Errol Morris’ documentaries include The Fog of War: 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. He spoke with us from his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.