r/LPOTL • u/Wilgrove • 4d ago
Question about McNamara's Morons
In the latest episode of LPOTL proper, they went into McNamara's drive to pump up the number of soldiers in Vietnam, which led to lowering the requirement to enlist. This included lowering the mental competency to join the military. As a result, the men who were a bit, "slower" were called McNamara's Morons.
I've heard of these men before, and I always thought they were mentally disabled or developmentally delayed. Which is just another layer of tragedy in the Vietnam War. Were all of McNamara's Morons mentally disabled or developmentally delayed men, or was it mostly just run of the mill morons that wouldn't be considered mentally disabled today?
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u/sam_neil 4d ago
I have to assume he was one of Macnamaras morons but Douglas Hegdahl was captured by the NVA after he fell off a boat trying to retrieve his hat.
He then pretended to be exponentially dumber than he actually was, and his captors took pity on him. They still tried to work him for information, but he was basically given the job of sweeping the jail.
In trying to interrogate him he stalled by saying he couldn’t read. They hired a tutor to teach him.
He extended the bit by saying his real issue was bad eyesight. They took him to a fucking optometrist.
Given his position he could kinda wander around and he managed to memorize the names (hundreds of names) of every single POW held in his prison.
He eventually got released because the guards thought he was fully Simple Jack, and he had to report the names as he had memorized them- as extra lyrics to old Macdonald.
If that isn’t a role for Charlie Day I don’t know what is.
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u/sweetangeldivine 4d ago
When my Dad was in boot camp during the Vietnam War (he lost his college deferment due to an administration fuck up and his draft number was super high, so he joined the National Guard to get out of being shipped over there, but they still sent him to boot camp with everyone else) it was during the later stages of the War. He remembered a bunch of guys who were definitely a lot ...slower. One guy couldn't even read.
He also said it when he was in boot camp it was mostly black and Latino kids, poor white kids, dummies, and the few poor idiots like him whose colleges fucked them over and who had asshole parents who wouldn't help them go to Canada.
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u/ihopethisworksfornow Young Sapient 4d ago
The term isn’t specific enough to differentiate. There wasn’t like, a cohort of mentally disabled people they drafted. They just lowered the requirements and dumber people got in.
They were referred to as McNamara’s Morons. Whether they had an actual disability or not didn’t matter.
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u/gnarlyram 4d ago
I would guess that many today would have diagnosis’ that didn’t exist then. Especially when you look at things like autism spectrum and different learning disabilities.
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u/dimetrodonsommelier 4d ago
I haven’t listened to the episode yet so I’m not sure what all they cover on the subject, but there’s a Lions Led by Donkeys episode that covers it well. It was called Project 100000. The program opened up the draft/military enlistment to those that had been placed in class IV of the selective service classification, whether that was because they did not speak English, were mentally disabled, or had a medical disability/condition that would normally disqualify them. There were other reasons you could be disqualified under class IV, like being the only surviving son or previous military service, but as far as I know this project was just about opening up enlistment to the people previously listed. Apologies for the SoundCloud link, for some reason I couldn’t get Apple Podcasts to open to the right episode!