It's a sad irony that David Halberstam, the journalist's journalist, should die suddenly as the hearings to determine what really happened in the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman got underway in Washington. Halberstam, killed in a car crash last month in Menlo Park, was scrupulous in digging up what might have been hidden about the Viet Nam War and, more recently, Korea. Halberstam would have reveled in the Tillman story, and how Tillman's family fought the government and the military for the truth about Pat's death in Afghanistan. Halberstam loved cover-ups. He was so good at revealing them, and analyzing them. He even gave us the term that has now resurfaced, "the making of a quagmire." No wonder members of the Bush administration bristled at the use of the word, "quagmire." It was applied to Viet Nam as it is now does to Iraq: "a sticky trap from one can not easily free oneself." Our modern-day tar pits.
This is why Halberstam books, such as The Best and the Brightest and The Powers That Be were required reading not only for curious, suspicious citizens (and suspicious is how we should be) but for anyone who had any sort of aspiration to write or to report. Not surprising, he was with a journalism graduate student when the accident occurred. Halberstam's generosity to young people with his time, and with his advice, was legend.
Unlike many writers, he spoke as well as he wrote. His television appearances were riveting. His remarks were rich with insight , drawing on that vast storehouse of history in his mind. An ignorance of history is cause for all sorts of trouble, even quagmires.
He covered the Viet Nam War. Even then, some of his colleagues wondered about him, that he might be burning with a brighter flame, that he might even be reporting in order to bring about change, a role that might be assigned to an evangelist. In the late 1960s, he turned to writing books -- he wrote about 20. He challenged the almost-sacred legacy of President John Kennedy, and the road to the quagmire that he and his advisors paved. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon continued to lead insane expedition to its messy, hideous conclusion.
“I became a historian because I went to cover a war and it didn’t work. So I busied myself finding out why it didn’t work.”
Halberstam's drive for learning, for analysis, and his fiery approach to his subjects dazzled me. How could a fellow write so clearly and passionately about the complexities of the Pentagon and the big media business, and be equally adroit about explaining the subtle vagaries of basketball and all other sorts of sports? When he died in that car crash on the Peninsula, he was on his way to interview football's legendary Y.A. Tittle for a book Halberstam was writing about that big game all those years ago -- the match between the N.Y. Giants & the Baltimore Colts for the NFL championship in 1958.
As in the days of Viet Nam, Halberstam evoked angry words from supporters of the war in Iraq. "The crueler the war gets, the crueler the attacks get on anybody who doesn't salute or play the game," he said. "And then one day, the people who are doing the attacking look around and they've used up their credibility." But he was also hard on the Democrats because they had not framed a tough-minded alternative to the actions in Iraq. He seemed to have a fairly optimistic point of view, believing that truth wins out in the end. It seems to me that the definition of success is to outlive your detractors. Halberstam called the current war in Iraq the “greatest foreign policy miscalculation of my lifetime." Considering how extensively he wrote about Viet Nam, that's a chilling thought.
But David Halberstam is gone. His new book, about the Korean War, comes out in the fall. I don't know how far he was on his new football book. His momentum was so forceful that at his death, his writing still raced ahead of him. His energy seemed boundless. His body of work was formidable. He never wasted time. He extolled the value of passion for a writer, and he lived it by example. My reaction to his death was, "A car accident? Here, on the Peninsula? How could we let such a thing happen? Halberstam's devotions to truth, to the language of history, to the importance of moral courage, are rare. Let's face it: most writers come and go. Halberstam's sudden departure is a real loss.
Bruce Bellingham is the author of a book, Bellingham by the Bay. He continues to natter on about an alleged second book which he's calling The Angina Dialogues. He's got a title so we guess that's a start.
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