The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam

Rating:
Summary: Bunk
Review: "In less than 200 pages, the author examines virtually every aspect of the war."

What a crock of @#$%!

McNamara's out of control ego thought that he could apply his quantitative analysis skills to any predicament or field. Johnson was an insecure fool who put his faith in him because he had no faith in himslef. McNamara (Rasputan) created a rift beteen the JCS and Johnson and usurped their power (through various methods and manipulations). The fact is that the military was out of the loop in the strategic decision making process, and Westmoreland like a true military man (recognizing himself subordinate to the civilian government) kept his mouth shut carried out their insane policies and took the wrap for them (the body count etc..was McNamara's concept). The only crime the military command committed was not resigning in mass to protest the McNamara/Johnson rape of the constitution and the military (they almost did, they should have followed through).
Do you think anybody who had anything to do with that administration is going to admit that they were responsible for what happened in Vietnam? Do you think their going to admit that they should have let the military handle the military strategy after they had intentionally alienated them? We did find and destroy the enemy consistently but we could never finish the job because of the strategic and tactical restraints. We had to fight an affirmative action war. Even with this we woud have still eventually won (Tet 68 Viet Cong wiped out; give Westmoreland his troops; invade Laos cut off Ho Chi Min trail; force the NVA into constant conventional warfare; They take even more unimaginable losses; they capitulate; Nobody in the military took winning a land war in Vietnam lightly. In the 1950's we knew what was needed to defeat the communists. It was no suprise. McNamara however thought he knew better and ultimately Johnson turned his back on the JCS and went with McNamara. That is really the bottom line.

Read McNamara's book "In Retrospect" where he attempts portray himself as taking his share of responsibility but only in the context of the terrible situation he had been placed in as opposed to the situation he created. He says in his book:

" We met and shook hands. When the president-elect asked if I would be his secretatry of defense, I told him...I am not qualified."...He rejected my claim that I was not qualified, pointing out dryly that there were no schools for defense secretaries, as far as he knew..." "When it came to Vietnam we found ourselves setting policy for a region that was terra incognita. Worse, our government lacked experts for us to consult to compensate for our ignorance."

This ignorance didn't seem to apply when it came to usurping the power of the military as though this particular profession was somehow overrated and anyone (he in particular) could do it better (I could quote more McNamara or you all could really read on the subject and find out for yourselves).

Guerilla operations were not foreign to us. Who were the guerillas in the jungles of the Phillipines successfully fighting the Japanese in WWII?. The guerilla war in the South of Vietnam was not self sufficient and relied on the north to sustain it, just as the government in the south relied on us to sustain it. The war was with North Vietnam (and the Soviet Union)and as Tet68 proved the VC were under the control of the north who sent them to be slaughtered. There was no popular uprising as planned in the south because nobody wanted the communists there. In early 1968 the war was clearly being lossed by the north and their puppet NLF. Giap was a history teacher and a fool of a military man. He was spoon fed a victory by the French at Dien Bien Phu, and he miscalculated and failed at every major
undertaking against the americans. He was handed one of the worst military defeats ever during Tet68 and Khe San failing on both objectives. He was however handed a victory due to the McNamara/Johnson coverup of the true circumstances concerning the estimated time table to success in Vietnam within the context of the limitations they had set on the military. Westmoreland wanted the 200,000 troops long before Tet68 to go on the strategic offensive, but that doesn't make a good enough story for the press. It had to be misrepresented as a desperate need to combat the intentionally under estimated strentgh of the enemy which was now apparent through their brilliant coordinated attacks throughout the south as being a coverup by the military. Where will it all end? If we had had that kind of deceit from the press and executive branch during WWII, we would have settled with the Japanese after Guadalcanal in 1942 and pissed our pants and settled with the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. A dangerous precedent has been set since Korea with politics interfering in military strategy. This penny wise pound foolish approach to war (getting more men killed in the long run and failing the objective to save the various political discomforts in the short run) is not the doing of the military professionals, it is the doing of the politicians. They are the liars and the murderers trying to displace the blame on the tenacity of the enemy or the mad military men driving us headlong into a nuclear war with China. I guess the Japanese or Germans or Chinese or North Koreans were not so fanatic. Who thought the Chinese would come pouring across the border if we cut off the Ho Chi Min Trail? Nobody but the politicians who want to rationalize in hindsight as to why they wouldn't allow it at the time. Who really though the Chinese would come pouring across the border if we invaded North Vietnam along the DMZ? The same group for the same reason. Who wants to admit they were the idiots and fools that murdered approx 58,000 Americans while they played the jack of all trades master of none, and kept from them the one thing (victory) that they should have been able to show for such a sacrifice?

If there was a war criminal to come out of Vietnam, it was McNamara. If there was a fool, it was Johnson.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful, well-balanced--a good corrective to Michael Lind
Review: Jeffrey Record is an internationally respected defense analyst who has served as a legislative assistant to Sen. Nunn and Sen. Bentsen, also working as a scholar at the Brookings Institution and the Hudson Institute. This is no left-wing peacenik!

His very astute book, based on hefty research and years of teaching courses on the Vietnam War, is a bit repetitive in some places but well-worth reading--the repetition is probably needed because he is out to counter some very entrenched myths about the "international communist conspiracy," North Vietnam's relationship to China, the civilian and military roles in Vietnam, etc.

It is curious that Michael Lind has gotten much more press and attention from readers for his much-criticized book, Vietnam, The Necessary War, whereas Record's well-researched, balanced work has received far more consistently positive critical reviews, yet much less widespread attention.

Record makes many crucial points...Get the book and read it. And then let's see if we can get Record and Michael Lind to have a long public debate--a debate that Record would easily win before any impartial jury. We need to demolish the myths and begin to heal the great divide in our country over this disastrous, unwinnable war.

Rating:
Summary: Why Vietnam Was, "The Wrong War!"
Review: Twenty-five years after the fall of Saigon, antagonists on the right and left are still debating whether we could have "won" in Vietnam. "The Wrong War" exposes the rationale behind U.S. decision making and examines alternatives that could and perhaps should have been examined, and evaluates their prospects for success.

Dr. Record shows how U.S. decision makers translated lessons learned from World War II to Vietnam. Surely, a military that destroyed Germany and Japan could easily defeat a pre-industrial state like Vietnam. The reasons why we could not and did not are exposed in this work. These include underestimating the stamina of the Viet-Cong and our insistence on using conventional tactics while fighting an unconventinal war. The physical and psychological impacts of the militaries' rotation policy and preoccupation with creature comfort is also examined critically.

He also analyzes our South Vietnamese allies militarily and politically and takes a critical look at the civilian-military conflict that raged in Washington. One of the key issues was mobilization of the reserves. Would it have made a difference? In all areas, he looks at alternative strategies and evaluates their chances for success. There is no guarantee these solutions would have worked any better than the ones employed.

Dr. Record applies Omar Bradleys' famous quote about Korea to Vietnam. It was, "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy." His arguments are presented clearly and succinctly in a book that takes aim at antagonists on both sides of the Vietnam debate. While LBJ, McNamara, etc. were often wrong, there is no evidence that other strategies would have fundamentally changed the situtation.

This is an excellent work that explodes the myths that we could have "won" in Vietnam using different approaches at a cost acceptable to the American people morally and politically. In less than 200 pages, the author examines virtually every aspect of the war. No one involved comes out as having the moral or political courage of their convictions sufficient to do what was in the best interest of the nation. There is certainly a lesson to be learned here: Under no circumstance should we go to war without clearly defining our objectives and carefully examining our chances of success. Today, as we have troops employed all over the world, this is too important a lesson to overlook.

Rating:
Summary: Why Vietnam Was, "The Wrong War!"
Review: Twenty-five years after the fall of Saigon, antagonists on the right and left are still debating whether we could have "won" in Vietnam. "The Wrong War" exposes the rationale behind U.S. decision making and examines alternatives that could and perhaps should have been examined, and evaluates their prospects for success.

Dr. Record shows how U.S. decision makers translated lessons learned from World War II to Vietnam. Surely, a military that destroyed Germany and Japan could easily defeat a pre-industrial state like Vietnam. The reasons why we could not and did not are exposed in this work. These include underestimating the stamina of the Viet-Cong and our insistence on using conventional tactics while fighting an unconventinal war. The physical and psychological impacts of the militaries' rotation policy and preoccupation with creature comfort is also examined critically.

He also analyzes our South Vietnamese allies militarily and politically and takes a critical look at the civilian-military conflict that raged in Washington. One of the key issues was mobilization of the reserves. Would it have made a difference? In all areas, he looks at alternative strategies and evaluates their chances for success. There is no guarantee these solutions would have worked any better than the ones employed.

Dr. Record applies Omar Bradleys' famous quote about Korea to Vietnam. It was, "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy." His arguments are presented clearly and succinctly in a book that takes aim at antagonists on both sides of the Vietnam debate. While LBJ, McNamara, etc. were often wrong, there is no evidence that other strategies would have fundamentally changed the situtation.

This is an excellent work that explodes the myths that we could have "won" in Vietnam using different approaches at a cost acceptable to the American people morally and politically. In less than 200 pages, the author examines virtually every aspect of the war. No one involved comes out as having the moral or political courage of their convictions sufficient to do what was in the best interest of the nation. There is certainly a lesson to be learned here: Under no circumstance should we go to war without clearly defining our objectives and carefully examining our chances of success. Today, as we have troops employed all over the world, this is too important a lesson to overlook.