In Retrospect: : The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

Rating:
Summary: self serving
Review: Robert S. McNamara is trying to salvage how 'history' is going to remember him. Unfortunately (for him) he's going to be judged on the facts. McNamara and his 'wiz kids' were an unmitigated disaster.They didn't understand war. Didn't understand people. Foreign cultures. Instead of observing reality and adjusting policy according to what worked and what didn't, they tried to force reality to fit their computer projections. McNamara is going to go down in history alongside:
Ambrose Burnside (instead of using a shallow ford at Antietam creek he funneled them across a narow bridge),Montgomery at Arnhem (194: 70% of his troops killer or captured)or Clades Variana who managed to lose two entire legions in the Teutoburg forest (and help hasten the end of the empire)

Actually, McNamara will make a name for himself just as Braxton Bragg did. A 'mcnamara' will be a blind blundering egocentric who causes death and anguish yet couldn't pour p*ss from a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.



For a better read
try:
Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War
or better still

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts : The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation of U.S. Army, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, Vietnam
or indeed anyting by David Hackworth

Rating:
Summary: 58,000 Americans died for LBJ's & JFK's business venture
Review: 58,000 Americans died for LBJ's & JFK's business venture known as the Vietnam War. The Kennedys and especially LBJ became very wealthy off of the war. McNamara's disasters during the war are endless including his rushing the defective M-16 into combat.

McNamara should have done the honorable thing and committed hari-kari. The man is a disgrace.

The only honorable characters in the Vietnam War are Nixon, our soldiers and General Creighton Abrams. Our men had the war won and the North Vietnamese were ready for a conditional surrender not long after the Tet Offensive after 1968. The liberal U.S. media, Hnaoi Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clark and Hanoi John Kerry saved the communists. General Giap and other N. Vietnamese leaders later said their anti-war collaborators saved the day for Hanoi.

While the Kennedys became wealthier from JFK's Vietnam War and LBJ became an inflation adjusted billionaire (see his Brown & Root ownership and billions in contracts) - Nixon left office practically broke.

McNamara is a disgrace. At least Benedict Arnold had a conscience and regretted his actions until the day he died.

Rating:
Summary: Honest admission, but still misses the mark
Review: Although the mention of Robert MacNamara's name is enough to inflame passionate responses on both ends of the spectrum, I felt the book was an honest attempt by MacNamara to deal with his mistakes and, to a lesser extent, the consequences of those mistakes. It's probably as honest a self-appraisal as we are likely to see from such a prominent figure of the period.

However, I suggest that one reads this in conjunction with H.R. McMaster's splendid "Dereliction of Duty" to gain a more balanced perspective on exactly where the Johnson and Kennedy administrations went wrong. One gains the impression that MacNamara still doesn't really understand why his noble intentions met such a sordid end - read McMaster's incisive analysis of the cynical machinations of Johnson, MacNamara, Taylor, et al and it will become clearer.

MacNamara is also disingenuous about the role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as his manipulation to remove the JCS from any major forum on the strategy of the war, despite their clear misgivings, makes him clearly culpable. McMaster's judgement on the JCS is also damning, but his analysis and conclusions are more sound, I think.

One of the few retrospective acounts by a major participant which isn't entirely self-serving and worth reading for that alone.

Rating:
Summary: ARE YOU READING THIS REVIEW, MR. MCNARAMA?
Review: I listened to the audio tape of this book because I intended to see Fog of War. The documentary about Robert McNamara's views, expressed in this book. This book gives McNamara's, views on war and peace in the nuclear age based on his experience as Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 under presidents Kennedy and Johnson and his service as a staff officer to General Curtis LeMay during WWII. General LeMay's command was responsible of the fire bombing of Japanese cities (bombing that in the aggregate did more damage and took more lives than the nuclear events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki). One wonders why, if firebombing was so destructive, was it necessary to use nuclear bombs. McNamara does state that President Truman's decision to use nuclear weapons was correct.

The premise of this book is that given human fallibility and the power of nuclear weapons to destroy entire nations in a few minutes we must be better prepared to solve international problems through diplomatic means or mediation by third parties i.e. the United Nations. Further if there is to be a war it has to be done with multilateral consent and not just one nation squaring off against another.

This book is broader than just McNamara's experience in Vietnam it details his life experiences that led him to his conclusions. Conclusions that include his belief that the Vietnam War was a mistake and that in the case of Japan, General Curtis LeMay's comment that they would all be prosecuted as war criminals because of the fire bombing if we lost the war, was probably correct. This is balanced by the fact, he points out, that sometimes you must do evil to accomplish good i.e. countless American lives were saved by the fire and nuclear bombing of Japan.

McNamara states when we entered the Vietnam War we knew we could not win because we wanted to avoid a larger war with China and possibly Russia. Mr. McNamara knew this in 1962 or 1963 because intelligence reports including CIA evaluations revealed that bombing in itself could not stop North Vietnam from supplying the South with men and supplies and since the supplies of war was generated outside North Vietnam we were powerless to destroy the means of production also. Our leaders knew for every troop commitment by the U.S. the North Vietnamese could match it with an increase of their own troop strength. Further it became obvious that the will to fight in the South basically centered in the Army and not the people. After Diem and his brother were assassinated with U.S. complicity, there was no viable political base to build on. We lost the hearts and minds of the people to the Viet Cong very early.

Mr. McNamara points out that the only way out of Vietnam was unilateral withdrawal because the North knew it was winning and there was nothing to negotiate. Bombing did not seriously interdict their ability to wage the war or recruit men to fight.

So how did we go there in the first place? Mr. McNamara believes it was caused by the lack of experienced U.S. Southeast Asia experts. The fall of China and the subsequent McCarthy witch-hunts had effectively purged our government of knowledgeable experts on the area. He makes the point that to the Vietnamese the war was a fight against colonialist aggressors and a civil war. Vietnam had been in a battle to free itself from Chinese domination and later French domination for a thousand years. The Americans were seen as a new colonialist aggressor while we saw ourselves in a battle to stop communist expansion.

In the end the lives of 58000 Americans and three million Vietnamese (The equivalent of twenty seven million Americans. McNamara loves numbers and their relationships) were lost on misperceptions given as advice to our presidents and political leaders. Advice McNamara disagreed with and which ultimately caused his dismissal by President Johnson. This is documented by statements on tape and internal government documents since released. The hawks appear to be senators, congressmen, cabinet members and outside experts buttressed by the Joint Chiefs who were always for escalation and a military solution which would have been impossible with out a probable third world war with nuclear consequences for every living soul on earth.

McNamara points out in October 1963 the military had advised the invasion of Cuba when unbeknownst to us the Russians had ninety tactical nuclear weapons and about sixty strategic nuclear weapons in Cuba. If Kennedy and Kruschev were unable to negotiate a peaceful withdrawal there would have been a nuclear exchange with the probable end of human civilization as we know it. The same situation occurred in Vietnam if we had followed military advice and escalated the war by using tactical nuclear devices China would felt threatened and entered the war.

McNamara makes the point that in this nuclear age we cannot go to war over a misunderstanding of another nations actions. A nuclear exchange offers no
room for correction or change of policy or goals once its done its all over.

History is plastic as it unfolds and in the heat of the moment one decision can lead to unintended results and history is always plastic in the subsequent interpretation and evaluation of events and so it is with McNamara and his views. One thing McNamara has right is that we cannot have a nuclear exchange by large powers or even lesser powers, ever, or else we will see Armageddon in our time.

This book is a clear statement of the terms of life in the nuclear age. As McNamara points out we are not going to change human nature but communication and understanding can be improved. I have written a longer review of the book and film at mechanic-al.org/Ed

Rating:
Summary: Would give it 3 and a half if I could; mixed feelings....
Review: I think Bob McNamara is a monster...all politicians are monsters. There has not been a single statesmen in history with very rare exceptions (Lazaro Cardenas and Nehru post-1948/9) that have not engaged in bloodshed and mass violence. There are two points about this book that i find quite galling. One, McNamara does not say a word about Agent Orange, I find his refusal to address an indication of his guilt in the matter. In Fog of War he cliams he "does not remember" who gave the final OK for that horrible chemicals use but does not any weapon used by the US military have to have the consent of the Secretary of Defense? Maybe he faced pressure from the Joint Chiefs to use it but that still doesnt make it ok with me or anyother sensible person. Next, is the issue of the M-16, McNamara was so enthused about the weapon that he ordered it shipped to Vietnam en masse by 1965. The M-16 was a disaster, it jammed more than fequently, thousands of US troops died as a result. Draftees wrote heart wrenching letters home begging their parents to do something to get the weapon improved. The situation got so bad that US troops actually took AK-47's, a much better Soviet rifle, of the bodies of dead VC/NVA and used them in combat. It was not until two years later that the M-16 was improved and jamming rates dropped, yet it took untold numbers of US deaths to finally bring McNamara around to the point that he could admit to his own mistake. Yet, he is completely silent on this issue as well. McNamara also praises Westmorland too highly (his constant use of the friendly term Westy for that idiot general made me want to puke). It seems to me all 'Westy' could do was turn South vietnam into a moonscape by endless bombing and use of chemical agents. When that didnt work all he could do was call for more troops and get more Americans and Vietnamese killed (the more troops you have on the ground the more die mr 4 star general....)
The bad aside McNamara realizes his mistakes and that is noble if nothing else. We lost that war fare and squre and I think we should admit it. McNamara is not better or no worse than a Nixon or a Kissinger or a Truman all of whom killed millions through their own warped perseptions of the world and their deadly modern military machine. What makes McNamara different is that he admits to more mistakes than all of these other politicians/murderers combined and thats something we all should admire.

Rating:
Summary: McNamara's Honest But Still Misses the Point
Review: It took more than a fair share of integrity and courage for McNamara to write In Retrospect. Others in similar positions of power have not owned up to their Vietnam era mistakes. Some, most notably Walt Rostow (National Security Advisor from 1966-1969), still think that Vietnam was a necessary war and that fighting it was worth the price. It saved other countries in the region - e.g. Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, even Japan - from the threat of Communist expansion, or so the argument goes.

In Retrospect is well written and provides a clear exposition of what McNamara believed were the mistakes of the war. The book also offers penetrating description and analysis of debates about the War occurring in the Johnson cabinet, in Congress, and in other branches of the U.S. government during McNamara's years in the Pentagon.

Nonetheless, the book has many shortcomings. While honest enough to admit his mistakes, McNamara still misses the point. He shares with many foreign policy makers past and present the mistaken belief that the War was a noble endeavor: "I truly believe we made an error not of values and intentions but of judgment and capabilities" (xx).

The evidence belies the nobility of U.S. intentions. After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, a diplomatic arrangement was created in Vietnam, whereby the country would be unified through democratic elections in 1956. Fearing the popularity of Ho Chi Minh, the United States undermined this political process. It instead installed Ngo Dinh Diem to lead a puppet government in the South to do its bidding. A compliant regime would help the United States pursue its economic and strategic interests in the region.

Diem was an inept dictator who squashed civil liberties and showed little interest in the welfare of his people. He was assassination in a November 1963 coup that had the support of the United States. A revolving door of generals held power during the ensuing years. They faired little better than Diem in garnering the support of their people, and rivaled Diem in their incompetence and pettiness. One of them, Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky, even professed his admiration for Adolph Hitler. It is no wonder that the South Vietnamese leadership failed to rally the people to its side and why the Vietcong made so many inroads in the countryside. One is left to speculate how McNamara could state that "President Johnson's foreign policy rested on moral grounds" (p. 147), when his administration, McNamara included, supported various unsavory Saigon regimes that did so little for their people.

Like so many who served under Kennedy, McNamara expresses the belief in his book that Kennedy would have extricated the United States from Vietnam had he lived. McNamara provides little evidence to support this argument, which has become standard fair for Kennedy hagiographers. Weeks before Kennedy's death, Walter Cronkite interviewed the president about Vietnam. As McNamara notes, Kennedy expressed the view that the South Vietnamese must win the war on their own. But he also told Cronkite "I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a mistake" (pg. 62).

Contrary to McNamara's speculation about what Kennedy might have done had he lived, the fact is that Kennedy increased U.S. involvement in Vietnam. From the time he took office until his assassination, the number of U.S. advisors in Vietnam increased from several hundred to 16,000. Upon becoming president, Lyndon Johnson shared many of the same concerns that Kennedy had about Vietnam. He too was wary of committing U.S. ground troops, believing that ultimately it was the South Vietnamese people's responsibility to fight the war. But, like Kennedy, he subscribed to the domino theory, holding an inflated view of Vietnam's geopolitical significance. Johnson introduced ground troops on a significant scale beginning in February 1965. Had he lived, there is no clear evidence that Kennedy would have chosen differently.

In Retrospect analyzes most of the major events of the Vietnam War during McNamara's tenure as Secretary of Defense. The coup of Diem, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the U.S. military build up, and the many of the failed attempts at negotiation are discussed in detail. Most disappointing, however, is McNamara's failure to write about the Tet Offensive, which he mentions only once in passing.

The Tet Offensive was launched the month before McNamara's resignation. Many believe that it was the seminal moment of the War. While the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese sustained enormous losses in the Offensive, they demonstrated that they could carry out coordinated attacks against major cities in the South. They attacked 13 of 16 provincial capitals and even managed to penetrate the U.S. embassy in Saigon. Tet produced a huge psychology victory for the North, helped to sway American public opinion decisively against the War, and was a major factor in convincing Lyndon Johnson not to seek a second term as president. That these issues are not discussed at all in the book is a shortcoming of In Retrospect.

The public should be grateful for this memoir. It is refreshing when a public official, especially one often criticized for his arrogance, has the humility to produce such a book. We do get a feel for what was going on in McNamara's mind while he was grappling with Vietnam as Secretary of Defense. His humanity comes across in these pages. Otherwise, none of the information here is new or, oddly, particularly illuminating. Likewise, this reader had difficulty with some of the author's conclusions.

Rating:
Summary: Yes, they did manage it poorly
Review: McNamara seeks to explain in this book the failure of American policy in Vietnam. He roots that failure mainly in false assumptions about the intentions of the North Vietnamese -- that is to say, they were actually nationalists first, communists second, and would not have acted to destablize Southeast Asia has we simply found a way for them to unify and rule the whole of Vietnam. He also demonstrates the remarkable lack of management skills of those known as the "best and the brightest." For example, he discusses how they failed to coordinate military actions with efforts to establish diplomatic negotiations; he talks about lack of historical knowledge about Vietnam among policymakers; he documents the remarkably inept and cavalier handling of the Diem situation. The book is useful in that it does show just how limited the vision of some of our policymakers is -- it hard to believe, given the French experience in Vietnam, that our top officials did not avail themselves, for example, of that history, yet McNamara basically argues that there were no "experts" to help guide their efforts. Unbelievable.

The book is useful in understanding the limited period of Kennedy/Johnson, but McNamara does not provide any deeper analysis of Nixon policies, or explore the historical issues that led up to the 1960s in any depth at all. In that sense, the book is almost as limited as the policy McNamara helped shape. Whether the war was "just" or not, whether the communist threat was real or not, it is mainly incompetence that seems to have shaped our policy -- there was not even a group within the policymaking establishment dedicated to the war full time. These are basic management and leadership issues that suggest mainly that the guys running the show were not so bright after all. I am hoping his second book on this subject, Argument without End, provides a more detailed analysis of the real issues that shaped that period of our history -- it includes discussions between US policymakers and the North Vietnamese.

Rating:
Summary: McNamara's moral flaw
Review: This book gives ample evidence of McNamara's moral lacking. Noam Chomsky puts it bluntly (Manufacturing Consent, 2002):

"Robert McNamara's widely publicized book, supposedly a mea culpa and moral tract, is notable for the fact that his notion of the war's 'high costs,' and the error and guilt he feels, extend only to U.S. lives and the effects of the war on 'the political unity of our society'. He offers neither regrets, moral reflections, nor apologies for his country having invaded, mercilessly bombed, ravaged the land, and killed and wounded millions of innocent people in a samll distant peasant society in pursuit of its own political ends."

It can summarized the only thing you can learn from this book...



Rating:
Summary: A confession and an apology?
Review: Was it guilt that drove McNamera to write this or the selfish desire to dilute his share of the blame in the Vietnam debacle? Despite his claim to the contrary in the preface, I think it was mostly the latter. I don't think his arrogance would allow him to do any less. While many are guilty of arrogance, McNamera's indirectly led to the deaths of thousands.

While an extremely intelligent man, he had no business deciding defense or foreign policy issues. He should have stayed in the business world and now be writing commentaries on operations and organizational management. Maybe as a secretary of defense to Kennedy, he may have provided some value, since Kennedy was astute in world affairs and maybe McNamera provided some balance; but as a secretary to LBJ, it was the blind leading the blind and a prescription for disaster.

One interesting comment in the book is the assertion that JFK would have never allowed the Vietnam fiasco to happen. I cautiously agree to some extent, and not because I fall prey to the mythic JFK legend, but because foreign policy was his forte, while domestic policy was LBJ's. JFK was an independent thinker in this arena, and he would have led McNamera, Bundy, et al., rather then been influenced by them. (BTW, Alan Schwartz has a new, different take on LBJ's foreign policy prowess in "LBJ and Europe").

To his credit, McNamera does not shift blame, just dilutes it. For a more telling version of this whole mess, read McMasters' "Dereliction of Duty". Many think McNamera guilty of war crimes, and while I think that is excessive, I certainly do not think he deserved the Medal of Freedom or the privilege of profiting from his "memoirs". He has a few new books out -- I think I will pass.