In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

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 noroom 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

It would appear McNamara did as thorough a review as his conscience would require and allow. However, I would suggest that before reading his (confession?), that in order to get a balanced evaluation, one should read possibly "Dereliction of Duty", by H.R. McMaster.There is another side!

When this book first came out 1n 1995 I recall having a phone call with a retired Marine friend, it seems in 1995 this book was plastered all over television, radio, school campuses – literally everywhere. It was a book I told my friend during the call that I would “not” read – now I believed I had to after having read “Last Stand at Khe Sanh” by Gregg Jones. After reading it, I feel none-the-better that I have. This book is book #2 of my personal trilogy that I decided to undertake. There were parts in this book that made me question his truthfulness, that in other words McNamara was not coming to full disclosure with. There were even less parts that I could accept his accounting with; mostly, I was disappointed that he did not outright dedicate this book to memory of lost service men and women who died fighting his war, that there was no apology within the overall framework to the parents and loved ones of these service members and no reference what so ever to the mental anguish the combat survivors had to endure years afterwards. The repetitive internalized questions he presents to the reader are useless to which he provides no answer (and make no mistake, this arrogance is directly tied to no apology); and, therefore makes no sense. The obvious questions he fully ignores. To add insult to injury, when he left the Defense Department on 29 February 1968 the battle of Khe Sanh was more than a month old, the Tet Offensive was nearly 30 days old, and by this point there had been more than 30,000 KIA or MIA in the Republic of Vietnam – he acknowledges only Khe Sanh and Tet once on page 314 as an almost *asterisk* to his departure – one word “disgusting” and totally unacceptable. (For the record he does the same thing earlier on with the Battle of Ia Drang of October/November 1965 - a hidden battle buried in a sentence another point I found repulsive.) Thousands of families bore the brunt of the losses incurred based on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of August 1964.I came away from this book with a complete emptiness and disappointed he didn’t have the dignity to do what was right within this work. Overall, I speculate that Mr. McNamara (with this book) was able to put his mind at ease before he passed away, because he certainly didn’t provide any written sorrow for all that was lost within the "Betrayed Generation" of "McNamara's War." The “whiz kids” should have stayed at Ford Motor Company; the weren't the "Best and Brightest" - the "Best" died on the battlefields of Vietnam, the "Brightest" tried to stop this idiocy or attempted to sway a micromanaged administration toward an outright win over the Communist North.I bought this book used for few dollars online – I intend to burn every page with some Vietnam Veterans I know that were all injured, maimed, or made otherwise injured in some form mentally as a result of this war. I give two stars to this book only because there were parts reflected of his family that were “truthful” – full disclosure was never his forte and this is obvious.

I might agree with some of the critics of Mr. McNamara's confessional. Perhaps it is a bit too sanitary and proper, and perhaps he is letting himself off the hook a bit while seeming to offer contrition, I am not sure. Regardless,it is interesting to hear what such a major figure in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations has to say after all these years. Information wise there was not much here that was not in the Pentagon Papers, which he, to his credit, commissioned, but perhaps the real story, is the insight into the mind and heart of a high level "good soldier", who took and gave difficult orders, that cost so many lives, and how the political entanglements of the time prevented proper decisions being made, or mistaken decisions from being corrected. Other books show different sides of this man that he presents, but this is still valuable and informative reading to those interested in trying to understand this era.

After committing more than five hundred thousand Americans to the Vietnam war, McNamara very painfully and eloquently concludes that the war was unwinnable in military terms and that Americans needed to go home. But, history affords no do-overs and perhaps the military definition, the focus on Vietnam and 30 years’ perspective were too narrow and too soon a basis for a final judgement.

The print quality is poor , so bad you practically need a magnifying glass to read any footnotes ! The quality of the "photographs" is an absolute disgrace , they are so substandard they are hardly viewable . If you imagine a newspaper photograph and fade it about ten times that is the standard .

The book is fascinating, if this era of US history interests you. However this particular version of the book looks like a cheap rip off. Poor quality print, full of spelling mistakes, and photographs almost illegible. Find a better copy!

Very important work. Unique insight into the big government decision making process and the US-Vietnam tragedy.

Excellent livre. Compte-rendu détaillé et honnête de la part de Mr. McNamara.