Dereliction of Duty, by McMaster, is a book written to explain the why and the how of the United States becoming involved in the Vietnam War. The author gives military and political reasons for this involvement and how the decisions were made by the nation’s leaders, who led not with honesty and integrity, but through mistrust and deceit. This group, who led this nation into war, involved the President of the United States, his military and civilian advisors, and the Joints Chief of Staff. What happened can be summed up in this statement from McMaster, "The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C."
H. R. McMaster was a West Point graduate and attended the University of North Carolina. He was also a Gulf War veteran who commanded an armored cavalry. His desire in writing this book was to examine, through the recently declassified documents, manuscript collections, and the Joint Chief of Staff official histories, where the responsibility for the Vietnam foreign policy disaster lay, but also examine the decisions made that involved the United States in a war they could not win.
This book details the discussion of government policy in the stages of the Vietnam crisis from 1961-July 1965. It examines the main characters of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara, in addition to the military, which included the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It began in the Kennedy era amidst the Bay of Pigs incident and how that led to mistrust of the military planning by advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It continues with Johnson and his administration making decisions over and over that continued to commit more and more involve...
... middle of paper ...
... all involved. President Johnson was determined to have a limited involvement in the war without involving the legal approval of Congress or the knowledge of the people of America. McNamara and Taylor regularly lie to conceal actions. McMaster has written a thorough look at the decisions of all these men, which certainly shows a Dereliction of Duty.
This book would be an excellent source for anyone wanting to understand this period of the entrance into the Vietnam War. It is a great look into the character of each of the participants. It also would benefit those who are studying and learning how to develop strategy and policy for future wars that the United States may involve itself.
Works Cited
McMaster, H. R. Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
One of the key strengths of this book is the author's first-hand knowledge of the people, places, and events that he is writing about. He also supplemented this first-hand knowledge with extensive interviews. In one example, he elaborated on the "chain of command" in Vietnam, which began with General Paul Harkins (and William C. Westmoreland) to the CINCPAC (Admiral Harry Felt) and from CINCPAC to Washington. "Not once in their four years of mutual agony in Vietnam did Harkins's successor, General Westmoreland, pick up the telephone and call his commander-in-chief, President Lyndon B. Johnson. Westmoreland did not have the authority, he told me."(169) This information came directly from an interview with Westmoreland. There are other anecdotes similar to this with each contributing to the extensive nature of the book's detail.
Appy’s book is valuable to its readers in showing how Vietnam became the template for every American war since, from novelties like the invasion of Grenada to the seemingly never-ending conflicts post-9/11. But before all that, there was Vietnam, and, larger lessons aside, Appy’s book is a fascinating, insightful, infuriating and thought-provoking study of that conflict, from its earliest days
The Vietnam War: A Concise International History is a strong book that portrays a vivid picture of both sides of the war. By getting access to new information and using valid sources, Lawrence’s study deserves credibility. After reading this book, a new light and understanding of the Vietnam war exists.
The regrets of the many lives lost in Vietnam. The former secretary of defense Robert McNamara published a memoir, two decades after the war ended. In the memoir he admitted that the policy he helped create was “terribly wrong”. He stated that the ignorance of the history, the culture of Vietnam, and the misguided belief that every communist movement in the world was led by Moscow, had led the United States into a war that was unwinnable and regrettable. (Foner, 4th edition, pg.1030) The students of The Port Huron Statement were right by being against the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was a military, political, and social disaster. Which only brought casualties in the lives of American people. It was an unforgivable mistake caused by Presidents that feared that the public would not forgive them for “losing” the Vietnam War.
Fussell, Paul. "Vietnam." The Bloody Game: An Anthology of Modern War. Ed. Paul Fussell. London: Scribners, 1991. 651-6.
This unfortunate legacy of failure in Vietnam carried far past the end of his service as Secretary of Defense. For years after, there have been ongoing debates as to what factors led the outcome of the Vietnam War. It wasn’t until 1995 that Robert McNamara contributed his own viewpoint on where the responsibility for the result of the war fell. McNamara’s memoir, “In Retrospect”, chronicles his perspective on the role he played as Secretary of Defense. It is apparent in his memoir that the public image associated with McNamara is vastly different from the McNamara he presents. Ironically, this infamous war he was so commonly know for may have been a war that privately he did not support.[1] This raises the question—was this hawk actually a
In conclusion, I think that the United States became increasingly involved in the Vietnamese War because of the policies they had made as a promise to fight communism, and because they had sorely underestimated Vietcong’s ability to fight back using Guerrilla warfare. They refused to pull out of the war in fear of losing face before the world, but this pride factor scored them massive losses in the war. In the end, with both side sustaining heavy losses, the US were still seen as mutilators in the war, with advanced showing what their intervention had costed, and Vietnam was still fully taken over by Communism – they had achieved nothing and lost a lot.
The Vietnam War was a conflict that many people did not comprehend. In fact, the war was atrocious and bloody. According to The Vietnam War: a History in Documents, 58,000 US soldier died and more than 700,000 came back with physical and emotional marks (Young, Fitzgerald & Grunfeld 147). For many Americans this war was meaningless. In the same way, O’Brien admits, “American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong; certain blood was being shed for uncertain reason” (40). O’Brien believes the war was not significance. Furthermore, the lack of logic in the matter makes him confused about going to war. That’s why, he does not understand why he was sent to fight a war for which causes and effects were uncertain. The author continues by saying, “I was too good for...
The Vietnam War was the longest and most expensive war in American History. The toll we paid wasn't just financial, it cost the people involved greatly, physically and mentally. This war caused great distress and sadness, as well as national confusion. Everyone had that one burning question being why? Why were we even there? The other question being why did America withdrawal from Vietnam. The purpose of this paper is to answer these two burning questions, and perhaps add some clarity to the confusion American was experiencing.
It is understandable that some Americans strongly opposed the United States getting involved in the Vietnam War. It had not been a long time since the end of World War II and simply put, most Americans were tired of fighting. Mark Atwood Lawrence is one of the people who opposed our involvement in the Vietnam War. In his essay, “Vietnam: A Mistake of Western Alliance”, Lawrence argues that the Vietnam War was unnecessary and that it went against our democratic policies, but that there were a lot of things that influenced our involvement.
Anderson, D. (2002). The Columbia guide to the Vietnam War. New York: Columbia University Press.
While Nixon was in office, he used the war to his benefit, helping him win another term in office. Nixon’s plan was to use “Vietnamization,” a process in which American soldiers would train South Vietnamese to fight for themselves and eventually drawing American troops out of the war (Vietnamization). At first, General WestPoint was in charge, raiding Vietcong bases and trying to eliminate them. The original plan was to use the body count to discourage any more NVA troops from fighting, but this strategy backfired because both Vietnamese and American troops had high body counts. General Abraham was appointed as commander and began the “Vietnamization” strategy, which only seemed to work in the public’s eyes. Nixon made a treaty with South Vietnamese President, to have a ceasefire to withdraw American troops and release American POWs while South Vietnam took over the war (The). Nixon planned to use this strategy to withdraw all American troops, however it was “worse, Nixon would leave North Vietnamese troops occupying and controlling much of the South, while withdrawing all remaining American ground forces (Hughes).” Nixon’s use of Vietnamization helped to further his political resolve. He “sacrificed the lives of American soldiers to further his electoral ends (Hughes).” The ...
Today I have more updates on the war in Vietnam. In May Vice President Lyndon Johnson went to visit the President of South Vietnam, President Diem. Johnson deemed President Diem as the “Winston Churchill of Asia”. That same month of Johnson’s trip to South Vietnam, we decided to send in forces, known as advisory forces, to train and prepare South Vietnamese soldiers for battle in case something happened, we want them to be prepared just as much as we are. Unfortunately, on November 2, President Diem and his brother were kidnapped and killed by a group of soldiers, when this happened we as the United States felt that we needed to become more involved in Vietnam because we wanted to help them fight against the communist rebels and their increasing
The U.S. attempted to apply conventional warfare strategy to the communist insurgency in South Vietnam. The result of this strategy was that U.S. forces were victorious in almost every military battle, but could not translate tactical achievement into operational and strategic success. However, during the course of the war, the U.S. discovered three elements of strategy that, if melded into a cohesive whole, could have achieved American objectives for a reasonable cost. First, the U.S. should have fully resourced and implemented a counterinsurgency strategy of pacification, as the primary U.S. military effort in Vietnam. Second, a robust network of South Vietnamese paramilitary forces, integrated with U.S. pacification, would have been the vital link to winning South Vietnamese popular support. Third, the synchronization of pacification with air mobility and air power operations would have effectively incorporated U.S. conventional firepower with the counterinsurgency effort. Next, the claim that U.S. military forces could not have been organized or resourced to implement an effective counterinsurgency will be refuted. Finally, a bridge forward explores whether the U.S. learned from Vietnam how to identify and fight a complex insurgency.
Willbanks, James H. "The Real History of the Vietnam War." ARMCHAIR GENERAL Nov. 2007: 54-67. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.