In Retrospect:: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

by Robert S. McNamara

Book Overview

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER. The definitive insider's account of American policy making in Vietnam. "Can anyone remember a public official with the courage to confess error and explain where he and his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812925238
• ISBN13: 9780812925234
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 414 Pages
• Weight: 2.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

It documents important history.

While not being a fan of Secretary McNamara during the Vietnam era, I was impressed by his willingness to provide an honest inside account of the war. It is a necessary public atonement.

Hindsight But Perceptive and Honest

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 exp

Historical Look Inside Memos and Minds

There are numerous verbatim copies of memos that were exchanged between President Johnson, the civilian (state and defense departments), and many military officials involved in this long-drawn out, lengthy period. From these memos, McNamera explained the circumstances, strategy, and thinking behind himself and others in the political, historical, and Cold War context of the time.He repeatedly (in my ignorant opinion) took honest and objective attempts to highlight and elucidate the (by his own admission many cases of faulty) reasoning behind why forces were there in the first place, and why escalation continued throughout the 1960s. Many Southeast Asian political factors external to Vietnam were factors in the decision to enter, escalate, and proceed, as the U.S. military did in this conflict. Some factors were: Sukarno in Indonesia (who was later toppled), Mao Zedong's promotion of "perpetual world-wide struggle through revolution," the Domino Theory (which we now know as false, but then it was difficult to know), among many other Cold War events that took place in the decade of the 1960s. The Cuban Missile Crisis, construction of the Iron Curtain, airlifts to Berlin, Khrushchev stating "we will bury you," and the mistakenly held perception that there was a "Sino-Soviet" pact, when in fact, the two didn't like each other. McNamera noted more than once that there were no "experts" on Vietnam and Southeast Asian historical, culture, and contemporary politics. They often consulted "experts" on the Soviets, Chinese, and other adversaries, who were often proved to be correct and were vital to the formulation and implementation of foreign and military policy. In Vietnam they chose to have no "experts" to turn to who knew the people. As McNamera noted, he and the military and administration didn't know very much at all about Vietnam, and its' history. A major point McNamera commonly stated was the perception of Ho Chi Minh by senior American political and military officials. Was Ho Chi Minh: 1. a nationalist who wanted to unify his country and expel foreigners who had subjugated Vietnam for hundreds of years (who also happened to be a communist, in the likes of Tito, independent of Peking and Moscow), or was he 2. A communist, who was promulgating Vietnamese unification under communism not only in Vietnam but also in neighboring South Eastern Asian nations. 3. A part of both or neither of 1. or 2. The answer now leans toward number 1. quite heavily. Should they have been aware of this then? McNamera says "yes." Although their decisions were terrible an important thing for the reader to be constantly be aware of is: the context of when these thoughts, strategies, and actions took place. The 1960s were from a radically different world than that of today. One can't even imagine, if compared to 2003. The 1960s were the most intense decade during the Cold War. Presently, to make more than a couple of assumptions or critiques of th

A Tortured Man Explains America's Many Mistakes in Vietnam

This book is a powerful explanation of what many people called "McNamara's War." It is intellectually honest, well-researched and an enormous insight to how President Lyndon Johnson's White House operated. The author explains how Johnson inherited a "God-awful" mess eminently more dangerous than the one Kennedy had inherited from Eisenhower. One evening not long after he took office, Johnson confessed to his aide Bill Moyers that he felt like a catfish that had "just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it," McNamara writes. In the last two chapters, "Estrangement and Departure" and "The Lessons of Vietnam" McNamara bravely admits many mistakes. The most glaring was not holding the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff accountable for its many reporting failures. It took McNamara nearly thirty years to finally tell his side of the story. It was worth the wait.

A must to better understand the quagmire that was Vietnam

For anyone wishing to better understand the Vietnam War this is a must read. As usual McNamara fills his book with tables and statistics that tend to support his view of Vietnam. Boiled down to its utmost simplicity there are really only several points of controversy in Vietnam. 1. The strategy as promulgated by the General Westmoreland (known as "Westy" by McNamara) was A. Let the South Vietnamese troops basically provide security in the villages and Hamlets, and have US Troops (sometimes assisted by those few South Vietnamese military units that were well organized and disciplined) engage in "Search and Destroy" missions. This was essentially the "war of attrition" philosophy. This was contrasted by the philosphy of having US troops guaranty security of the hamlets and villages so as to encourage the South Vietnamese to cooperate with the South Vietnamese Government. This philosophy was promoted by the United States Marines, primarily Lt. General Victor Krulak as described in his book, "First To Fight", a book not about Vietnam as such but about the Marine Corps. Krulak believes that Gen. Westmoreland's strategy was thus fundamentally flawed and I agree with him. 2.The second major point was that the "military's hands were tied" by McNamara and the President in that it was forbidden to fight in North Vietnam and the concurrent refusal to cut off the supply of military material to the North Vietnamese by bombing and mining the port of Haiphong and hitting other shipping and communications facilities in North Vietnam. On this important point it is vital for the reader to understand that neither North or South Vietnam hadd any material manufacturing abiltiy. All of North Vietnams military material came from either Russia or China or their allies. McNamara's point is that the bombing of Haiphong and other points would have not worked anyway due to the relatively small amount of material need to sustain the North Vietnamese regulars and the Vietcong. North Vietnam has large manpower willing to virtually carry supplies on his back to supply its own troops and the Vietcong. If Haiphong was cut off certainly the supplies would be sent through rail links to China. This point is crucial. McNamara and the President delieved that by bombing Haiphong and other points China and perhaps Russia would directly enter the war. Nobody now can know if that is true. What does seem to make sense is that McNamara's point that the bombing would not work as supplies would still flow into North and South Vietnam in amounts sufficient to maintain both the North Vietnamese regulars and the Vietcong. Another point brought out in McNamara's book is how close we came to use nuclear and biological weapons as proposed by the United States Military in their plan to bomb and mine Haiphong and other points. This account of nuclear weapons use was recently declassied and it is truly scary how close nuclear weapons night have been used. No one of course knows that even i

a suitable punishment: MCNAMARA'S BANNED!

AS A VETERAN OF TWO TOURS IN VIETNAM, I HAD ALWAYS BELIEVED ROBERT S. MCNAMARA TO BE ONE OF THE TRULY EVIL INDIVIDUALS OF RECENT TIMES. THE FACTS AS SET FORTH IN THIS BOOK, IN HIS OWN WORDS AND THOSE OF HIS CO-AUTHOR, HAVE CHANGED THAT OPINION OF SOME THIRTY YEARS. I NO LONGER BELIEVE HIM EVIL, MERELY STUPID. READ IT