In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam [Paperback]

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.

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.

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