Dereliction of Duty
by H. R. Mcmaster
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Book Summary Information
Author: H. R. McmasterReader: H.r. Mcmaster
Edition: Audio Cassette
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Published: 1997-05-01
ISBN: 0694518514
Publisher: HarperAudio
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Book Reviews of Dereliction of Duty
Book Review: LBJ and his assistant liars
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is a clear indictment of LBJ and his closest advisers on the policy on and war in Vietnam. Why was the Vietnam War lost? It was lost because of the fault of LBJ. The war was lost in Washington before it even began in Vietnam. LBJ shared the same distrust and despise of the military with his closest adviser, Robert S. McNamara. How can a military campaign be won if a leader does not trust his military experts? How can a war be won if a president does not listen to the recommendations of his military experts and instead follow the strategy set by his civilian advisers who have little or no military experience?
Plus, LBJ and McNamara consistently misled Congress and the American people about the U.S. policy toward Vietnam as well as the situations in Vietnam. Can a war be won based on lies? I would think not.
The most outrageous thing is that McNamara based his whole policy of "gradual pressure" for Vietnam on his single experience in the Cuban Missile crisis. Only an idiot, in this case a super-arrogant idiot, would rely on a single experience for the war in Vietnam. McNamara thought he was an instant military expert just because he defused the Cuban Missile crisis. What a fool he was! McNamara should have studied the past great generals and military leaders on how they lead and fight wars. But alas, he was too proud for that.
Though this book place equal blames on LBJ, McNamara and the Joint Chiefs, I strongly disagree with the author on this view. The Joint Chiefs had been systematically excluded from strategy and policy setting in LBJ administration. They were powerless. Therefore, the failure of the Vietnam War and the dead of 50,000 U.S. soldiers should be placed only on LBJ and McNamara.
In my opinion, the best way to view a presidency is to see what kind of top-level people he uses. Looking at LBJ, one can clearly see that he used smart people, but these people were arrogant liars and master-pleasing compromisers. No wonder Vietnam War was such a dismal failure.
Why only four stars? The author is very repetitious - the same points were stressed over and over again. Also, the writing style was very dry.
Summary of Dereliction of Duty
For years the popular myth surrounding the Vietnam War was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew what it would take to win but were consistently thwarted or ignored by the politicians in power. Now H. R. McMaster shatters this and other misconceptions about the military and Vietnam in Dereliction of Duty. Himself a West Point graduate, McMaster painstakingly waded through every memo and report concerning Vietnam from every meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to build a comprehensive picture of a house divided against itself: a president and his coterie of advisors obsessed with keeping Vietnam from becoming a political issue versus the Joint Chiefs themselves, mired in interservice rivalries and unable to reach any unified goals or conclusions about the country's conduct in the war.McMaster stresses two elements in his discussion of America's failure in Vietnam: the hubris of Johnson and his advisors and the weakness of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dereliction of Duty provides both a thorough exploration of the military's role in determining Vietnam policy and a telling portrait of the men most responsible.
"A fabulous piece of scholarship. This book will open a whole new chapter in our study of Vietnam."––Tom Clancy"Here's everything you didn't read in Robert S. McNamara's book. Vietnam did not simply happen; it was not an accidental Cold War collision that killed 58,000 Americans and a million Vietnamese. Men of power and responsibility caused that disastrous war and left their fingerprints all over it––and here are their names and what they did and said and decided in secret. McMaster has mined newly declassified records and, in these pages, sheds fresh light and understanding on how the best and the brightest, shielded by a bodyguard of lies and the words 'Top Secret,' maneuvered and manipulated our country down the road to war and bitter defeat." ––Joseph L. Galloway, Senior Writer, U.S. News and World Report, and co-author of We Were Soldiers Once . . . and YoungDereliction of Duty makes a unique, groundbreaking contribution toward clarifying what happened, why, and who was responsible for the decisions that led to direct U.S. military intervention in the Vietnam War. Based on more than five years of painstaking research, it includes startling revelations from previously classified transcripts of crucial meetings. The result is an inescapable correction to the prevailing view that an American war in Vietnam was inevitable.Based on dramatic and irrefutable evidence, Dereliction of Duty proves that the war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, or on the front pages of The New York Times, or on the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C., even before the first American units were deployed.
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