In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

Although the mention of Robert MacNamara's name is enough to inflame passionate responses on both ends of the spectrum, I felt the book was an honest attempt by MacNamara to deal with his mistakes and, to a lesser extent, the consequences of those mistakes. It's probably as honest a self-appraisal as we are likely to see from such a prominent figure of the period.
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.

Reading through this absorbing and well-written book often made me physically ill. As a guy who personally followed the flag into the miasma of that terrible war, I often got so angry reading the arguments and rationalizations spewed like so much vomit in the pages of this book that I literally threw this book against the wall. After I finished reading it I threw it in the garbage, where it and its author belong. After all this time, more than thirty years, McNamara's arrogance and indifference to the fate of thousands of young Americans still makes me so angry I would like to use him to personally demonstrate how easy it is to crush an enemy's windpipe. There can never be any excuse for the callous, craven, and criminal acts that the so-called "best and brightest" committed, thereby condemning a whole generation of the finest young men this country has ever produced to the horrors and insanity of Vietnam. McNamara still doesn't get it, after all this time. He is actually a bona-fide war criminal, and he should be arrested and tried just as the Allies did to the Nazis after World War Two in Nuremburg. But as Bobby Kennedy once said, "Kill one man and they call it murder. Kill a million and they call it war". When are we going to learn? These men will never see justice or the inside of a jail cell.

It turned my stomach to read this outrageous account of an unpenitent confessed killer looking for forgiveness and absolution after living a life of privilege and affluence, after he personally oversaw, with amazing indifference, the most atrocious set of public policies this side of Dachau. The only fit punishment for McNamara (along with a long list of other scumbag fellow-travelers like Henry Kissinger and General Westmoreland) is either execution, or alternatively, immediate imprisonment, where he could live the rest of his pathetic life confined in solitary confinement, just like former Reich-Marshal Rudoph Hess, for the crimes against humanity that he admits committing. On the other hand, perhaps we could provide real justice for this pseudo-macho pencil pusher by issuing him an M-16, some provisions, and a machete, setting him down by `chopper' in the middle of some God-forsaken jungle, along with a couple of companies of similarly equipped and well-motivated Vietnam vets a few miles away. Perhaps then, before he suffers and dies as slowly and as horribly at the hands of some people with a real sense of justice, he will understand how many of the people he anonymously condemned to such a fate for no good reason than personal cowardice thirty years ago felt. I volunteer for the mission here and now! Maybe then he would finally understand the true price of his arrogance, indifference, and cowardice. Boycott this book.

McNamara seeks to explain in this book the failure of American policy in Vietnam. He roots that failure mainly in false assumptions about the intentions of the North Vietnamese -- that is to say, they were actually nationalists first, communists second, and would not have acted to destablize Southeast Asia has we simply found a way for them to unify and rule the whole of Vietnam. He also demonstrates the remarkable lack of management skills of those known as the "best and the brightest." For example, he discusses how they failed to coordinate military actions with efforts to establish diplomatic negotiations; he talks about lack of historical knowledge about Vietnam among policymakers; he documents the remarkably inept and cavalier handling of the Diem situation. The book is useful in that it does show just how limited the vision of some of our policymakers is -- it hard to believe, given the French experience in Vietnam, that our top officials did not avail themselves, for example, of that history, yet McNamara basically argues that there were no "experts" to help guide their efforts. Unbelievable.
The book is useful in understanding the limited period of Kennedy/Johnson, but McNamara does not provide any deeper analysis of Nixon policies, or explore the historical issues that led up to the 1960s in any depth at all. In that sense, the book is almost as limited as the policy McNamara helped shape. Whether the war was "just" or not, whether the communist threat was real or not, it is mainly incompetence that seems to have shaped our policy -- there was not even a group within the policymaking establishment dedicated to the war full time. These are basic management and leadership issues that suggest mainly that the guys running the show were not so bright after all. I am hoping his second book on this subject, Argument without End, provides a more detailed analysis of the real issues that shaped that period of our history -- it includes discussions between US policymakers and the North Vietnamese.

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 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

As Secretary of Defense, McNamara soiled virtually everything he touched, in and out of Vietnam. Our military didn't recover from his mind numbing approaches until late in the Carter or early in the Reagan administrations. In this faux profound confessional, McNamara now suggests that he was a victim after all and was, at most, mistaken. Think for a moment if he isn't still mistaken today -- it's something that he is very good at and has never departed from for long. I would suggest an alternative explanation: instead of doing tricks for his old master, Lyndon Johnson, in bungling the Vietnam war, McNamara is now on his hind legs begging for treats in the form of acceptance from a new group of Marxist chic celebrities and editorialists during his Martha's Vineyard summers. One needn't belong to Mensa to infer that McNamara's bad judgment and sycophancy of the 60's hasn't suddenly evaporated, but simply changed directions in a "Road to Damascus" conversion. Seldom in American history has a single individual had such a pathologic influence on our nation. Even one of the easy analogies, that to Benedict Arnold, is inapt, because Arnold was a brave, dedicated and successful general for some years before he went bad. Anyone who believes that McNamara has suddenly found or is suddenly speaking some profound truth need only look at his track record. If he fooled us once, shame on him; if he fools the American public now, shame on us!

I was drafted and sent to Vietnam in 1968. I have always wondered how a man could be so evil. Unfortunately the world court does not pursue U S war criminals. The man should be in prison and not making huge royalties from his lieing novels for God's sake.

This book filled in some of the blanks about the mismanagement of the Vietnam war not found in previous readings. I have read extensively about this war with most finding fault with why it was undertaken and a few finding it a necessary war. McNamara was part of the early deception that the Administration undertook to continue supporting the South Vietnamese Government and sending American troops. Despite obvious evidence that the war was not going well, more money and troops poured into the country. McNamara finally saw the light and began to question continuing the war and Johnson dropped him from his cabinet and continued to expand the war. In some respects the book is an admission of guilt by McNamara to help clear his conscience, but also to help set the record straight. The pro and con segments in the appendix add some helpful insights.

It took more than a fair share of integrity and courage for McNamara to write In Retrospect. Others in similar positions of power have not owned up to their Vietnam era mistakes. Some, most notably Walt Rostow (National Security Advisor from 1966-1969), still think that Vietnam was a necessary war and that fighting it was worth the price. It saved other countries in the region - e.g. Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, even Japan - from the threat of Communist expansion, or so the argument goes.
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.

I am not an American. I was born in 1969. So I have no direct emotional connection to Vietnam. I respect people who do. But I can not agree with reviewers like Labradorman -otherwise a good reviewer- when he says: "Boycott this book". I can't see how boycotting the personal account of one of the leading protagonists of this drama can help understand what happened and why. McNamara is implaccable with himself and his mistakes, generous to his colleagues, and noble to the presidents he served. And yet, throughout the book it is clear that one of the officials who always had second thoughts and always pushed for further analysis was McNamara himself. A personal account supported by an impressive documental research, this book deserves to be read, for the personal advantage of the reader. It should be read not only by people interested in Vietnam, but by any one with an interest in public administration, government, and high-level decision making. This is a tour de force in the guts of one of the most formidable machines of government humankind has devised: the American government. We can see here how, even "the best ans the brightest" can make fatal -literally fatal- mistakes. We can see how the Cold-War mind affected every other decision. Points of interest: the position of the Joint Chiefs, always asking for more bombing and more soldiers; the conduct of undersecretary of State George Ball, one of the most sensible; the frivolous conduct of an inadequate ambassador, like Henry Cabot Lodge; and, of course, the tension and hesitation of McNamara. One can only hope more public officials would write honest and courageous books.

After I finished this terrible book, I wondered if McNamara was sitting in hell thinking, "I suffered too, I had to take a sleeping pill for a while!!!" In the book, he actually has the audacity to mention that. This book completely misses the mark. He could have gone much further. It also reads like a college math textbook, which likely reflects the author's thinking. It also ends with McNamara describing his ( and others) gallant work during the Cuban missle crisis. As if that 'victory' overshadowed his near geonocidal judgment regarding Vietnam.