Dereliction of Duty
Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies tht Led to Vietnam
This book was published in 1997 and author H. R. McMaster concentrates virtually all the action in Washington D.C. where Secretary of Defense McNamara deceives the Joint Chiefs and the Congress as he pushes President Johnson's Vietnam policy with a strategy conceived without input from the military.
Once presented with the McNamara-Johnson strategy, the Chiefs wargame the "graduated response" strategy twice--both times finding that it would lead to a stalemate and a quagmire. Interestingly, this was apparently the goal of McNamara and Johnson, both believing that a stalemate would lead the communist to negotiate a settlement.
Once you understand the strategic objective, it becomes clear why the Tet offensive which was a disaster for the communist turned out to be a strategic defeat for the Johnson administration. Having shown the communist that they could not win, they were still not able to negotiate a settlement.
It is also interesting that the settlement/disengagement that the Johnson administration was achieved by the Nixon administration employing exactly the strategy the Chiefs had urged before the war commenced--heavy bombing of North Vietnam and mining of the ports and it was accomplished in a matter of days, not years.
This is an excellent book. I highly recomend it. I should point out that the material in the preceeding two paragraph is not covered in the book, but is my own analysis. I will have more analysis on the material in this book later.
Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies tht Led to Vietnam
This book was published in 1997 and author H. R. McMaster concentrates virtually all the action in Washington D.C. where Secretary of Defense McNamara deceives the Joint Chiefs and the Congress as he pushes President Johnson's Vietnam policy with a strategy conceived without input from the military.
Once presented with the McNamara-Johnson strategy, the Chiefs wargame the "graduated response" strategy twice--both times finding that it would lead to a stalemate and a quagmire. Interestingly, this was apparently the goal of McNamara and Johnson, both believing that a stalemate would lead the communist to negotiate a settlement.
Once you understand the strategic objective, it becomes clear why the Tet offensive which was a disaster for the communist turned out to be a strategic defeat for the Johnson administration. Having shown the communist that they could not win, they were still not able to negotiate a settlement.
It is also interesting that the settlement/disengagement that the Johnson administration was achieved by the Nixon administration employing exactly the strategy the Chiefs had urged before the war commenced--heavy bombing of North Vietnam and mining of the ports and it was accomplished in a matter of days, not years.
This is an excellent book. I highly recomend it. I should point out that the material in the preceeding two paragraph is not covered in the book, but is my own analysis. I will have more analysis on the material in this book later.
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