Rating: 
Summary: A confession and an apology?
Review: Was it guilt that drove McNamera to write this or the selfish desire to dilute his share of the blame in the Vietnam debacle? Despite his claim to the contrary in the preface, I think it was mostly the latter. I don't think his arrogance would allow him to do any less. While many are guilty of arrogance, McNamera's indirectly led to the deaths of thousands.While an extremely intelligent man, he had no business deciding defense or foreign policy issues. He should have stayed in the business world and now be writing commentaries on operations and organizational management. Maybe as a secretary of defense to Kennedy, he may have provided some value, since Kennedy was astute in world affairs and maybe McNamera provided some balance; but as a secretary to LBJ, it was the blind leading the blind and a prescription for disaster. One interesting comment in the book is the assertion that JFK would have never allowed the Vietnam fiasco to happen. I cautiously agree to some extent, and not because I fall prey to the mythic JFK legend, but because foreign policy was his forte, while domestic policy was LBJ's. JFK was an independent thinker in this arena, and he would have led McNamera, Bundy, et al., rather then been influenced by them. (BTW, Alan Schwartz has a new, different take on LBJ's foreign policy prowess in "LBJ and Europe"). To his credit, McNamera does not shift blame, just dilutes it. For a more telling version of this whole mess, read McMasters' "Dereliction of Duty". Many think McNamera guilty of war crimes, and while I think that is excessive, I certainly do not think he deserved the Medal of Freedom or the privilege of profiting from his "memoirs". He has a few new books out -- I think I will pass.
Rating: 
Summary: Dry in tone, but important reading
Review: Perhaps only Lyndon Johnson could have offered more insight into the decision-making that guided the United States' involvement in Vietnam. From that standpoint, this book is fascinating and heart-breaking. McNamara concisely offers up question after question that should have been debated - but were not - within the Johnson administration. Still, I have a couple of issues with this book. One, McNamara seems overly generous in distributing blame to others, especially President Johnson. It's true that McNamara takes on blame himself, and it's also true that Johnson deserves ultimate responsibility for the actions of his administration. Still, it somehow seems unfair, considering LBJ is no longer around to defend himself. And I don't feel McNamara takes enough blame upon himself as Secretary of Defense. Two, a lesser issue, is McNamara's irritating habit of referring to almost everyone by their first name, making it difficult at first to keep up with the cast of characters (except General Westmoreland, who is annoyingly reduced to "Westy" throughout the book). It is at the end, when McNamara sums up the lessons learned from Vietnam, that "In Retrospect's" real power comes through. These are important lessons that would serve us well in the post-9/11 world, if only our "leaders" had the foresight to study them. Sorry to add a political tone to this review, but I can't help but be frustrated at those whose egos lead them to repeat the mistakes of the past. This is McNamara's greatest legacy - the urgent plea to build a brighter future, from one who led us through the past. That alone makes "In Retrospect" important reading.
Rating: 
Summary: An honest interpretation of Vietnam politics
Review: McNamara vividly tells the reader what the realities of Vietnam politics were in the 1960s.These realities examined in the book are:1)The United States' containment policy was severely tested at this critical time.Should the U.S. stay in Southeast Asia and contain communist expansion or should the U.S. withdrawl and focus on Western Europe,Cuba,and South America? 2)Cold war tensions made it very difficult for the U.S. to discern China's and the Soviet Union's motives about communist domination.Was the communist movement a nationlist movement confined only to the eastern world or was it striving for global domination?
Putting the Vietnam crisis within its proper time frame,McNamara felt that the U.S. took the proper approach to containment.The tragedy in Vietnam during his tenure as defense secretary lie not in U.S governmental subterfuge,but in tricky interpretations(listed above)of the cold war.
Rating: 
Summary: revisionist at best and close to fiction
Review: For those people who want the truth about the Vietnam war, read -"Shadows of Power" by Perloff. This book is revisionist at best and comes close to fiction. Mc Namara engineered the war and forced it on LBJ who was naive. LBJ had those Council on Foreign Affairs (CFR) idiots advising him. Connolly advised LBJ to get rid of McNamara and all of them. The difference between Kennedy and LBJ was that Kennedy was going to pull out of Vietnam when he was assassinated. This fact was omitted and revised in the book. Also, JFK was limiting the power of the Federal Reserve and dismantling the CIA because of what they did to him at the Bay of Pigs. This was also revised somewhat. These facts may have been why he was assassinated. Mc Namara tried to foster the same lie on a C-Span book review. He was humiliated on that show for being a liar and revisionist for stating that he wanted to pull out of Vietnam in the LBJ period - a lie among others in his recently published book. LBJ did a great deal with his Great Society and had vision. His only mistake was listening to the "wise men" (CFR). There are many facts that are still unknown but after reading some books - one can connect the dots. LBJ was manipulated by the elitist CFR and the establishment. I can only surmise that the reasons were multi-fold. To foster a one world govt. and prove to the communists that we would fight a stupid war and sacrifice 58k Americans for nothing - are two of the reasons. In short, every American should educate himself on this subject. There is a great deal of policy that we are paying for to this day. The CFR was also behind the Marshall plan. Marshall was the fastest rising general ever in the history of America. It's noteworthy that he never did anything to deserve that position except be the puppet of the CFR and Dean Acheson. A great deal like Johnson, Truman was also naive and listened to them because he did not like Mc Arthur. So, they gave away all of eastern Europe and Asia to the communists - a problem that we are still paying for. Ho Chi Minn and Chaing Kai Shek were backed by the Americans in WWII. We cut aid to them at shortly after the end of the war and unleashed the French on Vietnam as compensation for rebuilding of France after WWII. Ho Chi Minn had no choice but to embrace the communists. All this because of Acheson and Mc Namara, CFR elitists.
Rating:
Summary: Back to the future.
Review: One cannot help but wonder what our current Secretary of Defense will write when his time comes. One has the feeling that the subtitle of McNamara's retrospective, "The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam," will be a good starting place for that "sequel." McNamara writes, "We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." Americans today will have to decide whether or not we have actually learned our lessons and are now more wise than the last generation, more able to predict the tragedies that will arise during and after today's war. Anyone who recalls the Kissinger scheme to achieve "a decent interval" while bugging out of Southeast Asia will likely recall Eric Von Marbod comparing the logic of that process to that of "a man who impregnates nine women in the hope of getting a baby in one month." How can one not think of Afghanistan, Iraq, (and now Iran) without thinking of the Vietnam era? Despite all the criticism directed at him, the author reflects great credit upon himself and the country by even attempting to set the record "straight." One can indeed be wrong even when totally convinced one is "acting in the principles and tradition of this great nation." How could we have slipped out of Vietnam if we had really believed in the domino theory used to justify that war? What will become of the "nexus of WMD and terrorism" that is today's rationale for preventive war? As we watch to see how we extricate ourselves from the war on terror, there is much to be learned from the old political schemes of Robert McNamara's era. Recent remarks by Secretary Rumsfeld in the wake of heartbreaking setbacks in Iraq indicate that he may indeed have begun to learn that more frank our leaders are with the people, the more chance of success we have.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: As an avid history book reader, "In Retrospective: the tragedy ..." was a real deception. This book was written with the sole purpose of deceiving the american public opinion. It is well known that Ho Chi Minh had early contacts with the american intelligence agencies during WWII and probably the Viet Cong was a creation of America as an instrument to decolonize French Indochina. How Mr. McNamara dare to say that the entire campaign was a big misunderstanding that drove America to a long war of attrition. It is too late to asume responsabilities but don't asume it in such a way.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply disappointing
Review: As an historian who has studied and taught the Vietnam War, I was deeply disappointed in this book. Robert McNamara is a very intelligent man, which makes it worse. Why the disappointment? As Secretary of State, McNamara had access to excellent information, yet he writes as if he has only recently discovered information that was readily available during the war. I was hoping there was more to the story than willful ignorance.
Rating:
Summary: Ivy League rash
Review: a pompous, self-serving treatment that adds insult to injury on a level not seen since Benedict Arnold or Judas. Too much, too late from one whose arrogance and megalomania extend to writing a work with the intent to clear his conscience after years of living high on the hog, while others turned to worms. There is some interesting content here and he does some self disclosure which is worth something, but ohhhh how pathetic to know actual Vietnam vets and then come across content written by one of Sabbath's War Pigs! Blasphemy.
Rating:
Summary: Historical Look Inside Memos and Minds
Review: 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 the decisions made back during the conflict can easily (although not necessarily)lead to the comparison of "apples & oranges." McNamera probably wanted to expunge himself of some of the blame he's often been given by history regarding the disastrous foreign policy-making in Vietnam that still is referred to by some as "McNamera's War." This is in part, but not entirely, true of course. Pointing mainly and/or only to McNamera is big-time oversimplification. How interesting it is that a civilian intellectual Auto Executive can all of a sudden become Secretary of Defense in a single day. After getting a phone call from JFK and receiving Kennedy's job offer, McNamera replied he wasn't qualified to be Secretary of Defense, whereas JFK rhetorically asked "who is?" The rest is history: go figure. Communists are indeed rotten autocratic people who've failed miserably. Communism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism was the biggest mistake of the 20th Century. Yes, if the Pentagon bureaucrats and civilian leaders had simply read a couple of books on Vietnamese history they might have had a more balanced view of the objectives of the Viet Minh, NVA, and let the chips fall where they knew they were going long before Saigon fell.
Rating:
Summary: good ,but not candid enough
Review: McNamara should be complemented that he did what very few people involved with the Vietnam War did, admitted that the U.S. should never got into this war. But I find some flaws with this book. First, the only thing that went wrong with this war was none other than his inability to look at its human aspects and his infatuation with statistics. He said in 1962/63 that the war could be won in three years but he did not say about this in the book. His stupid assertion that Jack Kennedy would have done a better job had he lived longer shows that McNamara was not only a stupid but a thankless man. Lyndon Johnson gave him enormous power (more than any other Defense Secretary had) and even considered him as a possible running-mate. Lastly, he did not have the gust to resign and to speak out against the war when he was convinced that it was a wrong war and could not be won.
I do not know how much royalties he got from this book but they should all go to the families whose loved ones died needlessly in Vietnam.
Is he really a whiz-kind ?
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