Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating!
Review: If only every government official would come clean like this. A fascinating insight into McNamara and the Vietnam War. Engrossing.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting perspective from the guy who screwed things up..
Review: McNamara and his so called Whiz Kids really botched things up in Vietnam. Though, McNamara makes for an interesting read... The same arrogant McNamara that sunk us into the quagmire in Vietnam, with his poorly planned strategy, is still somewhat defiantly arrogant in this book. Yes, he humbles himself at first, but his true self comes out in the book. To me, he is still apt at making excuses like 'America was overzealously concerned about containing communism' and the 'domino theory is bogus.' McNamara is right in pointing out how we alienated the Vietnamese people, but he was complicit in the policy to do so. Vietnam was a farce, because Vietnam had no clear-cut strategic objectives... Gen. Westmoreland succinctly summarized its failings when he stated that the overarching strategic objective is to 'rack up the body count.' Killing people and breaking things is a means to attaining an end, but it shouldn't be the only end. Also recommended:
No More Vietnams by Richard Nixon
A Bright Shining Lie
Vietnam: The Neccessary War
Rating: 
Summary: THE UNBEARABLE ARROGANCE OF BEING
Review: Journalist David Halberstam believes that former Defense Secretary McNamara "is guilty of something even more serious than war crimes -- the crime of silence while some thirty or forty thousand young Americans died... after he changed his mind on the war." Then why did McNamara decide to break his silence suddenly in 1995? For one thing, he claims to have figured out the lessons of Vietnam only around 1993. Second and more plausibly, he says he decided it was time at long last to further the healing process .... His, that is, not ours. For McNamara, now 85, has been worried about his legacy. In the past decade, he has been the subject of critical studies by Shapley, McMaster and Hendrickson. Who will tell "his side" if not McNamara himself? It is clear that McNamara sees himself as a maligned patriot: his memoir, he hopes, will help you think better of him. Wearing a figleaf of remorse, he recounts his "honest mistakes" and the folly of some critics. Along the way, he tells us of his commitment to public service as a 12 year-old Eagle Scout, his tough guy exploits (scaling Mt. Rainier, standing up to a mob of antiwar demonstrators, etc) and his encounters with the rich and famous, as when he discussed poetry with Yevtoshenko and Jackie O. (Oddly, there's nary a mention of his parent's names). He concludes with 11 potted lessons -- lessons he hopes will help us heal our wounds and steer clear of future threats. In the appendix, he adds his imprimatur to the efforts of policymakers seeking a non-nuclear world. He's deeply moved, he says, by readers who've expressed their gratitude for the healing wisdom of his book. YET MUCH AS MCNAMARA IS EAGER FOR US TO LEARN FROM HIM, IT APPEARS THAT IN THE PAST THREE DECADES HE HAS NOT YET DEIGNED TO LEARN FROM US. Consider two examples from the 11 "lessons" he first wrote in longhand "off the top of [his] head". (The result, you'll see, is consonant with the effort.) 1) "We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion," McNamara now admits. Yet he still believes he was right to give Johnson his complete loyalty -- proud of it in fact (p.314). He seems oblivious to the stark contradiction. Hasn't he learned that he owed his ultimate allegiance to us, not Johnson? That he betrayed our trust? 2) He bemoans his failure to gather enough information. "No Southeast Asian counterparts existed for senior officials to consult when making decisions on Vietnam". Otherwise, he would not have "underestimated the power of [Vietnamese] nationalism," or failed to win "the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese. Nonsense. In 1965 Southeast Asian specialist George Kahin lead a national "teach-in" that made precisely these points. Another scholar of intelligence and integrity, Bernard Fall, who died in Vietnam in 1967, witnessed the French failure firsthand; he, too, could have enlightened McNamara, if only McNamara weren't convinced that he knew it all. The same goes for military experts like Victor Krulak, who argued that a war of attrition was doomed to fail. Though seemingly shaken by the reasoning, McNamara never let Krulak, or dozens of other military naysayers, meet with Johnson. McNamara still doesn't know how to listen. His book ignores eminent antiwar critics like Prof. Hans Morgenthau, who, by 1965, pointed out the very lessons McNamara recycles for us as his own wisdom. He impugns honorable men like Fall and Halberstam as erstwhile hawks who helped drum up support for the war. Perhaps it goes back to his schooldays, when he "worked his tail off to beat" the "Chinese, Japanese and Jews" in his class. Does McNamara still fear the humiliation of bringing home less than an A? Of conceding something to his "rivals"? McNamara, as he repeatedly reminds us, is a most courteous, modest man. Cultured, too. His morality reminds me of what Professor Schucking said of his compatriots after WWI: Germans are unwilling to put themselves completely in the position of others, which is why one kind of humaneness is poorly developed in them... not the humanity... [of the striving intellect], but the humaneness which comes from respect for one's neighbor as a moral personality. The Germans confuse these two, as was shown when they put up posters in WWI listing the German winners of the Nobel Prizes to rebut the Allies charges of inhumanity." Now consider McNamara again. Is it any wonder that he refused to donate the proceeds of this book to Vietnam Vets? That it will go to some ivory-tower program dedicated to establishing "dialogue" with the Vietnamese? McNamara still thinks he made "honest mistakes" of cognition. Incredibly, he persists in blaming these mistakes on insufficient organization and information. His very metier. (What did I.F. Stone know, one wonders, that he didn't?) But McNamara, ever the organization man, ever the artificial intelligence machine, still fails to grasp an elemental point: There can be no intelligence without *emotional* intelligence. In McNamara's failure to consider how Vietnam decisionmaking was affected -- not only by wrenching ambivalence-- but by politics, pride, macho, ambition, groupthink, and unexamined fears, he is even now further from reckoning with the past than the garden-variety, educated layperson. Unlike McNamara himself, we can glimpse the emotional factors that led him to control, manipulate, distort, invent, and filter the tremendous information he had at his disposal. If this memoir is self-delusion on his part, it is pathetic self-delusion. If it is self-serving spin, it is beneath contempt. McNamara has made a career out of telling people what he thinks they want to hear. After reading this book, I've concluded that he is as bereft of emotional intelligence -- empathy, honesty, judgment, self-awareness -- and yes, remorse, as he was three decades ago. Ingratitude on my part? Heavens, no. Let the headlines one day proclaim, "A Grateful Nation Buries McNamara."
Rating:
Summary: Reevaluation of Fact or Reaction to New Political Winds?
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: It takes courage and guts
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Let's Give Mcnamara A One-Way Ticket To Vietnam!
Review: 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 impenitent 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 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.
Rating:
Summary: The education of Robert McNamara.
Review: Robert McNamara's "In Retrospect" ranks up there with David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" as one of the most enlightening books on the Vietnam tragedy. Revealing is McNamara's describing of an incident in which a protestor committed suicide outside the window of his Pentagon office. After that episode McNamara stopped talking about the war with his wife and children, all of whom were against it. Those who are interested in history will find this book absorbing and impossible to put down. However, I most recommend it to those with an interest in human behavior and decision-making.
Rating: 
Summary: I Learned Nothing New
Review: After reading Mr McNamara's book, I feel as though I learned nothing new about Vietnam. He really is justifying the incompetence that cost so many lives. Among them: - During the 1966 bomb shortage, Mr McNamara correctly points out that no sorties were cancelled. However, he fails to mention that aircraft were flying missions with less tha optimal bomb load. The dangers US pilots faced, however, were still very high. - Before April 1967, US aircraft were not permitted to attack North Vietnamese aircraft while they were on the ground. This allowed the North Vietnamese to determine when they were going to fight. Of course, they would fight when it was only to their advantage. Fortunately, due to the skill of US pilots, the North Vietnamese Air Force put up only sporadic resistance. - US pilots were not permitted to attack North Vietnamese Surface to Air Missile (SAM) sites while they were under construction. Restrictions like these permitted the North Vietnamese to develop some of the toughest aerial defenses in the history of aerial warfare. Thanks to these restrictions, many pilots became POWs, enduring years of horrifying torture. - In July 1966, US POWs were paraded in Hanoi front of a deliberately agitated North Vietnamese mob. This was done in violation of the Geneva Convention, yet Mr McNamara or President Johnson did nothing. The message ws clear-you can torture US POWs, and their country will do nothing. - During the Vietnam War, the US was accused of genocide, when in fact the populations of both North and South Vietnam were increasing. Mr McNamara does not attack these accusations or defend US servicemen who fought in the war, nor did he defend them during the Vietnam War. In fact, he accused our pilots of killing 1000 civilians a week. - He still justifies denying US forces permission to pursue Communist forces in Laos and Cambodia. This restriction allowed the Communists to control the tempo of fighting in South Vietnam. - He does not state why the Soviet Union did not get involved in the Vietnam War after President Nixon mined Haiphong Harbor. Concern over Soviet involvement alledgedly restrained Mr McNamara from mining Haiphong. At least 70% of North Vietnamese were material entered through Haiphong Harbor. - The only time the North Vietnamese were anxious to negotiate was after Operation Linebacker II, the B-52 bombing of the Hanoi-Haiphong region during December 1972. Mr McNamara does not explain why this was not done during his tenure as Secretary of Defense. I have read many books on the Vietnam War and have come to the conclusion that our serviceman did an outstanding job there. In fact, despite Mr McNamara's idiotic restrictions, our servicemen never lost a battle, inculding Tet. I think Mr McNamara owes them an apology, for it ws his incompetence that lost the war.
Rating: 
Summary: Pitiful
Review: It is easiest to criticize in retrospect, but i'll make a grand exception in this case. I still cringe as I read and re-read about each miscalculation and misjudgement and the failure to attempt to understand their culture while attempting to communicate with the Vietnamese; I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that it was painfully obvious VERY EARLY in our involvemt there that the South Vietnamese would never be capable or willing to fight for themselves; and why do so with the big U.S. carrot dangling on the end of the huge U.S. stick? I found the author's eleven points, near the end of the book, clear and compelling, but like to many other reviewers have already said: "Too little, too late..."-and- have we learned from this experience? It does not seem to be the case.
Rating:
Summary: Enlightening Reading
Review: This was a good read. I especially liked McNamara's reconstruction of the cabinet meetings (with Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy) that led up to our involvement in Vietnam: it really showed the ambivalence and confusion these two presidents had about our involvement in Vietnam. Also helpful was the way McNamara presented the real-life difficulties of trying to get disentangled from the mess he had helped create. I'd recommend this book to anybody who wants the other side of the story of our involvement in Vietnam (it certainly was not as black and white as I once thought it was). McNamara deserves a lot of credit for writing such an honest portrayal. Also interesting for any reader will be McNamara's reconstruction of the cast of characters involved in the major decision making (Kennedy, Johnson, George Ball, etc). I recommend this book and the edited version of The Pentagon Papers (which McNamara commissioned). This latter book really puts you inside the White House during the 1960s.
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