In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

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Summary: The banality of the arrogance of evil
Review: A thoughtful, if repellent, reflection. Unfortunately, much too little, way too late. It's a conclusive demonstration of the chains of events the unbridled arrogance of one powerful man can initiate. Arendt wrote about the ultimate banality of evil. McNamara represents the banality of arrogance become evil. I am a combat veteran of this dismal adventure, and have tried for more than thirty years to come to terms with the vicious exploitation of our youth that undergirded and perpetuated it. There's darned little meaning to be found, and McNamara hasn't helped. Trust me: he earned and richly deserves every nightmare.

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Summary: You Had To Be There
Review: If we make a critical examination of this book, we will come to the same conclusion as Robert MacNamara does. And rightly so. Let's not get into intricate detail. THE US AND EVERYBODY ELSE IN THIS COUNTRY (98%) ASSUMED AUTOMATICALLY THAT THE NORTH VIETNAMESE WAS IN FRIENDLY COHESION WITH COMMUNIST CHINA. AND HE WAS WRONG! He knew that he was a couple of years after LBJ became president. But no matter what the attrocities involved, could you go up to your boss and say, "Mr. President, this war I started is not what I believed it to be. It's, well, stupid!" He resigned during Johnson's administration. And he was against the war at the time. But for him to state publically his view at the time could cause incredible damage to the country. Like half-time at a football game, and the coach throws up his arms, and says, "Oh, we made a grave mistake!" He descibes LBJ as a man who would never accept losing. And this was his fatal flaw. He does believe that Kennedy would have withdrawn all troops. This all does't matter that much. What Happened! And MacNamara blames the power of assumptions. Nobody in the White House ever questioned the assumption that North Vietnam and China were not working together. When now, we know they hated each other! And if this was known at the time, there would have been no war! And I believe him. What I think we should do now is to honor all the Vietnam vets who fought. This was none of their fault. They were killing and being killed for us. Well, for me, Thank You All Vietnam Vets. And God Bless You.

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Summary: Historical Gem
Review: I did not fight in Vietnam. However, I believe this book is valuable for its insightful look into the men who made the decisions for our involvement in Vietnam. I can only imagine how difficult it must of been for our President and McNamara to continue to send troops into a country where the outcome was in doubt. Our country never faced such an outcome! This book will be useful to anyone needing to brush up on their knowledge of Vietnam.

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Summary: The author is a genocidal murderer
Review: 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.

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Summary: Of fears and tears...
Review: If you're a history fan in general and interested in the history of this country in particular, you'll agree that "the sixties" were a watershed era for The United States. I found it both fascinating and infuriating to read Mr. McNamara's thoughts - and misconceptions - about southeast asia. ...Our government's arrogance when dealing with different cultures was truly shocking.

As the prime architect of our country's war efforts in Vietnam, he bears much of the burden for it's failure... and considering the level of domestic upheaval resulting from this war, having the ability to read this man's rational is even more powerful.

Reading this book had a strangely cathartic effect...and it confirms what we all knew all along...that protesting the war *was* the patriotic thing to to. McNamara himself, in so many words, admits it.

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Summary: The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions
Review: For every person who has ever asked, "How did we ever get into Vietnam," former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's book, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam," is a must read. In it, Mr. McNamara details clearly what actions American government leaders took at each phase of the conflict, why they did what they did, the assumptions their actions were based upon, and why, in retrospect, their actions were wrong. Their intentions were indeed pure: prevent the spread of communism world wide. However, the result of their actions was to uninitentially plunge two nations at opposite ends of the economic spectrum into the hell that was Vietnam.

Throughout, Mr. McNamara takes full responsibility for his actions or inactions, something no one else has ever done. He also does an outstanding job of describing the cold war mentatlity that that made South Vietnam seem worth the sacrifice of so many millions of lives and so many billions of dollars. In short, it seemed that the loss of Vietnam would start the fall of nations, like dominos, ending perhaps at the shores of the United States itself. It seemed there was adequate reason to think that given the rape of Eastern Europe by the Soviets after WWII, the stalemate in Korea, the Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises, and Soviet Premier Kruschev's bellicose statement, "We will bury you,!" and the national hysteria caused by McCarthyism. McNamara and Company made their decisions accordingly. The present and future generations that did not and will not grow up under a nuclear shaped cloud called the, "Cold War," will benefit from reading this account as virtually all decisions were made under these assumptions for over 40 years.

Mr. McNamara ends his work with a blueprint for future international relations based on the changing economic and political situations emerging worldwide. His assertions that American ability to shape the world in our own image is now gone and that domestic spending programs are as essential for our security as military spending are deserving of serious study.

The Holy Bible says in the book of Proverbs, Chapter 20, Verse 29, "The glory of young men is their strength; of old men, their experience." Future leaders would do well to heed this "old man's" advise, borne of hard experience. In a world now characterized by weapons of mass destruction in the hands of increasingly radical groups, we can afford to do no less.

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Summary: 52,000 Lives Too Late
Review: Mr. McNamara finally accepts responsibility for the political rationale of the Vietnam deception. However, the book is a poorly written attempt to rationalize the blood of 52,000 brave Americans that will be his final legacy.

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Summary: Bad, bad, bad
Review: For me reading this book was a real disappointment. To me, it sounds very naive, coming from a person who was in one of the highest positions in the US government. It sounds like the truth is absent from its pages. Lets write another one but more realistic. This one is a mix of history, biography, novel and science fiction.

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Summary: McNamara is still deluding himself
Review: AS an amateur historian on Vietnam, I grabbed this book right away. I thought a man as smart as McNamara would finally spill the beans after all these years. However sincere his aplogies in the beginning and ends of the book, the entire read seems as if it is nothing but a complicated rationalization for the tragedy. It offers no new insights in to the decisions or the main players in the tragedy, and even the lessons i nthe end of the book seem painfully obvious (Though not always followed) to any student of foreign policy. Though McNamara undoubtedly adds some interesting footnotes to history, this book adds little to the existing literature. Halberstam's THe Best and the Brightest, Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, Karnow's Vietnam, and Frances Fitzgerald's Fire In the Lake look better than ever. Read one of those instead, leave this book on the shelf where it belongs. It may have been therapeutic for its author, but it offers us little.

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Summary: An amazing feat of self-reflection.
Review: This book provides riveting insight into the crucial and excruciating decisions that determined U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. It not only provides a good overview of the war for people unfamiliar with it, but detailed explanations of critical junctures and how those decisions impacted the war's outcome. But the most amazing part of this book is how level and even-handed it is. Reflection usually provides someone ample opportunity to exaggerate, point fingers, exonerate oneself, etc. Robert McNamara rarely indulges in any of these. He is capable of writing not once but many times, the plain, devastating sentence which is almost unseen in this modern age: "We were wrong."