Rating: 
Summary: A must to better understand the quagmire that was Vietnam
Review: For anyone wishing to better understand the Vietnam War this is a must read. As usual McNamarafills his book with tables and statistics that tend to support his view of Vietnam.Boiled down to its utmost simplicity there are really only several points of controversy in Vietnam. 1. The strategy as promulgated by the General Westmoreland (known as "Westy" by McNamara) was A. Let the South Vietnamese troops basically provide security in the villages and Hamlets, and have US Troops (sometimes assisted by those few South Vietnamese military units that were well organized and disciplined) engage in "Search and Destroy" missions. This was essentially the "war of attrition" philosophy. This was contrasted by the philosphy of having US troops guaranty security of the hamlets and villages so as to encourage the South Vietnamese to cooperate with the South Vietnamese Government. This philosophy was promoted by the United States Marines, primarily Lt. General Victor Krulak as described in his book, "First To Fight", a book not about Vietnam as such but about the Marine Corps. Krulak believes that Gen. Westmoreland's strategy was thus fundamentally flawed and I agree with him. 2.The second major point was that the "military's hands were tied" by McNamara and the President in that it was forbidden to fight in North Vietnam and the concurrent refusal to cut off the supply of military material to the North Vietnamese by bombing and mining the port of Haiphong and hitting other shipping and communications facilities in North Vietnam. On this important point it is vital for the reader to understand that neither North or South Vietnam hadd any material manufacturing abiltiy. All of North Vietnams military material came from either Russia or China or their allies. McNamara's point is that the bombing of Haiphong and other points would have not worked anyway due to the relatively small amount of material need to sustain the North Vietnamese regulars and the Vietcong. North Vietnam has large manpower willing to virtually carry supplies on his back to supply its own troops and the Vietcong. If Haiphong was cut off certainly the supplies would be sent through rail links to China. This point is crucial. McNamara and the President delieved that by bombing Haiphong and other points China and perhaps Russia would directly enter the war. Nobody now can know if that is true. What does seem to make sense is that McNamara's point that the bombing would not work as supplies would still flow into North and South Vietnam in amounts sufficient to maintain both the North Vietnamese regulars and the Vietcong. Another point brought out in McNamara's book is how close we came to use nuclear and biological weapons as proposed by the United States Military in their plan to bomb and mine Haiphong and other points. This account of nuclear weapons use was recently declassied and it is truly scary how close nuclear weapons night have been used. No one of course knows that even if nuclear weapons were used what would have happened. McNamara does not deny that both he and the President did not want to use nuclear or chemical weapons because of the risks involved of the third world war. I agree that such a decision, made at the time was right. 3. McNamara further points out that the Vietnam war was doomed from the get go because of the lack of a strong, popularly supported government in South Vietnam. This obvious point is true. I believe that the only way the South Vietnamese people would have ever supported government would have been to provide security to the villages and hamlets by following the philosophy of Marine General Victor Krulak and his ilk. There is no doubt that McNamara was right. Without popular support the Vietnam war was doomed from the start. The last important point is that if McNamara thought the Vietnam war was doomed from the start and as McNamara points out that there were specific points that the United States should have pulled out why did he not say so. If McNamara felt as strong as he did about the unwinability of the war why did he not resign and say so. If McNamara did take such action what effect would it have on the future conduct of the war after McNamara resigned in protest. No one knows of course. NcNamara points out that his philosophy is that such action is just not right. McNamara feels that cabinet members owe their loyalty to the President and not anybody or anything else. This is where McNamara and I differ. McNamara points out that ours is not a parliamentary system as in England where the cabinet ministers revolt and call a new elections as recently did happen in England. This may be true but I believe that McNamara is wrong. The duty anyone owes is to the people of the United States and its Constitution and not to any one person even if that person is the President. The best example of a cabinet officer to resign in protest was that of Attorney General Elliot Richardson when he resigned in protest in the so called "Saturday Night Massacre". This is an important point and it should not be forgotten. It must be further pointed out that when McNamara "resigned, or quit" there were approximately 20,000 American dead. When the war ended in 1972/73 the total American dead was 58,000. McNamara resignation may have preventeed at least some of those 38,000 Americans who came not in glory but in body bags. Unusual in most books is that McNamara prints both favorable and unfavorable reviews and point by point answers his critics. One may not agree with McNamara but at the very least this book should be read to better understand all the actors points of view at the time. I would like to point out two upcoming events that anybody wishing to further understand Vietnam is that as this review is being written there is conference being held in Hanoi with McNamara and North Vietnamese military officials on the Vietnam War. This is the first time that meetings have happened at this level. The second event is a book which I have not read that is being pubished July 1, 1997 called "Dereliction of Duty" by H. R. McMaster. From the publishers hype this also appears another book to be read. Bernard Barton(BBarton@worldnet.att.net)
Rating: 
Summary: self serving
Review: Robert S. McNamara is trying to salvage how 'history' is going to remember him. Unfortunately (for him) he's going to be judged on the facts. McNamara and his 'wiz kids' were an unmitigated disaster.They didn't understand war. Didn't understand people. Foreign cultures. Instead of observing reality and adjusting policy according to what worked and what didn't, they tried to force reality to fit their computer projections. McNamara is going to go down in history alongside:
Ambrose Burnside (instead of using a shallow ford at Antietam creek he funneled them across a narow bridge),Montgomery at Arnhem (194: 70% of his troops killer or captured)or Clades Variana who managed to lose two entire legions in the Teutoburg forest (and help hasten the end of the empire)
Actually, McNamara will make a name for himself just as Braxton Bragg did. A 'mcnamara' will be a blind blundering egocentric who causes death and anguish yet couldn't pour p*ss from a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.
For a better read
try:
Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War
or better still
Steel My Soldiers' Hearts : The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation of U.S. Army, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, Vietnam
or indeed anyting by David Hackworth
Rating:
Summary: McNamara's moral flaw
Review: This book gives ample evidence of McNamara's moral lacking. Noam Chomsky puts it bluntly (Manufacturing Consent, 2002):
"Robert McNamara's widely publicized book, supposedly a mea culpa and moral tract, is notable for the fact that his notion of the war's 'high costs,' and the error and guilt he feels, extend only to U.S. lives and the effects of the war on 'the political unity of our society'. He offers neither regrets, moral reflections, nor apologies for his country having invaded, mercilessly bombed, ravaged the land, and killed and wounded millions of innocent people in a samll distant peasant society in pursuit of its own political ends."
It can summarized the only thing you can learn from this book...
Rating: 
Summary: Would give it 3 and a half if I could; mixed feelings....
Review: I think Bob McNamara is a monster...all politicians are monsters. There has not been a single statesmen in history with very rare exceptions (Lazaro Cardenas and Nehru post-1948/9) that have not engaged in bloodshed and mass violence. There are two points about this book that i find quite galling. One, McNamara does not say a word about Agent Orange, I find his refusal to address an indication of his guilt in the matter. In Fog of War he cliams he "does not remember" who gave the final OK for that horrible chemicals use but does not any weapon used by the US military have to have the consent of the Secretary of Defense? Maybe he faced pressure from the Joint Chiefs to use it but that still doesnt make it ok with me or anyother sensible person. Next, is the issue of the M-16, McNamara was so enthused about the weapon that he ordered it shipped to Vietnam en masse by 1965. The M-16 was a disaster, it jammed more than fequently, thousands of US troops died as a result. Draftees wrote heart wrenching letters home begging their parents to do something to get the weapon improved. The situation got so bad that US troops actually took AK-47's, a much better Soviet rifle, of the bodies of dead VC/NVA and used them in combat. It was not until two years later that the M-16 was improved and jamming rates dropped, yet it took untold numbers of US deaths to finally bring McNamara around to the point that he could admit to his own mistake. Yet, he is completely silent on this issue as well. McNamara also praises Westmorland too highly (his constant use of the friendly term Westy for that idiot general made me want to puke). It seems to me all 'Westy' could do was turn South vietnam into a moonscape by endless bombing and use of chemical agents. When that didnt work all he could do was call for more troops and get more Americans and Vietnamese killed (the more troops you have on the ground the more die mr 4 star general....)
The bad aside McNamara realizes his mistakes and that is noble if nothing else. We lost that war fare and squre and I think we should admit it. McNamara is not better or no worse than a Nixon or a Kissinger or a Truman all of whom killed millions through their own warped perseptions of the world and their deadly modern military machine. What makes McNamara different is that he admits to more mistakes than all of these other politicians/murderers combined and thats something we all should admire.
Rating:
Summary: McNamara's Honest But Still Misses the Point
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: ARE YOU READING THIS REVIEW, MR. MCNARAMA?
Review: 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
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