Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

Amazon.com
For years the popular myth surrounding the Vietnam War was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew what it would take to win but were consistently thwarted or ignored by the politicians in power. Now H. R. McMaster shatters this and other misconceptions about the military and Vietnam in Dereliction of Duty. Himself a West Point graduate, McMaster painstakingly waded through every memo and report concerning Vietnam from every meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to build a comprehensive picture of a house divided against itself: a president and his coterie of advisors obsessed with keeping Vietnam from becoming a political issue versus the Joint Chiefs themselves, mired in interservice rivalries and unable to reach any unified goals or conclusions about the country's conduct in the war. McMaster stresses two elements in his discussion of America's failure in Vietnam: the hubris of Johnson and his advisors and the weakness of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dereliction of Duty provides both a thorough exploration of the military's role in determining Vietnam policy and a telling portrait of the men most responsible.


The New York Times Book Review, Ronald Spector
The notion that a war like that in Vietnam, which began 14 years before the election of Kennedy and continued for six years after the end of the Johnson Administration, can be satisfactorily explained by reference to decisions made in Washington during late 1964 and early 1965 would seem at best questionable.


From Booklist
The "error not of values and intentions but of judgment and capabilities" to which Robert McNamara admitted in In Retrospect (1995) leaves out his deceptions that helped plunge America into the Vietnam War. McNamara may not have remembered them in his memoir, but army officer McMaster found them in the Joint Chiefs of Staff's archives for the crucial decision-making years of 1964 and 1965. Distilled to its essence, McMaster's thesis proposes that the plans and advice on Vietnam prepared by the nation's military advisers were systematically sidetracked by McNamara. Two facts exemplify the whole dense forest of facts McMaster explores: the prediction of the Joint Chiefs of the Army and Marine Corps that "victory" would require five years and 500,000 troops only reached LBJ's ears once (he didn't listen, obviously), and the Pentagon war games of McNamara's theory of "graduated pressure" eerily ended in stalemate. McNamara suppressed all such warning signs, theorizes McMaster, because he was responding to LBJ's anxiety to keep Vietnam's "noise level" down until the 1964 election was over and the Great Society safely enacted. As damning of the civilian leaders as he is, McMaster doesn't blithely exonerate the brass. They didn't heed their own warnings and acquiesced in McNamara's incrementalist policy, in the hope of eventually getting the huge force they diffidently advised would be needed to win. Writing about an ocean of memos, meetings, and reports as he does, McMasters delivers a narrative more diligent than dramatic, but his take on pinpointing the architect(s) of the Vietnam fiasco should prove, nonetheless, of high interest. Gilbert Taylor


From Kirkus Reviews
An intriguing analysis that challenges the view that Cold War anticommunism was primarily responsible for American military intervention in Vietnam. In his first book, McMaster, a US Army major and Persian Gulf war veteran, and a historian who has taught at West Point, zeroes in on the actions of Lyndon Johnson and his top advisers from the time LBJ became president in November 1963 to the July 1965 decision to escalate the war drastically. The author makes a convincing case that domestic political considerations were behind the development of the failed strategy of graduated military pressure. The actions of Johnson, his top civilian advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) were, moreover, characterized by ``arrogance, weakness [and] lying in the pursuit of self interest.'' President Johnson heads McMaster's culpability list, which also includes Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, JCS head and US ambassador to South Vietnam Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Taylor's JCS successor, Gen. Earle Wheeler, and top advisers William and McGeorge Bundy. McMaster's touchstone is the unchallenged fact that Johnson wanted to fight the war on poverty, not the war in Vietnam. McMaster interprets virtually all of LBJ's actions as chief executive in that light. From November 1963 to November 1964 Johnson's overarching goal was to win the presidential election. After that, his main concern was enacting his Great Society programs. The fact that Johnson made Vietnam policy based on domestic-policy implications, McMaster believes, was a recipe for disaster in Vietnam. David Halberstam promulgated similar arguments in The Best and the Brightest (1972). McMaster, using newly released transcripts and other primary source material, pays more attention to the JCS's role. Unsparing in his analysis of the chiefs, McMaster takes them severely to task for their ``failure'' to provide LBJ with ``their best advice.'' A relentless, stinging indictment of the usual Johnson administration Vietnam War suspects. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C."

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
July 1997

A decorated troop commander in the Persian Gulf War and former history teacher at the United States Military Academy, Major H.R. McMaster, Ph.D., has written a new book that unearths disturbing new evidence concerning the Vietnam conflict. It deftly proves how America's top leaders in the 1960s and '70s forgot their responsibility to the American public while manipulating the country into a vicious war that it could not win. Major McMaster wrote Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies That Led to Vietnam after reflecting on his service in the Gulf. "As a cavalry troop commander in Operation Desert Storm," he writes, "I was struck by how easily I could connect our unit's actions with the stated war aims of the American government. The contrasts between America's military experience in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf were stark and analogies between the two were evident in public commentary. My experiences in the Gulf and my scholarly interest in recent American history sparked my desire to research and write about Vietnam."

McMaster's research included poignant interviews with key policy-makers of the Vietnam era; he was also one of the first people granted access to recently-declassified audio tapes and documents previously scuttled away in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the LBJ library. The resulting evidence showed how Lyndon Johnson, and his top civilian and military advisors, turned the problem of Vietnam into a full-scale American war that claimed 58,000 American and over1,000,000Vietnamese lives. Lyndon Johnson's role is shown to be much more prominent than he admitted in his own memoirs, and as Washington steadily lost control of the war, McMaster argues how much of it is due to arrogance and political agenda, including deliberate deception of the American public that would ensure Johnson's reelection in 1964 on the platform of a "peace candidate."

Dereliction of Duty is a sobering, well-written account of how the Vietnam War was all but conceded in closed meetings by top officials in Washington, D.C. long before battles in the bush, skepticism in the press, or protest on college campuses. The clear and factual details that McMaster relays reinforces the tragedy of Vietnam, a war essentially without a clear purpose and orchestrated by political figures who sacrificed lives not so much in the name of national security, but political greed. "I want readers to understand," says the author, "that the disaster in Vietnam was uniquely due to human failure and not an inevitable outgrowth of the Cold War mentality of containment. This failure resulted from a fundamental dishonesty, and an abdication of responsibility to the American people, on the part of Lyndon Johnson, top advisors like Robert McNamara, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Dereliction of Duty makes a unique, groundbreaking contribution toward clarifying what happened, why, and who was responsible for the decisions that led to direct U.S. military intervention in the Vietnam War. Based on more than five years of painstaking research, it includes startling revelations from previously classified transcripts of crucial meetings, many of which were obtained by the author through the Freedom of Information Act; tapes of private telephone conversations; exclusive access to personal diaries; interviews with participants; and oral histories. The result is an inescapable correction to the prevailing view that an American war in Vietnam was inevitable. The book follows step-by-step the series of developments and secret decisions made in Washington between November 1963 and July 1965 to intensify the American military commitment in Southeast Asia. And it reveals that the disaster that followed was not caused by impersonal forces but by uniquely human failures at the highest levels of the U.S. government: arrogance, weakness, lying in the pursuit of self-interest, and above all, the abdication of responsibility to the American people. The roles played by the president's closest advisers - McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk, George Ball, Maxwell Taylor, and especially Robert McNamara - in the decisions to escalate American involvement are central to the story. And the reasons behind those decisions - now exposed - challenge McNamara's claim that American policy makers were prisoners of the ideology of the containment of Communism and therefore should be absolved of responsibility for the final outcome. The book also reveals for the first time how the virtual exclusion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the decision-making process exacerbated the problem.

FROM THE CRITICS

Ronald Spector

What gives 'Dereliction of Duty' its special value . . . is McMaster's comprehensive, balanced and relentless exploration of the specific role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. . . . As a result, he is able to explode some longstanding myths about the role of the Chiefs. According to the most popular of these, the Joint Chiefs always knew what was needed to win in Vietnam but were consistently ignored or circumvented by Johnson, Robert S. McNamara and their associates. McMaster shows that the President and his civilian advisers did indeed ignore the Joint Chiefs whenever it suited them, but he also demonstrates that the Chiefs were willing, or at least silent, accomplices in this process. -Ronald Spector - The New York Times Book Review:

Paul F. Braim

This book is an excellent addition to the growing record of inadequacies in senior leadership during that time of America's travail. McMaster's directcharge: Dereliction of duty by LBJ and his intimate advisors, and culpabilityby senior military leaders, in their commitment of our nation's most scarce and precious resource--our young soldiers--into a war under restrictions that produced high casualties and ultimate defeat for the United States. This provocative book brings the accused, alive and dead, before the bar of public justice. This reviewer's verdict: Guilty as charged! - Paul F. Braim - Parameters (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.)

Robert Anderson - The Philadelphia Inquirer

An impressive study thorough in its research and summary in its judgments. [McMaster] doesn't shy from bold interpretation, or the damning insight, and his analysis, a model of clarity and economy, puts civil-military relations during the Vietnam war in an eerie, indeed Byzantine light.

Donald Kagan

An outstanding example of historical research, interpretation, scholarship, and fair-minded analysis.

Eliot Cohen

Four star generals do not normally consult the writings of junior field grade officers for advice about career decisions. But it was widely reported that when Air Force Chief of Staff General Ronald Fogelman decided to resign in 1997, he did so at least in part on the basis of a careful reading of H. R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty. . . . "McMaster has written a scathing indictment of America's civilian and military leadership during the early phases of the Vietnam war, and he speaks. . . with unique moral authority. . . . McMaster earned his moral authority under fire. . . . By virtue of his actions [in the Gulf War], McMaster became a hero. . . . "[McMaster] speaks with unusual authority as a symbol of the confident young veterans of the Gulf. His call to his leaders to hold themselves to high standards of professional integrity is, therefore, an important one. No wonder, then, that General Fogelman, himself an acute student of history, would pay close attention to work that on nearly every page excoriates his predecessors for their unwillingness to speak and act as their positions required. . . . "Recently, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry Shelton, invited Major McMaster to lecture to the most senior generals in the American military about his book. Read all 24 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

What gives Dereliction of Duty its special value is...McMaster's comprehensive, balanced and relentless exploration of the specific role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...a devastating indictment of Johnson and his principal civilian and military advisers. — Ronald Spector

Carefully researched and vividly narrated, H.R. McMaster's book adds a new and disturbing dimension to an understanding of the decisions that propelled us into the Vietnam war. It should be read by anyone interested in the origins of one of the great tragedies in American history. — Stanley Karnow

A book to boggle your mind with new revelations of ineptness, duplicity, and arrogance amongst the senior-most officials of the United States....McMaster pastes all the puzzle pieces together to reveal a plot Shakespearean in its proportions ...McMaster's scholarship and presentation is exemplary in Dereliction of Duty...The author's arguments are coherent and convincing and important to the historical record. — Peter Arnett

Superbly researched, play—by—play, riveting inside story of the genesis of the American War in Vietnam. Assorted firepower explodes on every page. — (Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, U.S. Army (Retired), coauthor of the New York Times best seller We Were Soldiers Once￯﾿ﾽAnd Young)

Carefully researched and vividly narrated, H.R. McMaster's book adds a new and disturbing dimension to an understanding of the decisions that propelled us into the Vietnam War. It should be read by anyone interested in the origins of one of the great tragedies in American history. — (Stanley Karnow, Pulitzer Prize—winning author of Vietnam: A History)

An outstanding example of historical research, interpretation, scholarship, and fair—minded analysis. — (Donald Kagan, Bass Professor of History, Classics and Western Civilization, Yale University, and author of On the Origins of War)