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In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
The Secretary of Defense for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations provides a perceptive and candid account of how--and why--America became involved in Vietnam, discussing his own activities and the legacy of decisions made during the 1960s. 100,000 first printing. Tour.
414 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Robert S. McNamara
54 books43 followersRobert Strange McNamara (June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American business executive and the eighth Secretary of Defense, serving from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, during which time he played a large role in escalating the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. Following that, he served as President of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981. McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis. McNamara consolidated intelligence and logistics functions of the Pentagon into two centralized agencies: the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Supply Agency.
Prior to public service, McNamara was one of the "Whiz Kids" who helped rebuild Ford Motor Company after World War II, and briefly served as Ford's President before becoming Secretary of Defense. A group of advisors he brought to the Pentagon inherited the "Whiz Kids" moniker.
McNamara remains the longest serving Secretary of Defense at over seven years.
Prior to public service, McNamara was one of the "Whiz Kids" who helped rebuild Ford Motor Company after World War II, and briefly served as Ford's President before becoming Secretary of Defense. A group of advisors he brought to the Pentagon inherited the "Whiz Kids" moniker.
McNamara remains the longest serving Secretary of Defense at over seven years.
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September 23, 2021
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara wrote this memoir to explore, and explain to the American people, why their "government and its leaders behaved as they did" in regard to the Vietnam War, and "what we may learn from that experience."
As McNamara argues, President John F. Kennedy's decision to send military advisers to South Vietnam was a mistake because two important conditions were not met: political stability (which did not exist and was unlikely to ever be achieved) and a self-sufficient South Vietnamese force ( which could not defend itself training assistance and logistical support notwithstanding.) Americans should have withdrawn as early as Autumn 1963, after Diem's assassination, or in late 1964, or in early 1965, when South Vietnam was politically weak. The problem was that they never did.
McNamara proceeds to outline the crucial shortcomings of the American approach, which turned the Vietnam conflict into a disaster of considerable proportions.
According to the Secretary of Defense, it is inherently difficult, though not impossible, for great powers and small countries to understand each other. Leaders in Washington saw every event in Vietnam, no matter how apparently trivial, as having potential global strategic significance. They could not comprehend that in Hanoi, all events were interpreted according to whether they raised or lowered the chances of achieving the reunification of Vietnam under the leadership of Hanoi. The mutual ignorance was astonishing, and the array of misjudgments, misreadings, mistaken estimations, and other misunderstandings hindered each side's attempts at preventing tragedy and escalated the conflict.
"The Vietnam War, in important respects, a failure of American unilateralism," continues McNamara. What he means is that after 1954, despite the creation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the United States acted virtually alone. When John F. Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower in the White House, Ike told him that he preferred unilateral intervention to any type of neutral arrangement. "This was typical of Washington's cavalier attitude toward involving others in its schemes in Southeast Asia." For instance, France, which was a signatory to the SEATO treaty and carried the same obligations as the United States, offered, in 1963, to try to negotiate for a neutral arrangement in Vietnam, but Washington never consulted it.
Another failure, quite natural for a large power, was the American inability to see the limitations of its high-tech warfare capability when faced with guerrilla warfare. It seems to have been outright incomprehensible for leaders in Washington and Saigon that they could be defeated by a bunch of Vietnamese Communists. In addition, American civilian and military leaders could not even picture an organization like the Vietnamese Communist Party, which was willing to suffer nightmarish casualties yet keep fighting.
US leaders also arrogantly assumed that it is possible to build a nation exclusively through military power and economic support. The Vietnam quagmire proved this is not true. South Vietnam was a failed state from the beginning, and it was impossible to save it through external military forces, even if they were armed to their teeth. On top of that, in Vietnam, the United States completely strayed away from its democratic ideals: it upheld a dictator and thus betrayed its own stated principles for the sake of battling Communism.
As McNamara explains, most of those faults in American decision-making stemmed from deep-seated disagreements among the President's closest advisers about how to proceed in Vietnam. Those disagreements were neither acknowledged nor resolved. According to the Secretary of Defense, a small group of high-level officials, which would meet regularly with the President for open-ended, open-minded discussions when the use of military force was contemplated, should have been created and opposition should have been tolerated more. Instead, no senior person in Washington dealt only with Vietnam. The President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were all torn by a whole set of complex and demanding issues and could not focus their attention on resolving the Vietnam conflict efficiently.
Furthermore, throughout the course of the Vietnam War, the American government did not engage the American public in an honest discussion before committing ground troops to the conflict. It failed to explain to the people what the logic behind its decisions was, and eventually it lost their support. "Before engaging in wars, limited or otherwise, the American people must understand the difficulties they will face; the American military must know and accept the constraints under which they will operate; and the American leadership ... must be prepared to cut losses and withdraw if it appears that limited objectives cannot be achieved at acceptable risks and costs," concludes McNamara.
IN RETROSPECT is an immensely important book, which carries numerous implications for foreign policy today and in the future. I believe that every citizen, especially a citizen of a large and powerful country, should be familiar with the conclusions McNamara drew from the quagmire he helped his country get stuck in. First and foremost, though, his book should be read by policy-makers. It is a storehouse of bitter mistakes and grave, but useful, warnings.
As McNamara argues, President John F. Kennedy's decision to send military advisers to South Vietnam was a mistake because two important conditions were not met: political stability (which did not exist and was unlikely to ever be achieved) and a self-sufficient South Vietnamese force ( which could not defend itself training assistance and logistical support notwithstanding.) Americans should have withdrawn as early as Autumn 1963, after Diem's assassination, or in late 1964, or in early 1965, when South Vietnam was politically weak. The problem was that they never did.
McNamara proceeds to outline the crucial shortcomings of the American approach, which turned the Vietnam conflict into a disaster of considerable proportions.
According to the Secretary of Defense, it is inherently difficult, though not impossible, for great powers and small countries to understand each other. Leaders in Washington saw every event in Vietnam, no matter how apparently trivial, as having potential global strategic significance. They could not comprehend that in Hanoi, all events were interpreted according to whether they raised or lowered the chances of achieving the reunification of Vietnam under the leadership of Hanoi. The mutual ignorance was astonishing, and the array of misjudgments, misreadings, mistaken estimations, and other misunderstandings hindered each side's attempts at preventing tragedy and escalated the conflict.
"The Vietnam War, in important respects, a failure of American unilateralism," continues McNamara. What he means is that after 1954, despite the creation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the United States acted virtually alone. When John F. Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower in the White House, Ike told him that he preferred unilateral intervention to any type of neutral arrangement. "This was typical of Washington's cavalier attitude toward involving others in its schemes in Southeast Asia." For instance, France, which was a signatory to the SEATO treaty and carried the same obligations as the United States, offered, in 1963, to try to negotiate for a neutral arrangement in Vietnam, but Washington never consulted it.
Another failure, quite natural for a large power, was the American inability to see the limitations of its high-tech warfare capability when faced with guerrilla warfare. It seems to have been outright incomprehensible for leaders in Washington and Saigon that they could be defeated by a bunch of Vietnamese Communists. In addition, American civilian and military leaders could not even picture an organization like the Vietnamese Communist Party, which was willing to suffer nightmarish casualties yet keep fighting.
US leaders also arrogantly assumed that it is possible to build a nation exclusively through military power and economic support. The Vietnam quagmire proved this is not true. South Vietnam was a failed state from the beginning, and it was impossible to save it through external military forces, even if they were armed to their teeth. On top of that, in Vietnam, the United States completely strayed away from its democratic ideals: it upheld a dictator and thus betrayed its own stated principles for the sake of battling Communism.
As McNamara explains, most of those faults in American decision-making stemmed from deep-seated disagreements among the President's closest advisers about how to proceed in Vietnam. Those disagreements were neither acknowledged nor resolved. According to the Secretary of Defense, a small group of high-level officials, which would meet regularly with the President for open-ended, open-minded discussions when the use of military force was contemplated, should have been created and opposition should have been tolerated more. Instead, no senior person in Washington dealt only with Vietnam. The President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were all torn by a whole set of complex and demanding issues and could not focus their attention on resolving the Vietnam conflict efficiently.
Furthermore, throughout the course of the Vietnam War, the American government did not engage the American public in an honest discussion before committing ground troops to the conflict. It failed to explain to the people what the logic behind its decisions was, and eventually it lost their support. "Before engaging in wars, limited or otherwise, the American people must understand the difficulties they will face; the American military must know and accept the constraints under which they will operate; and the American leadership ... must be prepared to cut losses and withdraw if it appears that limited objectives cannot be achieved at acceptable risks and costs," concludes McNamara.
IN RETROSPECT is an immensely important book, which carries numerous implications for foreign policy today and in the future. I believe that every citizen, especially a citizen of a large and powerful country, should be familiar with the conclusions McNamara drew from the quagmire he helped his country get stuck in. First and foremost, though, his book should be read by policy-makers. It is a storehouse of bitter mistakes and grave, but useful, warnings.
December 29, 2025
This provided a lot of insight on the escalation into Vietnam from the advisory to combat role. From start to finish McNamara provided his side of the story and his opinions on the matter.
"...the two conditions underlying President Kennedy's decision to send military advisers to South Vietnam were not met and, indeed, could not be met: political instability did not exist and was unlikely to ever be achieved; and the South Vietnamese, even with our training assistance and logistical support, were incapable of defending themselves.
Given these facts—and they are facts—I believe we could and should have withdrawn from South Vietnam either in late 1963 amid turmoil following Diem's assassination and or in late 1964 or early 1965 in the face of increasing political and military weakness in South Vietnam. And, as the table opposite suggests, there were at least three other occasions when withdrawal could have been justified.
I do not believe that U.S. withdrawal at any of these junctures, if properly explained to the American people and the world, would have led Western Europeans to question our support for NATO and, through it, our guarantee of their society. Nor do I believe that Japan would have viewed our security treaties as any less credible. On the contrary, it is possible we would have improved our credibility by withdrawing from Vietnam and saving our strength for more defensible stands elsewhere." pg 320
From Newsweek interview with Jonathan Adler, 1995:
In the end, what are the two or three most important lessons of Vietnam?
The concluding chapter of the book focuses on this subject. Put very simply: don't judge the nature of the conflict. Don't underestimate the power of nationalism. Many conflicts of the future will be about nationalism. Don't overestimate what outside military forces can accomplish—they can't reconstruct a "failed" stated. And don't act unilaterally unless the security of our country is directly threatened. pg 415
I would recommend this to anyone interested in the Vietnam War and the political decision-making that went on during the LBJ administration with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Thanks!
"...the two conditions underlying President Kennedy's decision to send military advisers to South Vietnam were not met and, indeed, could not be met: political instability did not exist and was unlikely to ever be achieved; and the South Vietnamese, even with our training assistance and logistical support, were incapable of defending themselves.
Given these facts—and they are facts—I believe we could and should have withdrawn from South Vietnam either in late 1963 amid turmoil following Diem's assassination and or in late 1964 or early 1965 in the face of increasing political and military weakness in South Vietnam. And, as the table opposite suggests, there were at least three other occasions when withdrawal could have been justified.
I do not believe that U.S. withdrawal at any of these junctures, if properly explained to the American people and the world, would have led Western Europeans to question our support for NATO and, through it, our guarantee of their society. Nor do I believe that Japan would have viewed our security treaties as any less credible. On the contrary, it is possible we would have improved our credibility by withdrawing from Vietnam and saving our strength for more defensible stands elsewhere." pg 320
From Newsweek interview with Jonathan Adler, 1995:
In the end, what are the two or three most important lessons of Vietnam?
The concluding chapter of the book focuses on this subject. Put very simply: don't judge the nature of the conflict. Don't underestimate the power of nationalism. Many conflicts of the future will be about nationalism. Don't overestimate what outside military forces can accomplish—they can't reconstruct a "failed" stated. And don't act unilaterally unless the security of our country is directly threatened. pg 415
I would recommend this to anyone interested in the Vietnam War and the political decision-making that went on during the LBJ administration with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Thanks!
June 22, 2024
McNamara does not attempt to justify the Vietnam mistakes made by the Kennedy & Johnson administrations in which he was a major participant. But having identified those fatal flaws which cost so many American and Vietnamese lives, and gained nothing, he does not analyze why the thinking, including his, was so bad. I understand the goal of preventing the spread of communism in Asia, but once it was clear that US actions could not achieve that end, and that the South Vietnamese could not defend their country, why not tell the truth and get out. In the end, the truth was known and nothing but more death was accomplished. The fact that this same deception continued in the Nixon/Kissinger years is a major thread in my historical novel of the interactions of the US and China in the years preceding the 1972 Nixon visit to China. The failure to face facts and to act in accord with those facts, in order to gain short term political gains such as Nixon's re-election in 1972, was a disgrace.
McNamara's focus on numbers, including data such as body counts, is well known, and he is well aware of his absence of historical and cultural understanding of the countries and people he and others were dealing with in SE Asia. What is inexplicable to me is his failure to assemble resources of people who did know those things and to assimilate such input into his decision-making process. McNamara associates his focus on data with his years at the Harvard Business School. I attended HBS about 20 years after McNamara was there, and I took the excellent course in management accounting which was attributed to his influence. There was a focus on numbers at HBS, but this was always in the context of non-numeric conditions and human factors, which McNamara appears to have missed or considered not worthy of his attention.
How could a man as smart as McNamara be so stupid!
Here are some pathetic excerpts from his book ...
... We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.
... One reason the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed to take an orderly, rational approach to the basic questions underlying Vietnam was the staggering variety and complexity of other issues we faced. Simply put, we faced a blizzard of problems, there were only twenty-four hours in a day, and we often did not have time to think straight. ... LEW: what a pitiful excuse
... I had never visited Indochina, nor did I understand or appreciate its history, language, culture, or values. The same must be said, to varying degrees, about President Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, military adviser Maxwell Taylor, and many others. When it came to Vietnam, we found ourselves setting policy for a region that was terra incognita. ... There were no senior officials in the Pentagon or State Department with comparable knowledge of Southeast Asia.
... We failed to analyze our assumptions critically, then or later. The foundations of our decision making were gravely flawed.
... We thought that President Ngo Dinh Diem aimed to move his people toward freedom and democracy. That he had studied at a Catholic seminary in New Jersey in the early 1950s seemed evidence that he shared Western values. As we got closer and closer to the situation, however, we came to learn otherwise. Diem, those around him, and the political structures that he built lacked a connection to the South Vietnamese people; he never developed a bond with them. We totally misjudged that.
... top government officials need specialists—experts—at their elbows when they make decisions on matters outside their own experience. If we had had more Asia experts around us, perhaps we would not have been so simpleminded about China and Vietnam
... Contrary to the belief that we could force and win large-scale ground operations, the Sigma II-65 report noted “considerable feeling among participants that Viet Cong adoption of the strategy of avoiding major engagements with U.S. forces would make it extremely difficult to find and fix enemy units….Viet Cong experience in the jungles [and] guerrilla warfare…would pose serious problems, even for well-equipped and highly mobile U.S. regulars.” As for bombing, the report noted, “There was considerable feeling…that [the] punishment being imposed could and would be absorbed by the Hanoi leadership… LEW ... this quote refers to events of 1965, 10 years before US left Vietnam
McNamara's focus on numbers, including data such as body counts, is well known, and he is well aware of his absence of historical and cultural understanding of the countries and people he and others were dealing with in SE Asia. What is inexplicable to me is his failure to assemble resources of people who did know those things and to assimilate such input into his decision-making process. McNamara associates his focus on data with his years at the Harvard Business School. I attended HBS about 20 years after McNamara was there, and I took the excellent course in management accounting which was attributed to his influence. There was a focus on numbers at HBS, but this was always in the context of non-numeric conditions and human factors, which McNamara appears to have missed or considered not worthy of his attention.
How could a man as smart as McNamara be so stupid!
Here are some pathetic excerpts from his book ...
... We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.
... One reason the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed to take an orderly, rational approach to the basic questions underlying Vietnam was the staggering variety and complexity of other issues we faced. Simply put, we faced a blizzard of problems, there were only twenty-four hours in a day, and we often did not have time to think straight. ... LEW: what a pitiful excuse
... I had never visited Indochina, nor did I understand or appreciate its history, language, culture, or values. The same must be said, to varying degrees, about President Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, military adviser Maxwell Taylor, and many others. When it came to Vietnam, we found ourselves setting policy for a region that was terra incognita. ... There were no senior officials in the Pentagon or State Department with comparable knowledge of Southeast Asia.
... We failed to analyze our assumptions critically, then or later. The foundations of our decision making were gravely flawed.
... We thought that President Ngo Dinh Diem aimed to move his people toward freedom and democracy. That he had studied at a Catholic seminary in New Jersey in the early 1950s seemed evidence that he shared Western values. As we got closer and closer to the situation, however, we came to learn otherwise. Diem, those around him, and the political structures that he built lacked a connection to the South Vietnamese people; he never developed a bond with them. We totally misjudged that.
... top government officials need specialists—experts—at their elbows when they make decisions on matters outside their own experience. If we had had more Asia experts around us, perhaps we would not have been so simpleminded about China and Vietnam
... Contrary to the belief that we could force and win large-scale ground operations, the Sigma II-65 report noted “considerable feeling among participants that Viet Cong adoption of the strategy of avoiding major engagements with U.S. forces would make it extremely difficult to find and fix enemy units….Viet Cong experience in the jungles [and] guerrilla warfare…would pose serious problems, even for well-equipped and highly mobile U.S. regulars.” As for bombing, the report noted, “There was considerable feeling…that [the] punishment being imposed could and would be absorbed by the Hanoi leadership… LEW ... this quote refers to events of 1965, 10 years before US left Vietnam
November 20, 2017
This is by far the most self centered and lousy book of the most unforgiving nature I read in 2017. As promised - I have burned every page in fire pit with Vietnam Veterans of the U.S. Army, Marines, Navy, and Air Force. (Posted 20 November 2017 update)
This book is book #2 of my personal trilogy that I decided to undertake.
Book 1: Last Stand at Khe Sanh by Gregg Jones (this book represents where the rubber meets the road on "McNamara's War")
Book 2: This piece of trash by Robert McNamara
Book 3: Dereliction of Duty by H.R. McMaster
When this book first came out 1n 1995 I recall having a phone call with a retired Marine friend, it seems in 1995 this book was plastered all over television, radio, school campuses – literally everywhere. It was a book I told my friend during the call that I would “not” read – now I believed I was compelled to read this book after having read “Last Stand at Khe Sanh” by Gregg Jones. Once I finished "In Reflection" of McNamara's account of events, I feel none-the-better that I have and none of my questions have been answered. I served in the U.S. Marines and knew many who stayed in the Marine Corps after their return from Vietnam - they realized they couldn't work anywhere else and society didn't want them anyway. One Marine was a cannon cocker at Khe Sanh, the other a Tunnel Rat with the 1st Battalion 9th Marines; a host of other mid-level enlisted and officers I knew who served in Vietnam would later reach higher rank before my own honorable discharge from the Marines.
There were parts in this book that made me question his truthfulness, that in other words McNamara was not coming to full disclosure with. There were even less parts that I could accept his accounting with; mostly, I was disappointed that he did not outright dedicate this book to memory of lost service men and women who died fighting his war, that there was no apology within the overall framework to the parents and loved ones of these service members and no reference what so ever to the mental anguish the combat survivors had to endure years afterwards. There are many repetitive internalized questions he presents to the reader; these are useless to which he provides no answer (and make no mistake, this arrogance is directly tied to no apology); and, therefore makes no sense - had he attempted to answer these "internalizations" with disclosing his management style at DOD then one could at least attempt a better understanding of why he speckled his book with these unasked questions of the time. The obvious questions he fully ignores. To add insult to injury, when he left the Defense Department on 29 February 1968 the battle of Khe Sanh was more than a month old, the Tet Offensive was nearly 30 days old, and by this point there had been more than 30,000 KIA or MIA in the Republic of Vietnam – he acknowledges only Khe Sanh and Tet once on page 314 as an almost *asterisk* to his departure – one word “disgusting” and totally unacceptable. (For the record he does the same thing earlier on with the Battle of Ia Drang of October/November 1965 - a hidden battle buried in a sentence another point I found repulsive.) Thousands of families bore the brunt of the losses incurred based on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of August 1964 - an election year by the way with action on the Republic of Vietnam to be changed on 7 February 1965 - coincidence you say???
I came away from this book with a complete emptiness and disappointed he didn’t have the dignity to do what was right within this work. Overall, I speculate that Mr. McNamara (with this book) was able to put his mind at ease before he passed away, because he certainly didn’t provide any written sorrow for all that was lost within the "Betrayed Generation" of "McNamara's War." The “whiz kids” should have stayed at the Ford Motor Company; they weren't the "Best and Brightest" - the "Best" died on the battlefields of Vietnam, the "Brightest" tried to stop this idiocy or attempted to sway a micromanaged administration toward an outright win over the Communist North; this was a war based on politics/political strategy. The RAND Corporation ran two SIGMA tests on Vietnam SIGMA I ('62, '63, and '64) and SIGMA II '64. All of these ended unfavorable to a high degree - vacating South Vietnam was apparent and available through February 1964 and several points there after but "graduated escalation" was RSM's philosophy and goal to attempt to put North Vietnam on notice and to force a negotiated peace settlement. Meanwhile, all of the indicators (to include the SIGMA testing) provided only the determination of the North Vietnamese to do what they ultimately did - stick it out and fight a protracted war on their terms. No sense trying to get into the enemy's head and have him do what you would want him to do - no one confronted McNamara on this point.
I bought this book used for a few dollars online – I intend to burn every page with some Vietnam Veterans I know that were injured, maimed, or remained otherwise challenged in some form mentally as a result of this war. I give two stars to this book only because there were parts reflected of his family that were “truthful” – full disclosure was never his forte and this is obvious.
This book is book #2 of my personal trilogy that I decided to undertake.
Book 1: Last Stand at Khe Sanh by Gregg Jones (this book represents where the rubber meets the road on "McNamara's War")
Book 2: This piece of trash by Robert McNamara
Book 3: Dereliction of Duty by H.R. McMaster
When this book first came out 1n 1995 I recall having a phone call with a retired Marine friend, it seems in 1995 this book was plastered all over television, radio, school campuses – literally everywhere. It was a book I told my friend during the call that I would “not” read – now I believed I was compelled to read this book after having read “Last Stand at Khe Sanh” by Gregg Jones. Once I finished "In Reflection" of McNamara's account of events, I feel none-the-better that I have and none of my questions have been answered. I served in the U.S. Marines and knew many who stayed in the Marine Corps after their return from Vietnam - they realized they couldn't work anywhere else and society didn't want them anyway. One Marine was a cannon cocker at Khe Sanh, the other a Tunnel Rat with the 1st Battalion 9th Marines; a host of other mid-level enlisted and officers I knew who served in Vietnam would later reach higher rank before my own honorable discharge from the Marines.
There were parts in this book that made me question his truthfulness, that in other words McNamara was not coming to full disclosure with. There were even less parts that I could accept his accounting with; mostly, I was disappointed that he did not outright dedicate this book to memory of lost service men and women who died fighting his war, that there was no apology within the overall framework to the parents and loved ones of these service members and no reference what so ever to the mental anguish the combat survivors had to endure years afterwards. There are many repetitive internalized questions he presents to the reader; these are useless to which he provides no answer (and make no mistake, this arrogance is directly tied to no apology); and, therefore makes no sense - had he attempted to answer these "internalizations" with disclosing his management style at DOD then one could at least attempt a better understanding of why he speckled his book with these unasked questions of the time. The obvious questions he fully ignores. To add insult to injury, when he left the Defense Department on 29 February 1968 the battle of Khe Sanh was more than a month old, the Tet Offensive was nearly 30 days old, and by this point there had been more than 30,000 KIA or MIA in the Republic of Vietnam – he acknowledges only Khe Sanh and Tet once on page 314 as an almost *asterisk* to his departure – one word “disgusting” and totally unacceptable. (For the record he does the same thing earlier on with the Battle of Ia Drang of October/November 1965 - a hidden battle buried in a sentence another point I found repulsive.) Thousands of families bore the brunt of the losses incurred based on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of August 1964 - an election year by the way with action on the Republic of Vietnam to be changed on 7 February 1965 - coincidence you say???
I came away from this book with a complete emptiness and disappointed he didn’t have the dignity to do what was right within this work. Overall, I speculate that Mr. McNamara (with this book) was able to put his mind at ease before he passed away, because he certainly didn’t provide any written sorrow for all that was lost within the "Betrayed Generation" of "McNamara's War." The “whiz kids” should have stayed at the Ford Motor Company; they weren't the "Best and Brightest" - the "Best" died on the battlefields of Vietnam, the "Brightest" tried to stop this idiocy or attempted to sway a micromanaged administration toward an outright win over the Communist North; this was a war based on politics/political strategy. The RAND Corporation ran two SIGMA tests on Vietnam SIGMA I ('62, '63, and '64) and SIGMA II '64. All of these ended unfavorable to a high degree - vacating South Vietnam was apparent and available through February 1964 and several points there after but "graduated escalation" was RSM's philosophy and goal to attempt to put North Vietnam on notice and to force a negotiated peace settlement. Meanwhile, all of the indicators (to include the SIGMA testing) provided only the determination of the North Vietnamese to do what they ultimately did - stick it out and fight a protracted war on their terms. No sense trying to get into the enemy's head and have him do what you would want him to do - no one confronted McNamara on this point.
I bought this book used for a few dollars online – I intend to burn every page with some Vietnam Veterans I know that were injured, maimed, or remained otherwise challenged in some form mentally as a result of this war. I give two stars to this book only because there were parts reflected of his family that were “truthful” – full disclosure was never his forte and this is obvious.
September 9, 2009
Addendum 9/9/09. As I follow the discussion over Afghanistan, I was reminded of a report cited by McNamara that was begun at the behest of CIA director Richard Helms. Super-secret it was done to examine contingencies to see what might happen if there were an unfavorable outcome in Vietnam. Over 30 CIA analysts were consulted. It was not to be an argument for ending the war, just responses to a hypothetical question. The memo was entitled "Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Vietnam." (The entire report makes fascinating reading and has been declassified. It’s available at:
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/star/image...
Basically, it made four observations:
A. Failure in Vietnam would be a major setback to reputation that would reduce influence as a world power
B. Net effects of failure would not be permanent and that over a short time the U.S. could regain its stature
C. “The worst potential damage would be of the self-inflicted kind – lead to loss of confidence in internal dissension which would limit our future ability to use our resources and power wisely and to full effect and lead to a loss of confidence by others in the American capacity for leadership.”
D. Destabilizing effects in immediate area of SE Asia, some realignments in neighboring countries
“The frustration of a world power, once it has committed vast resources and much prestige to a military enterprise must be in some degree damaging to the general security system it upholds. . . .If the analysis here advances the discussion at all, it is in the direction of suggesting that such risks are probably more limited and controllable than most previous argument has indicated.”
McNamara claims he never saw the memo until he wrote the book. Johnson may not have shown it to anyone.
A book worth mentioning is Harold Ford's CIA and Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968 by Harold Ford, available from Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=UkdG...
Harold Ford’s book (at least excerpts I have read on Google books) indicates that CIA estimates were far more accurate than those coming publicly out of the White House.
Informative review at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william... re Ford’s comments on McNamara’s book.
7/6/09 McNamara died today, thought I might review my earlier review.
Clearly, the policy wonks made many errors in their decision to pursue the war in Vietnam. Halberstam in The Best and the Brightest catalogs many of those arrogant positions and their failures to listen to southeast Asia experts. But there was also a visceral fear of Communism (not to mention a fear of right-wing McCarthyites who had ruined many a reputation for failure to be anti-Communist enough. That's why only Nixon could go to China. The military was sure that just a few more soldiers would win the war, just a few more bombing missions, etc. etc.
The book reveals a level of amateurism that is scary and that from the "best and the brightest," a phrase that when I hear it now gives me the willies. They failed to learn as much as they could about Vietnam
McNamara, by 1966, had already decided that the war could not be won.
Johnson knew that McNamara and RFK were friends and spoke frequently and by this time RFK was running for president and had come out against continued involvement in Vietnam. Already, McNamara and Dean Rusk both by this time were showing the strain physically. Diplomatic efforts continued to fail and in 1967, Buddhist uprising intensified and the fragility of the South Vietnamese government became obvious. The military situation while not great, was overshadowed by political problems. Johnson had even hinted in April of 1966 that he might be willing to withdraw troops from Vietnam and "make a stand in Thailand." (I'm not sure what the Thais would have thought of that, but no matter, other people's considerations don't seem to be taken into account when the U.S. is on the march.) "Looking back I deeply regret that I did not force a probing debate about whether it would ever be possible to forge a winning military effort on a foundation of political quicksand.. . . I believe it is clear today that military force especially, when wielded by an outside power, just cannot win in a country that cannot govern itself."
His colleagues saw things differently, and inaccurately says McNamara. Dean Rusk was already sure in 1966 that the situation was such that the North Vietnamese could not succeed. Ambassador Lodge was convinced the military war was going well (this was before Tet) and that the war would be lost only if the political will failed in the United States. McNamara reports that he laid out the reasons why the US could not succeed in the fall of 1966 after a trip to Vietnam. (McNamara was pilloried when the book came out by critics who faulted him for not going public with his dissent, or at least making a stronger effort to persuade the president of the lost cause. I think that's being a little harsh given the overwhelming support for the war from Johnson's other advisers.
I would hope that current administration officials would read this book, obviously the Bush folks did not, or maybe they didn't care. I would hope that we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Just take a stroll along the Vietnam Memorial to realize the import of those decisions. An important book, if a cynic-maker.
Update 7/6/09CIA and Vietnam Policymakers Three Episodes, 1962-1968
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/star/image...
Basically, it made four observations:
A. Failure in Vietnam would be a major setback to reputation that would reduce influence as a world power
B. Net effects of failure would not be permanent and that over a short time the U.S. could regain its stature
C. “The worst potential damage would be of the self-inflicted kind – lead to loss of confidence in internal dissension which would limit our future ability to use our resources and power wisely and to full effect and lead to a loss of confidence by others in the American capacity for leadership.”
D. Destabilizing effects in immediate area of SE Asia, some realignments in neighboring countries
“The frustration of a world power, once it has committed vast resources and much prestige to a military enterprise must be in some degree damaging to the general security system it upholds. . . .If the analysis here advances the discussion at all, it is in the direction of suggesting that such risks are probably more limited and controllable than most previous argument has indicated.”
McNamara claims he never saw the memo until he wrote the book. Johnson may not have shown it to anyone.
A book worth mentioning is Harold Ford's CIA and Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968 by Harold Ford, available from Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=UkdG...
Harold Ford’s book (at least excerpts I have read on Google books) indicates that CIA estimates were far more accurate than those coming publicly out of the White House.
Informative review at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william... re Ford’s comments on McNamara’s book.
7/6/09 McNamara died today, thought I might review my earlier review.
Clearly, the policy wonks made many errors in their decision to pursue the war in Vietnam. Halberstam in The Best and the Brightest catalogs many of those arrogant positions and their failures to listen to southeast Asia experts. But there was also a visceral fear of Communism (not to mention a fear of right-wing McCarthyites who had ruined many a reputation for failure to be anti-Communist enough. That's why only Nixon could go to China. The military was sure that just a few more soldiers would win the war, just a few more bombing missions, etc. etc.
The book reveals a level of amateurism that is scary and that from the "best and the brightest," a phrase that when I hear it now gives me the willies. They failed to learn as much as they could about Vietnam
McNamara, by 1966, had already decided that the war could not be won.
Johnson knew that McNamara and RFK were friends and spoke frequently and by this time RFK was running for president and had come out against continued involvement in Vietnam. Already, McNamara and Dean Rusk both by this time were showing the strain physically. Diplomatic efforts continued to fail and in 1967, Buddhist uprising intensified and the fragility of the South Vietnamese government became obvious. The military situation while not great, was overshadowed by political problems. Johnson had even hinted in April of 1966 that he might be willing to withdraw troops from Vietnam and "make a stand in Thailand." (I'm not sure what the Thais would have thought of that, but no matter, other people's considerations don't seem to be taken into account when the U.S. is on the march.) "Looking back I deeply regret that I did not force a probing debate about whether it would ever be possible to forge a winning military effort on a foundation of political quicksand.. . . I believe it is clear today that military force especially, when wielded by an outside power, just cannot win in a country that cannot govern itself."
His colleagues saw things differently, and inaccurately says McNamara. Dean Rusk was already sure in 1966 that the situation was such that the North Vietnamese could not succeed. Ambassador Lodge was convinced the military war was going well (this was before Tet) and that the war would be lost only if the political will failed in the United States. McNamara reports that he laid out the reasons why the US could not succeed in the fall of 1966 after a trip to Vietnam. (McNamara was pilloried when the book came out by critics who faulted him for not going public with his dissent, or at least making a stronger effort to persuade the president of the lost cause. I think that's being a little harsh given the overwhelming support for the war from Johnson's other advisers.
I would hope that current administration officials would read this book, obviously the Bush folks did not, or maybe they didn't care. I would hope that we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Just take a stroll along the Vietnam Memorial to realize the import of those decisions. An important book, if a cynic-maker.
Update 7/6/09CIA and Vietnam Policymakers Three Episodes, 1962-1968
May 1, 2015
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."
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."
April 27, 2015
Defensive and arrogant as ever, McNamara offers nothing new but a long list of excuses that go as far back as the Edsel during his days with Ford. There are much better and more sincere books our there; keep looking.
January 23, 2010
I find myself repeating a common sentiment felt after reading non-fiction: where are your editors? Allow me to summarize the whole thing in a few sentences:
"We made a lot of mistakes in our decision-making and administration of the war. We had the nation's best interests at heart and whole-hearted thought that we were doing the right thing. However, we made decisions based on faulty premises and, in general, did a poor job of understanding the geopolitical climate of Southeast Asia which was largely due to an utter lack of expert advisers in the region. Had we been better organized and better informed, there are many actions that would have been taken in a different direction."
I'm glad that I read the book, I have had a long-standing interest in the Vietnam war. This account is different in that no time is focused on battles, maneuvers, Agent Orange, napalm, carpet bombing, war crimes, or protests. This is strictly an account of the political machinations and decision-making processes involved in the administration of the war and setting the foreign policy that dictated our actions. That said, I would have liked to see it weigh in at 200 pages instead of 335.
"We made a lot of mistakes in our decision-making and administration of the war. We had the nation's best interests at heart and whole-hearted thought that we were doing the right thing. However, we made decisions based on faulty premises and, in general, did a poor job of understanding the geopolitical climate of Southeast Asia which was largely due to an utter lack of expert advisers in the region. Had we been better organized and better informed, there are many actions that would have been taken in a different direction."
I'm glad that I read the book, I have had a long-standing interest in the Vietnam war. This account is different in that no time is focused on battles, maneuvers, Agent Orange, napalm, carpet bombing, war crimes, or protests. This is strictly an account of the political machinations and decision-making processes involved in the administration of the war and setting the foreign policy that dictated our actions. That said, I would have liked to see it weigh in at 200 pages instead of 335.
June 18, 2016
Vietnam with my war. I was a teenager a college student and a young adult. I wasn't drafted as a result of a series of deferments. This is an after-the-fact story by Robert McNamara who was the secretary of defense under Kennedy and Johnson for seven years. He thinks Kennedy would've gotten out of Vietnam if he would've lived. And he thinks the Johnson should've gotten out of Vietnam in the mid 60s. He thinks he made some mistakes and failed to push issues as he should have as the US pushed further and further into the big muddy. It is a fascinating story to me even though we have moved out of the Vietnam era and are now second-guessing about Iraq and Afghanistan. We couldn't win somebody else's war in Vietnam or Iraq.
April 5, 2014
I was just listening to Errol Morris being interviewed about his new movie about Donald Rumsfeld. Morris also made the documentary, The Fog of War, about Robert McNamara, and in his interview was asked by Bob Edwards how he compared the two men: Rumsfeld and McNamara. Basically, McNamara was a reflective man, tormented by the decisions that he made regarding the conduct of the war in Vietnam, and Rumsfeld is, decidedly, not. I read, In Retrospect just after it came out and was absolutely riveted and horrified by it. Masterfully written, it is a journey into the consciousness of a man who participated in what was arguably one of the most absurd and misplaced military ventures the US was ever involved in. And the book begs the following questions: What does it mean to the human experience that we wage wars that result in incalculable destruction and loss of life, and then come to realize that we had made a "mistake." What does it mean that we poisoned millions of acres of land with defoliants and cancer causing agents in an attempt to defeat an enemy that was, at some fundamental level trying to achieve what we had done a couple hundred years before; build a nation based upon self-determination. What does it teach us that when we pursue a national goal based on false pretenses, and our efforts CREATE exactly the result that we thought we were fighting to destroy? There is really no evidence anymore that Viet Nam was ideologically committed to Communism. We emboldened the Communist forces by ignoring the Nationalists who we disregarded because they would not agree with us that Communism was the driving force behind the independence movement. And finally, the book begs the question as to how a man with a conscience, which McNamara certainly is, can live with himself knowing that he had played a major role in engineering a disaster that had such devastating results? This is a book that is essential reading for anyone with an opinion on the Vietnam war, which, though it happened so many years ago, still has an enormous influence on the way we see the world. Masterfully written and compelling in its premise, this is a book about a rare breed of leader: someone who is capable of reflection and admitting that he was wrong. An individual who is the antithesis of a Donald Rumsfeld, a man who Erroll Morris believes (as I do) that he is a war criminal.
November 11, 2017
Informative. Disturbing. Well written. Sad.
March 9, 2025
I know Robert McNamara is a controversial figure in history, but I'm not afraid to say this: I liked his memoir. A lot.
He reflects with remarkable humility and self-awareness. I appreciated his willingness to confront difficult truths and acknowledge mistakes candidly, offering a valuable lesson in accountability and introspection.
At the end of the memoir, McNamara lists eleven causes for Vietnam. You'll have to read the book for the other ten, I won't spoil them, but here's one that particularly stood out to me, especially now:
"A nation's strength lies not in its military prowess but, rather, in the unity of its people. We failed to maintain it."
Sad to see that history is repeating itself in 2025.
^ And that's my take. For those considering reading this memoir, I'd highly recommend. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He's one of the key architects of America's policy in Vietnam. It was a valuable read for me, I learned about American history, foreign policy, insight into leadership, the complexities of human decision-making, and how it's still happening today.
He reflects with remarkable humility and self-awareness. I appreciated his willingness to confront difficult truths and acknowledge mistakes candidly, offering a valuable lesson in accountability and introspection.
At the end of the memoir, McNamara lists eleven causes for Vietnam. You'll have to read the book for the other ten, I won't spoil them, but here's one that particularly stood out to me, especially now:
"A nation's strength lies not in its military prowess but, rather, in the unity of its people. We failed to maintain it."
Sad to see that history is repeating itself in 2025.
^ And that's my take. For those considering reading this memoir, I'd highly recommend. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He's one of the key architects of America's policy in Vietnam. It was a valuable read for me, I learned about American history, foreign policy, insight into leadership, the complexities of human decision-making, and how it's still happening today.
January 12, 2025
If you're just interested in the history of the Vietnam War, highly informative read! But if you're looking for substantive understanding of what went wrong, maybe look elsewhere. Most of the memoir is repetitive claims by McNamara of the lack of Vietnam experts [or literally anyone with any insights on Vietnam] in the decision making process, followed by "I probably should've found a Vietnam expert... my bad." Also, if you're looking for another reason to think LBJ was lame, this book will provide.
January 11, 2024
3.5
Interesting read for the behind the scenes of the decision making process from McNamara’s perspective. Part self-serving as he often tries to distance himself from hard-liners and more aligned with public opinion of the war to repair his image. But he also offers great behind the scenes perspective to help understand how the US got so deeply involved in Vietnam. So which came first: his realization of wrongdoings by him and the LBJ administration or the desire to reform his image?
Interesting read for the behind the scenes of the decision making process from McNamara’s perspective. Part self-serving as he often tries to distance himself from hard-liners and more aligned with public opinion of the war to repair his image. But he also offers great behind the scenes perspective to help understand how the US got so deeply involved in Vietnam. So which came first: his realization of wrongdoings by him and the LBJ administration or the desire to reform his image?
May 29, 2021
We all come to a crossroads in our lives and hope to choose the correct path. Never before, has someone so obviously chosen the worst path available as Robert McNamara did in 1960. At that time, he was President of Ford Motor Company, making a great living, and apparently successful in that position. He chose to leave that job to become Secretary of Defense under the Kennedy Administration. A job, he himself admits he was unqualified for. And, he was unqualified for it the entire time he served in that position until 1967. Some people learn to do their job better after being at it for awhile. This was not the case with McNamara.
Pg. 108: "Eager to get moving, we never stopped to explore fully whether there were other routes to our destination." Pg. 117: "Top government officials need specialists--experts--at their elbows when they make decisions on matters outside their own experience. If we had had more Asia experts around us, perhaps we would not have been so simpleminded about China and Vietnam."
The basic summary of this book is, we got a lot of data saying we could not win this war, although, I still don't know what "win" meant to them, because they never figured that out, but we will keep pouring money and soldiers into it so we do not have to tell the American people we are leaving and risk embarrassment. These are completely political decisions, and yes many American people approved of Johnson's handling of the war because they had no idea what was really going on. McNamara states this as if "we were doing what the American people wanted us to do." No, that is because you were lying to everyone.
McNamara never seems to accept responsibility for the devastating decisions he made. And, yes while he was not alone, this was McNamara's War. Any time he could have stepped down, but he didn't. When he wrote this book he still was trying to rationalize the horrible things he and Johnson did. And, maybe this is a small point, but the photos drove me crazy, him laughing on vacations with his wife, and meetings, etc. Yes, why didn't he show photos of all the soldiers who were being maimed and killed on the battlefield, while he apparently was having the time of his life.
It was hubris, an unwillingness to accept responsibility and political expedience that caused the Vietnam War and that is the reason over 58,000 American Soldiers died there, and millions of Vietnamese. This is the legacy that McNamara will always be remembered for and, in my opinion, he earned the responsibility for every death. This book does not acquit him of blame, if anything it just highlights the question of "why were you so stupid 30 years ago?"
Pg. 108: "Eager to get moving, we never stopped to explore fully whether there were other routes to our destination." Pg. 117: "Top government officials need specialists--experts--at their elbows when they make decisions on matters outside their own experience. If we had had more Asia experts around us, perhaps we would not have been so simpleminded about China and Vietnam."
The basic summary of this book is, we got a lot of data saying we could not win this war, although, I still don't know what "win" meant to them, because they never figured that out, but we will keep pouring money and soldiers into it so we do not have to tell the American people we are leaving and risk embarrassment. These are completely political decisions, and yes many American people approved of Johnson's handling of the war because they had no idea what was really going on. McNamara states this as if "we were doing what the American people wanted us to do." No, that is because you were lying to everyone.
McNamara never seems to accept responsibility for the devastating decisions he made. And, yes while he was not alone, this was McNamara's War. Any time he could have stepped down, but he didn't. When he wrote this book he still was trying to rationalize the horrible things he and Johnson did. And, maybe this is a small point, but the photos drove me crazy, him laughing on vacations with his wife, and meetings, etc. Yes, why didn't he show photos of all the soldiers who were being maimed and killed on the battlefield, while he apparently was having the time of his life.
It was hubris, an unwillingness to accept responsibility and political expedience that caused the Vietnam War and that is the reason over 58,000 American Soldiers died there, and millions of Vietnamese. This is the legacy that McNamara will always be remembered for and, in my opinion, he earned the responsibility for every death. This book does not acquit him of blame, if anything it just highlights the question of "why were you so stupid 30 years ago?"
May 13, 2017
This is a very interesting a highly readable memoir from Robert McNamara about the decision-making process during the Vietnam War. It is a bit shocking to read, in hindsight, how unfocused the debate about strategy and progress was during this time period, and how wedded the administration was to staying the course, almost regardless of the consequences. I was reminded of the Freakonomics radio broadcast "The Upside of Quitting" as I read this. Ironically, McNamara completely missed the boat in his vision of the future of US (and global) national security in the Lessons of Vietnam chapter, but he certainly was not alone in doing so. There is an interesting appendix regarding the military utility of nuclear weapons which I think is still very applicable to today's landscape.
October 22, 2017
I did not find this particularly good. It seemed clear from the start that Secretary McNmara was a part of ill prepared executives in the administrative branch who handled a number of critical events in our history poorly. Not that I could have done better, but it appeared quickly in his text that both Kennedy and Johnson would have benefited from a more experienced cabinet.
However, there is also a prevailing question that seems to go unasked in the book by anyone and that is "why should we be in Viet Nam to begin with?" We should not, as a country be in the business of manipulating regime's at the expense of American lives.
However, there is also a prevailing question that seems to go unasked in the book by anyone and that is "why should we be in Viet Nam to begin with?" We should not, as a country be in the business of manipulating regime's at the expense of American lives.
June 26, 2021
Basically they had little knowledge/information and wrong perception when entering VN.
But well, isn't that often the case for leaders, making decision with ambiguous info?
If you don't have the information, then ask for it. If made wrong decision based on being poorly informed, then correct it, why continue being wrong, especially in the cost of other lives. I sympathised for his position, but US mistakes are undeniable.
There were certain events behind the scene triggered these series of ill actions that were not made available to public earlier, causing worse public & international images. But again, whose fault to blame?
But well, isn't that often the case for leaders, making decision with ambiguous info?
If you don't have the information, then ask for it. If made wrong decision based on being poorly informed, then correct it, why continue being wrong, especially in the cost of other lives. I sympathised for his position, but US mistakes are undeniable.
There were certain events behind the scene triggered these series of ill actions that were not made available to public earlier, causing worse public & international images. But again, whose fault to blame?
June 24, 2022
This book is exactly what you’d expect it to be.
“We weren’t dishonest. We didn’t lie. We didn’t deceive, manipulate, obfuscate, omit, or make things up. Ok maybe LBJ did. The rest of made simple honest to goodness mistakes with the BEST intentions. Oops. Sorry. To the tune of 53,000+ dead Americans sorry our bad but we’re cool right?”
“We weren’t dishonest. We didn’t lie. We didn’t deceive, manipulate, obfuscate, omit, or make things up. Ok maybe LBJ did. The rest of made simple honest to goodness mistakes with the BEST intentions. Oops. Sorry. To the tune of 53,000+ dead Americans sorry our bad but we’re cool right?”
August 20, 2011
The entire book was attempting to justify his actions. It was an interesting perspective but he was not able to convince me that anything done by the government in that war was 'just.'
May 17, 2014
the description of the cuban missile crisis in this excellent memoir's appendix is one of the most terrifying things i've ever read.
May 14, 2024
This book is absolutely worth your time. Jina picked it up for me at an annual book sale. As stated on the cover by The Wall Street Journal, it provides "a clear, concise, and extremely interesting look at a crucial period of decision-making." Indeed, I strongly endorse that sentiment, hoping many will read it. It has been available since 1995.
I came away feeling a kinship with Robert McNamara. Despite our different origins—he from poverty, me not—his academic success, passion for the outdoors, and mountain climbing struck a chord. Of course, his eventual wealth and hobnobbing with notable figures like Jackie Kennedy are a couple of points where our paths diverge. Yet, his simple love for mountain excursions with family resonates with me.
McNamara's insights are thought-provoking. For those interested, the Vintage edition published in 1996 includes maps which -- while copyrighted in '95, and identifying Myanmar as Burma—ignite a desire in me to visit these places.
The Vintage edition also contains critical responses to McNamara's narrative, including an especially notable one from Walt Whitman Rostow. McNamara posits an early realization of our inevitable doom in Vietnam and advocates for withdrawal amid fears of Chinese and Soviet intervention, potentially escalating to World War III. I'm skeptical of this fear and sympathize more with the people of Vietnam than with the perceived Soviet and Chinese direct intervention threat. Although China intervened in Korea, the historical enmity between China and Vietnam, evidenced by their post-war conflict, suggests a different dynamic. And in fact, the war being fought in Ukraine shows how a superpower can supply materials of war but not put its boots on the ground or its warplanes in the air. Which is what China and the Soviet Union did throughout the Vietnam war.
The book shines a light on the tumultuous period following the U.S.-endorsed coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, a stark illustration of miscalculations in foreign policy. JFK greenlighted the coup, which resulted in the murder of the brothers in the back of a US-built armored personnel carrier - shocking and grieving the naive Kennedy. Despite the ensuing chaos, by 1966, South Vietnam began to exhibit signs of democratic governance—a progression we should have safeguarded.
The Rostow commentary further examines the 1968 Tet Offensive, which, despite initial shocks to the American psyche, was militarily and politically disastrous for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. Ironically, in Khe Sanh, where American military applied appropriate tactics, victory was decisive. This reveals that a less reactionary approach could have recognized the offensive as a substantial defeat for the communists.
Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew highlighted the collateral benefit of America's involvement in Vietnam—bolstering critical Southeast Asia countries during the period of resistance, enabling economic and political strengthening. This regional fortification, though later marred by the collapse in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal—which eroded Nixon's credibility—underscored the importance of American support for South Vietnam.
McNamara's book, while largely dwelling on his personal reckoning and apology for his role in the Vietnam War, stops short of dissecting the aftermath of U.S. withdrawal.
The Vintage appendix of critical responses is particularly fascinating. I love the way Rostow excoriates the New York Times for pretending that it knew all along that Vietnam was a misadventure. Another commentator references Jack Christ, director of the leadership program at Ripon College in Wisconsin, signaling the book's broad relevance and unexpected connections. It was nice to see a shout-out to my adopted hometown of Ripon and its marvelous college, where my dad was director of public relations after retiring from the US Army (WWII, Korea).
In sum, the book is an excellent read. It presents as a historical narrative, well-supported with documentation and, inevitably, controversy. One disputed claim involves Kennedy's supposed intent to withdraw from Vietnam, announced days before his assassination, albeit without concrete action. Kennedy's subsequent assassination shocked America - I remember it well as a child living on an Army base. Our commander-in-chief (and our Catholic president) was gone, with Johnson stepping in, arguably even less equipped in foreign policy acumen.
The book's reflection on past foreign policy errors is sadly echoed by recent events in Afghanistan, horribly botched by Joe Biden, highlighting a cycle of retreat and the consequences of failing to learn from history. It serves as either a starting point or continuation in contemplating the lessons of history, capturing the complexities of political decisions and their significant impact.
I came away feeling a kinship with Robert McNamara. Despite our different origins—he from poverty, me not—his academic success, passion for the outdoors, and mountain climbing struck a chord. Of course, his eventual wealth and hobnobbing with notable figures like Jackie Kennedy are a couple of points where our paths diverge. Yet, his simple love for mountain excursions with family resonates with me.
McNamara's insights are thought-provoking. For those interested, the Vintage edition published in 1996 includes maps which -- while copyrighted in '95, and identifying Myanmar as Burma—ignite a desire in me to visit these places.
The Vintage edition also contains critical responses to McNamara's narrative, including an especially notable one from Walt Whitman Rostow. McNamara posits an early realization of our inevitable doom in Vietnam and advocates for withdrawal amid fears of Chinese and Soviet intervention, potentially escalating to World War III. I'm skeptical of this fear and sympathize more with the people of Vietnam than with the perceived Soviet and Chinese direct intervention threat. Although China intervened in Korea, the historical enmity between China and Vietnam, evidenced by their post-war conflict, suggests a different dynamic. And in fact, the war being fought in Ukraine shows how a superpower can supply materials of war but not put its boots on the ground or its warplanes in the air. Which is what China and the Soviet Union did throughout the Vietnam war.
The book shines a light on the tumultuous period following the U.S.-endorsed coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, a stark illustration of miscalculations in foreign policy. JFK greenlighted the coup, which resulted in the murder of the brothers in the back of a US-built armored personnel carrier - shocking and grieving the naive Kennedy. Despite the ensuing chaos, by 1966, South Vietnam began to exhibit signs of democratic governance—a progression we should have safeguarded.
The Rostow commentary further examines the 1968 Tet Offensive, which, despite initial shocks to the American psyche, was militarily and politically disastrous for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. Ironically, in Khe Sanh, where American military applied appropriate tactics, victory was decisive. This reveals that a less reactionary approach could have recognized the offensive as a substantial defeat for the communists.
Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew highlighted the collateral benefit of America's involvement in Vietnam—bolstering critical Southeast Asia countries during the period of resistance, enabling economic and political strengthening. This regional fortification, though later marred by the collapse in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal—which eroded Nixon's credibility—underscored the importance of American support for South Vietnam.
McNamara's book, while largely dwelling on his personal reckoning and apology for his role in the Vietnam War, stops short of dissecting the aftermath of U.S. withdrawal.
The Vintage appendix of critical responses is particularly fascinating. I love the way Rostow excoriates the New York Times for pretending that it knew all along that Vietnam was a misadventure. Another commentator references Jack Christ, director of the leadership program at Ripon College in Wisconsin, signaling the book's broad relevance and unexpected connections. It was nice to see a shout-out to my adopted hometown of Ripon and its marvelous college, where my dad was director of public relations after retiring from the US Army (WWII, Korea).
In sum, the book is an excellent read. It presents as a historical narrative, well-supported with documentation and, inevitably, controversy. One disputed claim involves Kennedy's supposed intent to withdraw from Vietnam, announced days before his assassination, albeit without concrete action. Kennedy's subsequent assassination shocked America - I remember it well as a child living on an Army base. Our commander-in-chief (and our Catholic president) was gone, with Johnson stepping in, arguably even less equipped in foreign policy acumen.
The book's reflection on past foreign policy errors is sadly echoed by recent events in Afghanistan, horribly botched by Joe Biden, highlighting a cycle of retreat and the consequences of failing to learn from history. It serves as either a starting point or continuation in contemplating the lessons of history, capturing the complexities of political decisions and their significant impact.
January 5, 2024
Finally finished on my break from school and this book was very insightful. McNamara writes well and really tells the behind the scenes story of Vietnam. Would recommend to anyone interested in the Vietnam War/Era
August 30, 2016
“In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam” by Robert S. McNamara was a very good read. If you look at the reviews, some readers loved the book and some hated it…and often it was because some loved the man and some hated him. But if you can push aside your feelings for a moment, the book is a fascinating study of our drift into war during the 1960s. For those in their 60s, this book will be a reminder of events that transpired and that you saw in the news every night. For those that are younger it will be pure history. The reader must keep in mind that this is but one man’s view of what happened…and it is not a perfect view.
McNamara waited almost 30 years to share his thoughts and actions as Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) during the early years of the Vietnam War. When this book was published in 1995 a lot of his contemporaries had already passed on, so we do not get the chance to hear informed critiques of this work. We have to take McNamara at his word for a lot of the material. In addition, there are parts of the narrative that read like an excuse…one gets the feeling that McNamara is holding back a little and trying to make his part in the tragedy seem a bit smaller. He often admits to shared guilt (we, they, us)…rarely is it him alone. In addition SECDEF McNamara sometimes comes off as smug. But even with these slights, the story holds your attention.
This tale is about the political maneuvering that took place during the McNamara years…it is not a list of the battles that occurred in Vietnam; it is not about what our advisors were sent there to do; it is not about the aerial herbicides such as Agent Orange that caused so much trouble later…it is the politics – which mainly take place in Washington DC and Saigon. Ambassadors, generals, security advisors, Vietnamese government bureaucrats, Soviet and Chinese officials, and a host of others all get their due in this tale.
McNamara claims that as early as June of 1966 he was trying to get LBJ to understand that there was no way the U.S. could win this war, and that we should look for the best exit. This may be so, but McNamara stayed the course with LBJ through the huge escalation of troops. Could he have brought more attention to the issues had he thrown his feet out and resigned? Who knows, and the book won’t answer this question. It will make you think though.
As an aside, the similarities between Robert S. McNamara and Donald H. Rumsfeld are fascinating: both served as SECDEF for two presidents (RSM – JFK and LBJ…DHR – Ford and GW Bush); both presided over very unpopular wars which began under faulty information (RSM – Vietnam/torpedo attacks on U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy in the Tonkin Gulf…DHR – Iraq/WMD); both left office early and under a cloud (RSM – left 2/1968 roughly 11 months early…DHR – left 12/06 roughly 25 months early).
All-in-all this is good stuff. Whether you like the man or not and whether you believe the man or not, it is still worth listening and forming your own judgement.
McNamara waited almost 30 years to share his thoughts and actions as Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) during the early years of the Vietnam War. When this book was published in 1995 a lot of his contemporaries had already passed on, so we do not get the chance to hear informed critiques of this work. We have to take McNamara at his word for a lot of the material. In addition, there are parts of the narrative that read like an excuse…one gets the feeling that McNamara is holding back a little and trying to make his part in the tragedy seem a bit smaller. He often admits to shared guilt (we, they, us)…rarely is it him alone. In addition SECDEF McNamara sometimes comes off as smug. But even with these slights, the story holds your attention.
This tale is about the political maneuvering that took place during the McNamara years…it is not a list of the battles that occurred in Vietnam; it is not about what our advisors were sent there to do; it is not about the aerial herbicides such as Agent Orange that caused so much trouble later…it is the politics – which mainly take place in Washington DC and Saigon. Ambassadors, generals, security advisors, Vietnamese government bureaucrats, Soviet and Chinese officials, and a host of others all get their due in this tale.
McNamara claims that as early as June of 1966 he was trying to get LBJ to understand that there was no way the U.S. could win this war, and that we should look for the best exit. This may be so, but McNamara stayed the course with LBJ through the huge escalation of troops. Could he have brought more attention to the issues had he thrown his feet out and resigned? Who knows, and the book won’t answer this question. It will make you think though.
As an aside, the similarities between Robert S. McNamara and Donald H. Rumsfeld are fascinating: both served as SECDEF for two presidents (RSM – JFK and LBJ…DHR – Ford and GW Bush); both presided over very unpopular wars which began under faulty information (RSM – Vietnam/torpedo attacks on U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy in the Tonkin Gulf…DHR – Iraq/WMD); both left office early and under a cloud (RSM – left 2/1968 roughly 11 months early…DHR – left 12/06 roughly 25 months early).
All-in-all this is good stuff. Whether you like the man or not and whether you believe the man or not, it is still worth listening and forming your own judgement.
February 22, 2024
I didn't know too much about the Vietnam War before reading this book, other than its key highlights in 20th century history as a protracted conflict that ultimately degraded American geo-strategic prestige amid the backdrop of a flaring Cold War. McNamara's inside account of the decision-making within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations paints a different picture than that of popular conceptions of reckless Cold War adventurism and war mongering. Gradual deployments of military advisors and then later military units masked an indecision that plagued the Vietnam policymaking inner circle, justified under the "Domino Theory" and "Containment" dogmas - the belief that one developing country to fall to revolutionary communism would fall into the orbit of the USSR and China and embolden further 'liberation' movements and thus the logical strategy of Western powers was to isolate and contain movements at the source. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see such fears were overblown; most revolutionary movements were nationalistic in essence and contemporary regional developments suggested a fragmentation of any sort of coordinated global communist movement (e.g. the Sino-Soviet split, the 1965 Indonesian Revolution). But Vietnam policy was advanced under the assumption of an impending domino collapse.
What doomed Vietnam, at the core, was a lack of consensus among policymakers that ultimately drove a policy of incrementalism - with each move engendering a sort of path dependency that was increasingly difficult to unwind. On one hand, doves would advocate for ceasefire and concurrent negotiation, while military hawks would press to double down militarily - and when policy would pivot, weakness and vulnerability would be signaled.
The lessons of Vietnam are then as follow:
In the context of organizational decision making, consensus should be sought and attained before embarking down a particular path. Most conflicts are messy and imperfect, but decisiveness and consensus fortify your strategy. Communication and openness are paramount - in the case of Vietnam, a declaration of war was never formally attained (i.e. Tonkin Gulf Resolution) and Congress (the node of transparency in American democracy) was often kept in the dark and never fully consulted. This led the American public to grow distrustful of the motives of policymakers and ultimately culminated in anti-war movements. Trust from stakeholders is lost when decisions are made in secret. These sound straight out of an organizational behaviour textbook, but they were clear perils for the highest echelons of the American government in Vietnam.
What doomed Vietnam, at the core, was a lack of consensus among policymakers that ultimately drove a policy of incrementalism - with each move engendering a sort of path dependency that was increasingly difficult to unwind. On one hand, doves would advocate for ceasefire and concurrent negotiation, while military hawks would press to double down militarily - and when policy would pivot, weakness and vulnerability would be signaled.
The lessons of Vietnam are then as follow:
In the context of organizational decision making, consensus should be sought and attained before embarking down a particular path. Most conflicts are messy and imperfect, but decisiveness and consensus fortify your strategy. Communication and openness are paramount - in the case of Vietnam, a declaration of war was never formally attained (i.e. Tonkin Gulf Resolution) and Congress (the node of transparency in American democracy) was often kept in the dark and never fully consulted. This led the American public to grow distrustful of the motives of policymakers and ultimately culminated in anti-war movements. Trust from stakeholders is lost when decisions are made in secret. These sound straight out of an organizational behaviour textbook, but they were clear perils for the highest echelons of the American government in Vietnam.
September 21, 2007
In Retrospect was a book I had no desire to read, at all, on the basis that its author was, is and ever shall be one of the least credible monsters in the history of US government. Vietnam was McNamara's war. After hearing so much about the documentary Fog of War, I really wanted to read this book and see where McNamara was coming from more than thirty years after the war he and the Democratic administrations of the times started and escalated. The first few chapters of the book imply that it will be an informative, frank take on where these boys, the "best and the brightest" as they were called, screwed up and created a mess that was arguably one of the greatest tragedies in our 200 year history. Then the excuses start. And the excuses don't stop. And they are all pretty lame. McNamara makes a good case that there were a lot of details they overlooked and a lot of things they'd have done differently, and a lot of people think it is good that he's finally admitted a lot of this. My question, though: Will my generation forgive Donald Rumsfeld in thirty years if he writes a similarly conniving and self-serving book? Or should we all be glad that Rummie probably won't live long enough to pen it? There's a real instinct on the part of my generation, at least among the anti-war lot of us, to forgive McNamara and use his repudiations of his own past as a proof of how we're repeating the same mistakes now. Personally, I didn't have to move far from my couch when I listened to Rummie talk to know we were repeating the same mistakes, and it is just as hard to forgive McNamara - or believe him. In Retrospect is a self-serving attempt at one man to clear his conscious, and midway through the book, he even gives up on that and starts with the excuses. Sad, really.
NC
NC
April 20, 2025
This book is worth it’s time to digest, regardless that the author – at least the main character, since McNamara had it written mostly by someone else – is not an honest storyteller. Throughout the book, he shifts responsibilities, points fingers, and demonstrates his ego was far larger than his regret for making so many mistakes over so many years that it cost the lives of over 50,000 Americans, along with the causalities of scores more under his command and innocent civilians. He was right when he told President Kennedy that he was not qualified to be Secretary of Defense.
If one were to believe the author, questionable even with the considerable footnotes, Kennedy would not have committed soldiers to the war effort and had planned to withdraw 1,000 of the advisors by the end of 1963. Johnson ultimately took the war to another level and McNamara worked to send American troops over there to be slaughtered at alarming rates and worked with the president to deceive the American people. Do not expect to read that interpretation in his book.
Throughout the book, McNamara gave passive allowances that he – and others, usually others in his book – did not make the best decisions. At one point when speaking about Johnson’s involvement, he writes: “It was our job to demand the answers. We did not press hard enough for them. And the chiefs did not volunteer them.” That’s not much reflection when the stakes were so high – for so long.
It was surprising how many times it was mentioned that this would be a long, tough war and questions if we could win such a war. Back in 1966, one memo stated: “At its very best, the struggle in Vietnam will be long.” Yet, instead of questioning the wisdom of sending more troops, McNamara was part of the machine that increased troop strength from 23,000 to 175,000 with the expectation that another 100,000-armed forces would be shipped to the jungles in 1966. McNamara simply stated, in a shrug, “Wars generate their own momentum and follow the law of unanticipated consequences.”
He wrote about in 1965 when Vietnam was unstable, and the General was asking for more and more combat troops. McNamara concluded that his requests meant a “dramatic and open-ended expansion of American political involvement.” He further wrote, “Of the thousands of cables I received during my seven years in the Defense Department, this one disturbed me the most. We were forced to make a decision…the issue would hang over all of us like a menacing cloud for the next seven weeks.” He takes no accountability that he did not make a decision and that while the cloud hung over him for seven weeks, his decisions made that cloud hang over tens of thousands of American families forever.
He wrote: “Some critics have asserted that the United States lacked a military strategy in Vietnam. In fact, we had one – but its assumptions were deeply flawed.” In a couple of other areas, he says that they did not have Asian experts to help them figure out the culture, the history, and decision making. He states it like he couldn’t have done something to bring in more expertise. It was pretty insulting that in this resourceful country, he did not think of bringing in experts who would help us mitigate the loss of humans while figuring out the best way to wage a war – or, if to wage a war.
For a guy who sent so many, mostly young, Americans to their death, it was shocking that he did not include even one picture of him solemnly welcoming home the coffins of our American servicemen; he did include many pictures of him with smiling high ranking elected officials and playing one of his 2,500 games of squash.
There were many interesting political stories outlined in the book that seemed real, including when appointed Secretary by Kennedy, he was given freedom to select his “men,” but one day the president-elect asked him to consider hiring Franklin Roosevelt, Jr as Secretary of Navy to follow the career of his father. McNamara said he didn’t interview him because he thought he was a reckless Playboy. Kennedy then told the incoming Secretary that Roosevelt was especially helpful in winning the Catholic state of West Virginia so McNamara interviewed him, coming back with the same view. When he spoke with Kennedy, the president-elect took his word but said he would have to find another appointment for him.
There are some important learning lessons in this book. The author speaks about the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and how Congress granted Johnson incredible power, allowing the president to move from 16,000 military advisers to over a half million combat troops without further involvement of Congress. While Congress did not necessarily think the president would use this power without further consultation, the same thing happened again decades later when Democrats and Republicans lined up to give President Bush II the power to declare a war that would last even longer than the Viet Nam War. Later, these same politicians cried they thought, they assumed, they…that the president wouldn’t utilize the full power granted by them.
Near the end of the book, he did have some interesting reflections worth considering. McNamara spoke about how America often thought the East had more power than they had and how we will learn more when the archives of the former Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam are opened. He also feels that the Soviet Union and China would not have behaved any different had we not waged the war. He outlines a number of times when this country could have broken away from Vietnam, all making sense. He includes a chart, showing how many American lives could have been spared had those breaks in the war occurred, ranging in the tends of thousands depending on when America could have easily disentangled from the conflict.
For those who do not want to read a long book by a guy whose ego was much larger than his capabilities, it is worth mentioning that McNamara brought out some of the same and many different points in the documentary, The Fog of War. It is well worth viewing, at least once.
This book is dedicated to his wife of 40 years. Nice. But it would have been at least a message of some recognition of the loss of lives he helped to cause had he dedicated it to the military families who lost loves ones and our military heroes who stood up for our nation in a horrible war.
If one were to believe the author, questionable even with the considerable footnotes, Kennedy would not have committed soldiers to the war effort and had planned to withdraw 1,000 of the advisors by the end of 1963. Johnson ultimately took the war to another level and McNamara worked to send American troops over there to be slaughtered at alarming rates and worked with the president to deceive the American people. Do not expect to read that interpretation in his book.
Throughout the book, McNamara gave passive allowances that he – and others, usually others in his book – did not make the best decisions. At one point when speaking about Johnson’s involvement, he writes: “It was our job to demand the answers. We did not press hard enough for them. And the chiefs did not volunteer them.” That’s not much reflection when the stakes were so high – for so long.
It was surprising how many times it was mentioned that this would be a long, tough war and questions if we could win such a war. Back in 1966, one memo stated: “At its very best, the struggle in Vietnam will be long.” Yet, instead of questioning the wisdom of sending more troops, McNamara was part of the machine that increased troop strength from 23,000 to 175,000 with the expectation that another 100,000-armed forces would be shipped to the jungles in 1966. McNamara simply stated, in a shrug, “Wars generate their own momentum and follow the law of unanticipated consequences.”
He wrote about in 1965 when Vietnam was unstable, and the General was asking for more and more combat troops. McNamara concluded that his requests meant a “dramatic and open-ended expansion of American political involvement.” He further wrote, “Of the thousands of cables I received during my seven years in the Defense Department, this one disturbed me the most. We were forced to make a decision…the issue would hang over all of us like a menacing cloud for the next seven weeks.” He takes no accountability that he did not make a decision and that while the cloud hung over him for seven weeks, his decisions made that cloud hang over tens of thousands of American families forever.
He wrote: “Some critics have asserted that the United States lacked a military strategy in Vietnam. In fact, we had one – but its assumptions were deeply flawed.” In a couple of other areas, he says that they did not have Asian experts to help them figure out the culture, the history, and decision making. He states it like he couldn’t have done something to bring in more expertise. It was pretty insulting that in this resourceful country, he did not think of bringing in experts who would help us mitigate the loss of humans while figuring out the best way to wage a war – or, if to wage a war.
For a guy who sent so many, mostly young, Americans to their death, it was shocking that he did not include even one picture of him solemnly welcoming home the coffins of our American servicemen; he did include many pictures of him with smiling high ranking elected officials and playing one of his 2,500 games of squash.
There were many interesting political stories outlined in the book that seemed real, including when appointed Secretary by Kennedy, he was given freedom to select his “men,” but one day the president-elect asked him to consider hiring Franklin Roosevelt, Jr as Secretary of Navy to follow the career of his father. McNamara said he didn’t interview him because he thought he was a reckless Playboy. Kennedy then told the incoming Secretary that Roosevelt was especially helpful in winning the Catholic state of West Virginia so McNamara interviewed him, coming back with the same view. When he spoke with Kennedy, the president-elect took his word but said he would have to find another appointment for him.
There are some important learning lessons in this book. The author speaks about the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and how Congress granted Johnson incredible power, allowing the president to move from 16,000 military advisers to over a half million combat troops without further involvement of Congress. While Congress did not necessarily think the president would use this power without further consultation, the same thing happened again decades later when Democrats and Republicans lined up to give President Bush II the power to declare a war that would last even longer than the Viet Nam War. Later, these same politicians cried they thought, they assumed, they…that the president wouldn’t utilize the full power granted by them.
Near the end of the book, he did have some interesting reflections worth considering. McNamara spoke about how America often thought the East had more power than they had and how we will learn more when the archives of the former Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam are opened. He also feels that the Soviet Union and China would not have behaved any different had we not waged the war. He outlines a number of times when this country could have broken away from Vietnam, all making sense. He includes a chart, showing how many American lives could have been spared had those breaks in the war occurred, ranging in the tends of thousands depending on when America could have easily disentangled from the conflict.
For those who do not want to read a long book by a guy whose ego was much larger than his capabilities, it is worth mentioning that McNamara brought out some of the same and many different points in the documentary, The Fog of War. It is well worth viewing, at least once.
This book is dedicated to his wife of 40 years. Nice. But it would have been at least a message of some recognition of the loss of lives he helped to cause had he dedicated it to the military families who lost loves ones and our military heroes who stood up for our nation in a horrible war.
February 13, 2021
This book is a memoir, in many ways an apologia, and I read it as such. I also read some of the reviews and criticisms that were written at the time of its publication. I believe that there are lessons for us to learn from the war in Vietnam. I believe that, regardless of one’s viewpoint as to the rightness or justness of the war, there is considerable evidence that it was poorly managed and executed. McNamara made a noteworthy effort to ensure the accuracy of his recollections of the years he served as Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy and then continuing under President Johnson but in the end he wrote a very personal, almost intimate, story of those years. Stylistically, I think he repeated his central ideas and themes so often as to approach insulting the capability of his readers to grasp and remember them. I also found that his use of first names, although heightening the intimate tone, interfered with readability; I frequently had to refer to the Personae section to figure out exactly who he was referring to. In the end, I am happy to have finally read this book; it adds to my knowledge and insights about those years that were such a formative factor in my young adulthood.
Want to read
June 20, 2011I am slugging through this book. It is very interesting, but not as compelling to me as fiction. I once told my dad that I didn't learn enough about the Vietnam War in school. He replied that when I was in school, people still weren't sure what really happened in Vietnam. I feel like the puzzle pieces are now being put together.
It is intriguing to be reading about a polarizing war at a time when the US is engaged on multiple fronts. It changes the way I read the newspaper.
It is intriguing to be reading about a polarizing war at a time when the US is engaged on multiple fronts. It changes the way I read the newspaper.
May 14, 2008
Very interesting. Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense, takes an apologetic and critical look at the decisions he and others made regarding US involvement in Vietnam. I hate to get all political, but some of the missteps are quite a bit too familiar for comfort, even if some of them "seemed like a good idea at the time."
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