A Brief Review of H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty

"Oh the games people play now, every night and every day now,
Never saying what they mean, never meaning what they say."
--Joe South 

The subtitle of this book is Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.

We all know that it was an ugly war. This book, published in 1997, pulls back the curtain to reveal how much uglier it was than anyone at the time ever knew. The amount of research that H.R. McMaster, a West Point grad, put into this book is remarkable. The end notes and supporting documents are nearly 90 pages.

The book begins with the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was supposed to be a U.S. backed invasion of Cuba to overthrow Castro. It failed because the U.S. did not back the invasion after all and backed off. The reason the Vietnam story begins here is that it shows the rift and distrust between the Pentagon and the Kennedy administration. The Cuban missile crisis only exacerbated this distrust.

In 1961 JFK also riled the Pentagon by appointing a DC outside to be Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. McNamara was one of the fabled "Whiz Kids" that transformed the Ford Motor Company in the 50's becoming president of Ford before being appointed Secretary  of Defense. 

In conjunction with these Cuba matters we see JFK struggling to sort out our position in Southeast Asia as well as Berlin. Because Vietnam is so far away, it doesn't get the kind of journalistic oversight that happens closer to home, and from the start we see the first lies regarding events unfolding there. American pilots began flying combat missions while telling Americans back home we were not. 

And so it begins. 

The themes that unfold here are twofold: the ongoing lies that Kennedy, McNamara and LBJ were telling to the public and Congress, and the ongoing efforts to gag the Generals who were being ordered to carry out the escalating war that ensued.

I'd forgotten that the press had at one point nicknamed it "McNamara's War." His role in this unwinnable war is shown for what it was. Johnson wanted Yes-men, and McNamara wanted to please his boss. (He served under both JFK & LBJ.)

In 1964, even though we were not in a declared war, McNamara and LBJ agreed to use special forces to execute raids in North Vietnam. Simultaneously, McNamara continued to block backchannel communications between the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and LBJ.

The JCS decided to play out war game simulations to see in advance whether this adventurism in SE Asia was feasible. The strategy McNamara worked out was "Graduated Pressure" to bring Hanoi to the bargaining table. The JCS concluded that it would not and could not work, and the events the unfolded were accurately predicted in 1964. But McNamara and LBJ were not listening. McNamara had LBJs ear and the JCS did not.

The war was going badly pretty much from the start, but the U.S. has a habit of projecting a winning smile and maintaining appearances. The whole war effort was a sham, but the administration seemed not to care about anything other than looking good in the world's eyes.

I'm skipping a lot here and will note that the book gets tedious. The common thread throughout is how devious everyone seemed to be. The worst thing of all was how many young men they sent to die, knowing that sooner or later they would have to admit it was all a disastrous mistake.

This is an excerpt from one of the review on Amazon that summarizes the contents of each chapter. This a description of an incident in Chapter 15, circa July 1965:

LBJ gave the JCS a pep talk about how they are the team and he is the coach and they are supposed to do what he says. Nobody knew what the objective of the war was, or if they had an opinion, there were different and conflicting opinions. Destroy NVN’s ability to wage war and compel them to call off the rebellion in SVN? Hang on a little longer, propping up the SVN government? Show the world that we are a dependable ally, then figure out a way to exit SVN with honor? 

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WHY I WANTED TO SHARE THIS

The Sixties was a turbulent time to be a teen and over the years much has been written about that period. The reason I wanted to read this book is because many of its features are relevant to what has been happening today and over the past two decades. 

The war in Afghanistan has now become the longest in our nation's history. Why were we there this long? What was the real objective? When did our leaders know it was unwinnable? These are all the same questions that were raised in Vietnam. 

I'm imagining that we did not want to pull out because the U.S. is supposed to be the most powerful nation on earth. Were were afraid we would look like weak?

I'd read earlier this summer that President Biden is a lot like LBJ in that he wants Yes-men and doesn't want to be challenged. The problem with this is that helpful insights get quenched or shut out to the detriment of the bigger picture. I've written about this more than once. (See: The Three Most Important People in the Room.)

This past week I read that two senior FDA officials quit because President Biden was not listening to the science on some matters related to Covid. It made me think of President Johnson shutting his ears to the voices of concern being raised by the Pentagon. 

In the Sixties, there was more concern with regard to projecting an image of strength than to figuring out what the right thing to do would be. That's probably a game all politicians play. 

Having come full circle, I'd best just leave off here. 

Related

Two articles about Afghanistan that especially made me sad:

“A Vast Criminal Racket”: Sebastian Junger on How the U.S. Corrupted Afghanistan"

Assabiya Wins Every Time