Author | H. R. McMaster |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Subject | Vietnam War |
Publisher | Harper Perennial |
Publication date | September 2, 1997 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Pages | 352 |
ISBN | 0060187956 |
OCLC | 778975095 |
Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam is a 1997 book written by H. R. McMaster, at the time a major in the United States Army (he subsequently became National Security Advisor in 2017 after having risen in rank to lieutenant general). The book presents a case indicting former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his principal civilian and military advisers for losing the Vietnam War. [1] The book was based on McMaster's Ph.D. dissertation at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [2] [3]
Herbert Raymond McMaster, a United States Military Academy graduate and University of North Carolina Ph.D. who was an armored cavalry commander in the Persian Gulf War, authored the book over the course of five years of research and writing. McMaster claims that his principal motivations for authoring Dereliction of Duty came from his experience reading the accounts of Vietnam War soldiers while studying as a West Point cadet and his experience as a field commander in Operation Desert Storm. [4] [5]
McMaster would later rise to the rank of lieutenant general and serve in the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan before being appointed to the position of National Security Adviser by President Donald Trump in February 2017. [6]
McMaster blamed leaders in Washington for losing the Vietnam War, writing:
The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of The New York Times, or on the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C., even before Americans assumed sole responsibility for the fighting in 1965 and before they realized the country was at war. ... [It was] a uniquely human failure, the responsibility for which was shared by President Johnson and his principal military and civilian advisors. [7]
The book examines the failure of Robert McNamara and U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's staff, alongside the military and particularly the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to provide a successful plan of action to pacify a Viet Cong insurgency or decisively defeat the North Vietnamese Army. McMaster details why military actions intended to indicate "resolve" or to "communicate" ultimately failed when trying to accomplish sparsely detailed, confusing, and conflicting military objectives. In his opinion, the military is to be used appropriately in order to meet objective military targets and goals. [8]
Unusual for an active-duty officer, McMaster scolded the U.S. government for its "arrogance, weakness, lying in pursuit of self-interest [and] abdication of responsibility to the American people." [9]
Retired Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard said that the book is built around examining and interpreting four key Washington decisions that were of major influence on the American involvement in Indochina:
A review in The New York Times by military historian Ronald H. Spector praised many aspects of the book, but criticized the author's emphasis on the shortcomings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the outcome of the war, as opposed to the strengths of North Vietnamese military strategy and tactics. [3] Spector also notes that McMaster, like earlier authors, presented a picture of Lyndon B. Johnson as a President chiefly concerned about keeping Vietnam from becoming a political issue, and with his portrayal of Johnson's advisers as men possessing a distinctive combination of arrogance, deviousness and disdain for expertise different from their own. [3]
In a CNN report on Iraq in October 2006, the influence of the book in military circles is noted:
General Pace said he and the other Joint Chiefs were debriefing commanders just back from the front lines, including one colonel recognized as a rising star and creative thinker—Col H.R. McMaster, the author of 1997 book Dereliction of Duty, considered the seminal work on military's responsibility during Vietnam to confront their civilian bosses when strategy was not working. [10]
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Robert Strange McNamara was an American business executive and the eighth United States secretary of defense, serving from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He remains the longest serving secretary of defense, having remained in office over seven years. He played a major role in promoting the U.S.'s involvement in the Vietnam War. McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) is the body of the most senior uniformed leaders within the United States Department of Defense, which advises the president of the United States, the secretary of defense, the Homeland Security Council and the National Security Council on military matters. The composition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is defined by statute and consists of a chairman (CJCS), a vice chairman (VJCS), the chiefs of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and the chief of the National Guard Bureau. Each of the individual service chiefs, outside their JCS obligations, works directly under the secretaries of their respective military departments, e.g. the secretary of the Army, the secretary of the Navy, and the secretary of the Air Force.
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General John Paul McConnell was the sixth Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. As chief of staff, McConnell served in a dual capacity. He was a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff which, as a body, acts as the principal military adviser to the President of the United States, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense. In his other capacity, he was responsible to the Secretary of the Air Force for managing the vast human and materiel resources of the world's most powerful aerospace force.
Herbert Raymond McMaster is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 25th United States National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018. He is also known for his roles in the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
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The Taylor-Rostow Report was a report prepared in November 1961 on the situation in Vietnam in relation to Vietcong operations in South Vietnam. The report was written by General Maxwell Taylor, military representative to President John F. Kennedy, and Deputy National Security Advisor W.W. Rostow. Kennedy sent Taylor and Rostow to Vietnam in October 1961 to assess the deterioration of South Vietnam’s military position and the government's morale. The report called for improved training of Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops, an infusion of American personnel into the South Vietnamese government and army, greater use of helicopters in counterinsurgency missions against North Vietnamese communists, consideration of bombing the North, and the commitment of 6,000-8,000 U.S. combat troops to Vietnam, albeit initially in a logistical role. The document was significant in that it seriously escalated the Kennedy Administration's commitment to Vietnam. It was also seen historically as having misdiagnosed the root of the Vietnam conflict as primarily a military rather than a political problem.
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