We lived [close] to then-Colonel H. R. McMaster at Ft. Irwin while he was there as observer/controller for the armored cav. As such, my dad, who was [redacted], got a signed copy of McMaster's then-new book, Dereliction of Duty, a development of his thesis (or diss, not sure which; he got both an MA and a Ph.D in US History) on how the US military-political establishment bumbled its way into the Vietnam War. While I was living at home, I never read Dereliction of Duty, but ever since McMaster's tenure as National Security Adviser, I've thought about the book a lot, and so acquired it on my Kindle.
It is a remarkably unflattering portrait of the men involved and the decision-making system they created. Virtually nobody in either the Kennedy or Johnson administrations comes off looking very good. Neither do the Joint Chiefs. McMaster's thesis has several parts. He argues that, although Kennedy created many of the preconditions for war, Johnson failed to establish a vision for American involvement in Vietnam and thus let strategy drift, determining the course of action more by the barometer of American domestic politics than by anything happening on the ground in Southeast Asia. At the same time, Robert McNamara was able to effectively exclude the professional military establishment from decision-making, placing most of that latter power in the hands of quantitative analysts from civilian firms. Bolstered by apparent success of a quant-based program of graduated response in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara chose to employ the same methods in Vietnam, which synergized neatly - but unfortunately - with the new president's unfocused approach to overseas strategy. McNamara and Johnson, in order to keep public focus on the Great Society reforms, sold the Vietnam War to Congress and the public mostly through lies, and used the Joint Chiefs as a shield in front of Congress to testify on their behalf. The Chiefs did this, despite repeatedly advising the administration that its Vietnam War policy would not be successful, because they were bought off by budgetary increases and politically outmaneuvered.
McMaster reserves considerable scorn for the Joint Chiefs, whom he characterizes as unable to agree on any courses of action (and thus became easy for McNamara, the Bundys, and other Johnson Administration officials to divide and conquer) and whom he argues failed to make their criticisms of administration strategy sufficiently clear. The Pentagon was quite clear that war in Vietnam was a losing proposition as proposed by the administration long before even the Gulf of Tonkin incident. War games in 1964 reemphasized this point, although the administration ignored them. Yet the Chiefs failed to publicly appeal to Congress, despite airing their complaints with several congressmen quietly. Instead, they testified on the administration's behalf, perpetuating the lie.
In the book, McMaster comes off as obviously uncomfortable with the dichotomy of service. On the one hand, the US military has always been a civilian-directed military. Moments when military officers appeal to the public or to Congress around the president's back are widely reviled in institutional memory, and rightly so. The likes of George McClellan, Douglas MacArthur, and, yeah, even Maxwell Taylor are not remembered fondly by serving soldiers. McMaster repeatedly makes reference to serving soldiers' unwillingness to criticize political superiors. This is, it is widely agreed, a Good Thing. Political direction of the US military is far superior to, say, the "Black Reichswehr", or the Shōwa IJA, or the modern Rwandan Patriotic Army/Defense Forces. But McMaster is also deeply unhappy at the fact that the 1960s Joint Chiefs of Staff were basically used by the administration to lie and say that a course of action that they themselves had recommended against was in fact good and fine and an excellent idea and going quite smoothly - a course of action that got Americans killed unnecessarily.
It is, frankly, not possible to resolve those two situations. American soldiers are trained to disobey unlawful orders and to report violations of the laws of war. (That doesn't always happen in practice. Sometimes, however, it does.) Something like lying to the public and to Congress is not exactly the same thing. The Chiefs did not make things very easy for themselves, but they were put in an impossible situation by Johnson and McNamara. After reading McMaster's book, I genuinely don't know if I think that Wheeler, Johnson, LeMay, Greene, and McDonald were culpable for Vietnam or not. McMaster clearly thinks that they were - along with Johnson, McNamara, Nitze, the Bundys, etc. He's clearly sympathetic to their difficulties, especially to Johnson (the Army Chief of Staff, not the president), but not enough to avoid describing what they did as "dereliction of duty".
The book was a fairly severe critique of US military institutions and garnered a lot of praise from soldiers and civilians alike at the time. (Regardless of what you think about the US military's officers, they are not a mindless echo chamber, and haven't been for decades, if ever.) It remains a fixture on reading lists at CGSC and the War College, as well as many undergraduate classes on the Vietnam War.
Along with his leadership in the Battle of 73 Easting during the 1991 war, the book put McMaster on the map as a leading light and a soldier-scholar. He solidified his bona fides with development of US counterinsurgency concepts while in Iraq. Then, remarkably, he was placed in the position of being able to act on his conception of military-political relations when Trump selected him to be national security adviser early last year. (He left the position, or was forced out, in April of this year, and retired from the US Army in May.) Given the impenetrable cloud of innuendo that surrounds the Trump White House, I think it'll be awhile before somebody has the facts to write a Dereliction of Duty for it. I, for one, have absolutely no idea how he'll come off, good or bad.
At any rate, Dereliction of Duty is a fine monograph, and one that deserves your attention if you're at all interested in the American drift into war in Southeast Asia - or if you're interested in learning anything about the way the former National Security Adviser thought about politics and war.
at least you get to read on the train
It is a remarkably unflattering portrait of the men involved and the decision-making system they created. Virtually nobody in either the Kennedy or Johnson administrations comes off looking very good. Neither do the Joint Chiefs. McMaster's thesis has several parts. He argues that, although Kennedy created many of the preconditions for war, Johnson failed to establish a vision for American involvement in Vietnam and thus let strategy drift, determining the course of action more by the barometer of American domestic politics than by anything happening on the ground in Southeast Asia. At the same time, Robert McNamara was able to effectively exclude the professional military establishment from decision-making, placing most of that latter power in the hands of quantitative analysts from civilian firms. Bolstered by apparent success of a quant-based program of graduated response in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara chose to employ the same methods in Vietnam, which synergized neatly - but unfortunately - with the new president's unfocused approach to overseas strategy. McNamara and Johnson, in order to keep public focus on the Great Society reforms, sold the Vietnam War to Congress and the public mostly through lies, and used the Joint Chiefs as a shield in front of Congress to testify on their behalf. The Chiefs did this, despite repeatedly advising the administration that its Vietnam War policy would not be successful, because they were bought off by budgetary increases and politically outmaneuvered.
McMaster reserves considerable scorn for the Joint Chiefs, whom he characterizes as unable to agree on any courses of action (and thus became easy for McNamara, the Bundys, and other Johnson Administration officials to divide and conquer) and whom he argues failed to make their criticisms of administration strategy sufficiently clear. The Pentagon was quite clear that war in Vietnam was a losing proposition as proposed by the administration long before even the Gulf of Tonkin incident. War games in 1964 reemphasized this point, although the administration ignored them. Yet the Chiefs failed to publicly appeal to Congress, despite airing their complaints with several congressmen quietly. Instead, they testified on the administration's behalf, perpetuating the lie.
In the book, McMaster comes off as obviously uncomfortable with the dichotomy of service. On the one hand, the US military has always been a civilian-directed military. Moments when military officers appeal to the public or to Congress around the president's back are widely reviled in institutional memory, and rightly so. The likes of George McClellan, Douglas MacArthur, and, yeah, even Maxwell Taylor are not remembered fondly by serving soldiers. McMaster repeatedly makes reference to serving soldiers' unwillingness to criticize political superiors. This is, it is widely agreed, a Good Thing. Political direction of the US military is far superior to, say, the "Black Reichswehr", or the Shōwa IJA, or the modern Rwandan Patriotic Army/Defense Forces. But McMaster is also deeply unhappy at the fact that the 1960s Joint Chiefs of Staff were basically used by the administration to lie and say that a course of action that they themselves had recommended against was in fact good and fine and an excellent idea and going quite smoothly - a course of action that got Americans killed unnecessarily.
It is, frankly, not possible to resolve those two situations. American soldiers are trained to disobey unlawful orders and to report violations of the laws of war. (That doesn't always happen in practice. Sometimes, however, it does.) Something like lying to the public and to Congress is not exactly the same thing. The Chiefs did not make things very easy for themselves, but they were put in an impossible situation by Johnson and McNamara. After reading McMaster's book, I genuinely don't know if I think that Wheeler, Johnson, LeMay, Greene, and McDonald were culpable for Vietnam or not. McMaster clearly thinks that they were - along with Johnson, McNamara, Nitze, the Bundys, etc. He's clearly sympathetic to their difficulties, especially to Johnson (the Army Chief of Staff, not the president), but not enough to avoid describing what they did as "dereliction of duty".
The book was a fairly severe critique of US military institutions and garnered a lot of praise from soldiers and civilians alike at the time. (Regardless of what you think about the US military's officers, they are not a mindless echo chamber, and haven't been for decades, if ever.) It remains a fixture on reading lists at CGSC and the War College, as well as many undergraduate classes on the Vietnam War.
Along with his leadership in the Battle of 73 Easting during the 1991 war, the book put McMaster on the map as a leading light and a soldier-scholar. He solidified his bona fides with development of US counterinsurgency concepts while in Iraq. Then, remarkably, he was placed in the position of being able to act on his conception of military-political relations when Trump selected him to be national security adviser early last year. (He left the position, or was forced out, in April of this year, and retired from the US Army in May.) Given the impenetrable cloud of innuendo that surrounds the Trump White House, I think it'll be awhile before somebody has the facts to write a Dereliction of Duty for it. I, for one, have absolutely no idea how he'll come off, good or bad.
At any rate, Dereliction of Duty is a fine monograph, and one that deserves your attention if you're at all interested in the American drift into war in Southeast Asia - or if you're interested in learning anything about the way the former National Security Adviser thought about politics and war.
good gracious, that's awful
at least you get to read on the train
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