Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam [H. R. McMaster] on leondumoulin.nl *FREE* shipping on.
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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:. 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.

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. 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. McMaster, the author of book Dereliction of Duty , considered the seminal work on military's responsibility during Vietnam to confront their civilian bosses when strategy was not working.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Spector 20 July The New York Times. Retrieved 20 November McMaster talked about his new book, Dereliction of Duty: He outlined his arguments about why America lost the Vietnam War, especially the misconceptions about the war by policy makers.

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Retrieved 21 February McMaster's Dereliction of Duty". Retrieved from " https: Pages with login required references or sources Pages to import images to Wikidata All stub articles. Views Read Edit View history. This page was last edited on 17 July , at Robert McNamara , Lyndon B.

Arthur Goodzeit Book Award To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Dereliction of Duty , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Sep 10, BlackOxford rated it really liked it Shelves: The Presidential Psycho-drama of Fear War originates from psychosis.

If not in individuals then certainly in groups. Particularly in groups of men in which each individual attempts to establish his will as dominant. Each fears failure and loss of affection, and yet the will to dominate causes failure and loss of affection, thus increasing fear. This is McMaster's story about the prosecution of the Vietnam War from start to finish by the American government. It is a compelling story, made more so The Presidential Psycho-drama of Fear War originates from psychosis.

It is a compelling story, made more so by the fact it was written by a career officer on active duty. McMaster does have an axe to grind, but it is one that is sharp to begin with. His thesis is that the exclusion of the military leadership from decision-making by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, led to incoherent and contradictory actions that were compounded as the war progressed.

In short his argument is that "The intellectual foundation for deepening American involvement in Vietnam had been laid without the participation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But McMaster also conveys another message, perhaps inadvertently, which is relevant for more than historical reasons, namely that deceit and duplicity have been embedded in the Executive Branch of the government of the United States long before Donald Trump made them so apparent through his political inexperience.

McMaster shows, as have others, that lying to the press and the public about Vietnam was routine for every administration from Eisenhower through Nixon. However this propagandistic lying was the tip of an iceberg of duplicity. All the key players - the President, his staff, successive ambassadorial and military leadership teams in Vietnam, the Secretary of Defence, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and virtually every executive agency involved in the war severally and collectively lied to each other consistently as a matter of policy. This deeply ingrained duplicity is documented repeatedly in McMasters' research of minutes, messages and statements made by the senior members of each department.

This is more than merely disfuntion. Persistence suggests something systematic, a self-defeating but self-inflicted group-inability to perceive or act on reality. Largely there are institutionalised motivations for this continuing inability to cope with the existential situation. The self-interested departmental rivalries among the military and intellectual arrogance by the civilians running the Department of Defence for example seem endemic.

And not just during the Vietnam era. Certainly the dissonance between domestic political and international military objectives continued to be problematic during US involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. However, what McMaster demonstrates without ever making the point explicit is that the systematic deceit by the administration is not something of narrow historical relevance to the war in Vietnam, or even to the wider issue of the organisational effectiveness of the executive branch. The central problem arises from attempting to successfully wage any sort of limited but extended warfare in a democratic society.

It is a psychotic symptom to act as if this were not the case. American democracy is established on the idea of separation of powers. In itself this concept promotes tension and duplicity, particularly between the President and members of Congress who, as has been shown recently, have no necessary commonality of interests. The next election looms over all decisions.

This separation of powers is also a political fact within the executive branch in which personal ambitions, professional experiences, and abiding animosities and friendships dominate policy-making. It is not just Trump who has had problems with staff rivalries, embarrassing leaks and dissident agents. Only Trump's inexperience allows these to become as public as they have done. In such an environment deceit becomes a necessity for the creation of almost any policy from war, to welfare, to justice.

Perhaps this is true for all forms of government. But the motivating factor which seems to be unique to democracy is fear by the man at the top. A common trait that seems to run from Kennedy, through Johnson and Nixon to Trump is fear, fear of failure, of rejection, of being found to be inadequate, in a real sense of loss of love.

Presidents, it seems, are very insecure people. They appear ready to turn psychotic at any moment. This fear is, I think, an inherent part of democratic politics, which are never stable and which don't provide an effective means for the Executive to reduce them.

He can't imprison or execute his foes; he can't form a reliable alliance with legislative politicians; he can't be explicit about his goals lest he be held politically to account; he can't even get rid of his own people without the risk of them spilling the beans on his real actions and motivations. One of the democratic leader's, and his minions', few options therefore is to lie. Lying, even when it is unnecessary and irrational becomes the norm. This is the bleak message I take from McMaster.


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He may be right. Let's see how much truth-telling he engages in as Trump's National Security Advisor. View all 24 comments. Apr 18, Howard rated it really liked it Shelves: The Failure of H. National Security Adviser H. Today, he risks becoming one. On January 20, President Trump appointed him to the position of National Security Adviser; on February 13, Flynn, under a cloud of suspicion, resigned from the position.

His tenure was by far the shortest ever served by a National Security Adviser. A week later, the President appointed Lt. He continues to say that Flynn was a good guy and should never have been forced to resign and, privately, that McMaster is a pain…. All too often advisers are hesitant to disagree with presidents or even give them bad news. McMaster, on the other hand, has a reputation of being a tough-talking, straight-shooting military officer, who has never hesitated to say what he thought even if it meant criticizing the military establishment and running the risk of being passed over for promotion.

And that brings us to Dereliction of Duty. A decorated hero of the first Iraqi war, McMaster was a young major studying for a Ph. He faults them for knowing that the policies advocated by Johnson and McNamara were fatally flawed and would never lead to victory in the conflict, but due to several reasons, the principal one being turf battles between the different branches, the JCS failed to openly state their concerns to the President and his Secretary of Defense.

After all, two decades had passed since the war ended. However, as soon as it was announced that McMaster had been selected to replace Flynn, the general had a best-seller on his hands. And it was then that I decided to take a second look at the book. The research is painstaking; there are many pages of endnotes; and a long list of people who were interviewed for the book. It is a great dissection of how both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations stumbled into a fight that neither wanted.

Yes, there was a clear dereliction of duty, but even if that had not been the case, would the war have had a different outcome? In my second reading I was struck by the fact that the Vietnamese are hardly mentioned. Spector, author of After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam. View all 9 comments. Aug 26, Scott Holstad rated it really liked it. This is a very detailed and somewhat shocking book telling of how America sunk itself into the Vietnam war fiasco, and it's truly a sorrow to read.

I never knew Johnson, McNamara, the Bundy brothers and Taylor were such lying assholes, as well as Rusk, McNaughton and the other civilians in charge of planning the war. They lied to the Joint Chiefs, to Congress, to the American people and to the world sounds like Bush, doesn't it?

20 years ago, H.R. McMaster wrote a cautionary tale. Now he risks becoming one.

The book starts with and Kennedy but quickly moves on to Johnson, who wanted his Great Society domestic program passed so badly that he literally flat out lied -- continuously -- to the Congress and America about his efforts to sink us into Vietnam -- without any goals or exit strategies, I might say. One thing the author, McMaster, hammered home really shocked me. We never thought we could win, never expected to win, and wanted to escape Vietnam just "bloodied. Why delve into a war if you have no intention of winning? They thought that the principal objective of military activities was to protect U.

Indeed, the loss of South Vietnam after the direct intervention of U. He concluded that to avoid humiliation the United States must be prepared to undertake a 'massive' effort on the ground in Southeast Asia involving the deployment of , ground troops. Even if the Communists won, McNaughton believed that the United States would have protected its international image.

As America begins to send troops to South Vietnam to start conducting offensive operations for the first time while refusing to mobilize the reserves, General Harold Johnson, the JCS in charge of the Army, "was to preside over the disintegration of the Army; a disintegration that began with the president's decision against mobilization. Harold Johnson's inaction haunted him for the rest of his life. He paints the JCS as little more than stooges kept out of the loop of actual military planning.

It's not until the book's epilogue does he place some blame on the JCS, writing "the 'five silent men' on the Joint Chiefs made possible the way the United States went to war in Vietnam. The principal civilian planners had determined that to guarantee American credibility, it was not necessary to win in Vietnam. That conclusion, combined with the belief that the use of force was merely another form of diplomatic communication, directed the military effort in the South at achieving stalemate rather than victory. Those charged with planning the war believed that it would be possible to preserve American credibility even if the United States armed forces withdrew from the South, after a show of force against the North and in the South in which American forces were 'bloodied.

I would have liked to read more about what went on after inserting troops for offensive operations, how things escalated, what Johnson, McNamara and the rest did in educating America on what was happening or not , etc. In other words, I think the author cut the book short and that was disappointing.

Otherwise, it was a fascinating, while sobering, read and should be required reading of all active politicians to ensure we never repeat the stupid mistakes made during the '60s regarding Vietnam. View all 8 comments. Jul 09, Ed rated it really liked it. It you like histories of the bureaucratic minutiae and system failures that lead to bad advice badly given, institutional paralysis in the face of collapsing strategy and a determined refusual to accept reality which I do you will love this book.

McMaster is a serving career Army officer with a PhD. He has the analytical tools to do justice to the story of how the Joint Chiefs of Staff failed the nation in during the Vietnam war. It's been a few years since I read "Dereliction of Dut It you like histories of the bureaucratic minutiae and system failures that lead to bad advice badly given, institutional paralysis in the face of collapsing strategy and a determined refusual to accept reality which I do you will love this book. It's been a few years since I read "Dereliction of Duty" but it is quite a book. McMaster re-fought the bureaucratic wars of and memo by memo--his main villain was Robert McNamara but he found plenty of blame to lay at the feet of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who as I recall McMaster accused of shirking their constitutional duty to advise the President and to to so truthfully.

The generals wanted a huge force and an open ended schedule to "win" the war with Vietnam and McNamara simply didn't present it to Johnson. The JCS thought if they went along with McNamara's gradualism they would ultimately get the half-million men they wanted. He makes the point that the JCS knew better than anyone how the U. And in a real "ripped from the headlines" update McMaster has been appointed head of the National Security Council.

Given the abrupt and ignominious departure of his predecessor he probably has a bit more room to disagree with the currency president than other appointees have. Mar 25, Lobstergirl rated it liked it Shelves: In spite of its expansive sounding title, this book has a fairly narrow focus. It begins approximately in the Kennedy administration and goes on to spend most of its time in , where it ends. It also stays mostly in Washington. There is little discussion aside from coups and the Gulf of Tonkin of things happening on the ground in Vietnam. If you are completely new to the Vietnam War this shouldn't be your first book on it.

McMaster argues that LBJ was powerfully, primarily concerned with In spite of its expansive sounding title, this book has a fairly narrow focus. McMaster argues that LBJ was powerfully, primarily concerned with his domestic policy agenda, wasn't terribly interested in foreign affairs and didn't understand military power or military policy. Every decision he made about Vietnam in these years was related either to getting elected in , or keeping on the good side of everyone he needed in order to get his Great Society passed. The overarching goals and strategies for the U.

Johnson knew what answers he wanted to hear from his military and civilian advisers on Vietnam, and for the most part they complied by telling him what he wanted to hear. Dissenting viewpoints were screened out, usually before they got to the president; Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was the primary gatekeeper. Johnson picked as his heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff men who would agree with him and wouldn't roil the waters, and these heads too would censor the opinions of the other JCS members before Johnson could hear them.


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Information inside the administration was very tightly controlled, and it usually didn't escape outside to journalists or the public, unless someone went off the reservation. LBJ lied in his public pronouncements about what was happening in Vietnam, and McNamara and others lied when they went before Congress to testify. Judging by the blurbs, this book is extremely popular among the right wing Rush Limbaugh even blurbed it.

View all 4 comments. May 30, Andrew Carr rated it it was ok. In Dereliction of Duty H. McMaster provides a devastating portrait of an administration which stumbled evermore into a war it had no interest in and no understanding of. He begins with John F. On top of this, McMaster adds one more biting critique: This led him to sideline the key office supposed to advise him on military affairs: This is a distinction McMaster never seriously addresses, and it undermines the book.

But as strategists such as Sun Tzu and Clausewitz have shown, defeating the enemy is rarely the primary concern of the conflict. As the story progresses, the author turns his criticism towards the military, but only on the grounds of their actions such as failing to stand up to the President , not whether their advice had merit. Analysis by McMaster of the content of their disagreements could have helped clarify the respective merits.

Most notably, while the JCS wanted rapid escalation, the administration feared this would bring China and Russia into the conflict. It would have been extremely useful to see McMaster engage the scholarly literature and assess who had the better understanding of the wider context of the conflict. No definitive answer can be given for such a counter-factual, but surely historians have insights into how Beijing and Moscow were thinking during this period and whether they would have engaged in Vietnam in the way China had in Korea a decade earlier.

Maybe this is asking too much. The book is a very impressive piece of scholarship for its ability to piece together the evidence to show who said what to who, who had read which memo, who had responded in time and how the overall thinking of the administration evolved. But McMaster seeks to argue that not only was the process dysfunctional, but the strategy was as well. There was indeed a dereliction of duty by the President, his Secretary of Defence and wider administration.

Dereliction of Duty

While I think the book is too light on the military, the failure of both process and strategy ultimately rest with the President. If I had been in the office of George W. They are neither seen nor heard in our debates about war and peace. Mar 04, Barry Sierer rated it it was amazing. While this mentality may help manage political problems it had no sensible application to military operations. Altogether, this is a sharp, and still relevant work.

May 17, Betsy rated it really liked it. Although the book focuses only on the period up to the end of , it is fairly easy to see where the lies would end up, even if the Americans would hang in there until McMaster looks at how the U. Although 'graduated pressure' seemed to be a 'safe' way to go, it laid the foundations for discord with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ironically, even after a landslide election, Johnson's plans for the domestic Great Society projects drastically influenced what he was willing to do in Vietnam.

McMaster thoroughly discusses the relationship between the JCS and the White House, their exclusion from many of the decisions made. Unfortunately, the JCS contributed to their exclusion by their 'parochialism' in which each service tried to get as much for themselves as possible.

Dereliction of Duty - H. R. McMaster - Hardcover

It didn't help that the two chairmen, Taylor and Wheeler, were more than willing to back up the President instead of speaking out. This was particularly noticeable when Johnson virtually insisted upon the loyalty of the JCS, and demanded that the U. But Halsey wasn't the president, Johnson was. As a result by the end of , advisors and bombing were not enough. The ground war began in earnest although even then the White House would not admit the numbers involved. This is an eye-opening book about years that I remember so well.

It should be read in horror, and with a caution to all of us about how easy it is for those in power to lie, and how we all pay the price. Mar 09, Mark Fallon rated it it was amazing. Written by an active duty Army officer then a Major, now a General , this book is based on meticulous research of meeting minutes and previously classified memos. The tragedy is summed up in the final sentence: Mar 19, Ronnie rated it it was amazing Shelves: The Joint Chiefs of Staff Then it becomes unfunny. There's a sense of sadness that permeates this reading.

The book was written by H. Who replaced Flynn in the WH. It is scary book because the scenario that are covered goes up to the time when the US became fully involved in Vietnam All those dead soldiers When you read these people talking about loss of blood in warfare as if it was mere pittance or like squishing bugs on a floor Heres a guy who had a dry view of war effects until seeing face first and seeing what he has caused I believe that this book is required reading for anyone to try to better grasp the troubling aspect of getting into wars The book was written as part of his Ph.

It harshly criticized high-ranking officers of that era, arguing that they inadequately challenged Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson on their Vietnam strategy. The book examines McNam From wiki: The book examines McNamara and Johnson's staff alongside the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high-ranking military officers, and their failure to provide a successful plan of action either to pacify a Viet Cong insurgency or to decisively defeat the North Vietnamese army.

McMaster also details why military actions intended to indicate "resolve" or to "communicate" ultimately failed when trying to accomplish sparsely detailed, confusing, and conflicting military objectives.

The book was widely read in Pentagon circles and included in military reading lists. Given that the rumour-mill on The Hill is that McMasters may be the next casualty, I mark this cat-claw as 'pending'. I picked up a copy of H. While the book was written twenty years ago, I hoped the book would provide some insights into how General McMaster looks at the role of a presidential advisor and that relationship with a President during time of war. President Johnson's advisors proved unwilling or unable to provide clear, honest advice.

According to McMaster, they lied to the President, to the Nation, and possibly even to themselves. Apparently more interested in holding onto their jobs, their power, and their prestige, they failed to challenge the president, to set goals and objectives in the war, and told the President pretty much what he wanted to hear. Fast forward twenty years, and now General McMaster is in the same position as some of the people he was critical of during the Vietnam War.

I now wonder if he's taken the lessons of his book to heart, and will be willing and able to provide sound military and security advice to President Trump. I'm leaning to the belief that he will. However, McMaster was sent out to meet with the media and speak the party line after President Trump apparently revealed intelligence about ISIS when meeting with the Russians, possibly endangering foreign intelligence sources and relationships. On the other hand, there have been stories of Trump and McMaster having yelling matches behind closed doors, certainly making it sound like the General is doing his best to provide honest and sound advice to the President, even if it runs contrary to the President's beliefs and ideology.

Apr 30, Joe Clark rated it liked it Shelves: The book is exhaustive but it is also tedious and repetitive. In my recollection of the events from '63 through '69, everything moved very quickly and it looked like Johnson set out to take our country to war. No doubt, the problem was that I didn't pay much attention until I was drafted in ' I think HR McMaster does a good job of showing that we stumbled into war over a period of years.

But I think that the book lacks empathy. It is all too easy for a young military man to condemn the politi The book is exhaustive but it is also tedious and repetitive. It is all too easy for a young military man to condemn the politicians for not doing a better job. It is easy to say that Johnson had a choice that needed to be made and he tried to ignore it hoping it would go away. It was either guns or butter. It isn't possible to do both. But it is not easy to choose which which one you want to hold onto. Of course, Johnson essentially made his choice by not neglect.

He didn't pull out of Vietnam. He focused on his domestic agenda.