Book Review: Dereliction of Duty

I took advantage of my first few days after final exams to finish Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies That Led to Vietnam by H. R. McMaster. Counting appendices, this book runs 480 pages with small print, so it is not by any means light reading that you can take in over a weekend. Chronicling the onset of the Vietnam War from Kennedy's administration to the large commitment of troops in 1965, Dereliction of Duty follows the action minute by minute, meeting by meeting as Presidents Kennedy and Johnson installed the generals that would tell them what they wanted to hear and Robert McNamara implemented his new vision of warfare. Of the five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Kennedy and Johnson replaced all but the Marine Corps Commandant at least once each in order to weed out the opponents of their new and untried (and eventually disastrous) theories.
"Graduated Pressure" was McNamara's brainchild. A quantitative data analyst who had most recently worked for Ford Motor Company, McNamara had absolutely no tactical or strategic training, although he had worked in logistics during World War II. In logistics, the application of certain quantities of food, fuel, bullets and supplies can equip an Army unit: as supplies go up, the soldiers' needs go down. McNamara and President Johnson imagined that they could apply the same principles to warfare. With the right experimentation, as their insertion of troops went up, North Vietnamese support for the Viet Cong would go down. Of course, no wars in history have ever worked this way. When one side raises its commitment, the other side raises its commitment, with victory the prize for which no price is too high to pay. The Joint Chiefs retorted repeatedly early on that the United States should invest enough troops to win the Vietnam War or pull out completely. At one pivotal moment, the Joint Chiefs asked for 500,000 troops and Johnson replied that he would give them 15,000, comparing the Joint Chiefs to a farmer asking for a loan from the banker, "Mr. McNamara."
McMaster does not excuse the Joint Chiefs of blame - placing a little more at their feet than I would - but highlights their complicity in President Johnson's bald-faced lies to Congress about the number of troops required and the cost of the War in Vietnam. Johnson always considered his politics ahead of all else, so he put off any decision on Vietnam commitment in 1964 until after the election. In 1965, he deceived Congress and the American people about his investments of men and materiel in Vietnam until after his Great Society programs had passed.
Dereliction of Duty is an excellent, well-researched, highly detailed history of the beginning of the Vietnam War. McMaster does not belabor the point that Johnson's lies led to the deaths of tens of thousands of American servicemen, but faithfully reports the process that brought about the American commitment of troops to Vietnam. A sobering account for any strategist, the lesson of Dereliction of Duty is that the civilians who control the military have a responsibility to understand the nature of warfare, to learn the lessons of history rather than reading one book, The Uncertain Trumpet, and deciding that everything in the world has changed and history does not matter. Kennedy's unbridled enthusiasm for The Uncertain Trumpet shows the danger of electing presidents because they are young and good-looking.