By H.R. McMasters, a West Point graduate. I believe this is based on his Phd thesis at North Carolina, where he was doing graduate work while a major on detached duty.
An altogether invaluable account, as outlined by this review:
McMaster stresses two elements in his discussion of America's failure in Vietnam: the hubris of Johnson and his advisors and the weakness of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dereliction of Duty provides both a thorough exploration of the military's role in determining Vietnam policy and a telling portrait of the men most responsible.For years the popular myth surrounding the Vietnam War was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew what it would take to win but were consistently thwarted or ignored by the politicians in power. Now H. R. McMaster shatters this and other misconceptions about the military and Vietnam in Dereliction of Duty. Himself a West Point graduate, McMaster painstakingly waded through every memo and report concerning Vietnam from every meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to build a comprehensive picture of a house divided against itself: a president and his coterie of advisors obsessed with keeping Vietnam from becoming a political issue versus the Joint Chiefs themselves, mired in interservice rivalries and unable to reach any unified goals or conclusions about the country's conduct in the war.
I couldn't read it for more than an hour at a time...before throwing the book up against the wall and walking around the block to cool off.
There is a good argument that Clinton was our worst president ever. There might be a better one for Johnson...
This policy allowed the "anti-war" (actually anti-American) left to gain traction, and to plant a host of false "lessons" in the minds of the young. It was also deeply and profoundly immoral.
I have to ask you thucydides, however, do you really believe that ALL of those opposed to our involvement in Vietnam were anti-American? All I have to do is think of the incident that led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to make me believe that the whole thing was on a weak foundation from the beginning. Not to mention that LBJ was not actually leading the country - - he was doing everything he could do to take the country's attention away from the Kennedy "hit" and to get elected.
IMO, history will show Johnson as the worst president of, at least, the 20th century. Clinton will be thought of as a worthless president.
No. And God bless those who did anyway.