An extensive and unsparingly critical reappraisal of America's
prolonged presence in Vietnam, which places virtually all
responsibility for the war's loss on the US military. Historian
Buzzanco (Univ. of Houston), who takes a middle-of-the-road stance
on America's involvement in Vietnam, comes down hard on Pentagon
brass at almost every turn. In a chronological format that
commences with an evaluation of Indochina's perceived importance to
Washington's strategic objectives after WW II and effectively ends
with the Tet offensive early in 1968, the author documents the
consistent wariness with which armed-forces chieftains viewed
intervention from 1945 on and the divisiveness that convulsed their
ranks once troops had been committed en masse. Buzzanco also
addresses the arguable containment policies embraced by the
military's civilian masters during the early stages of the Cold
War, noting that they pinned their hopes for a quick return to the
domestic agenda on battlefield attrition and overkill. Concerned
they could be held accountable for failure, he observes, uniformed
leaders began maneuvering the White House into untenable positions,
e.g., with requests to mobilize reserves and permit unhindered
escalation. In the meantime, upper-echelon commanders fought among
themselves not only about whether massive firepower offered the
best chance of winning an increasingly unpopular war but also over
individual branches' share of the budgetary and mission action.
Buzzanco asserts that by the time it became clear that military
victory in Vietnam was an impossible dream, positions had hardened
on the civilian as well as military sides of the debate. Although
US forces soldiered on (at no small cost) for nearly five years
after Tet, Buzzanco concludes that it was communist troops (not
Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, or Richard Nixon)
who defeated them. A diligently researched and thought-provoking
contribution to the literature of Vietnam, a conflict that may
never be resolved to the complete satisfaction of either the left
or right. (Kirkus Reviews)
Throughout the past decade, defenders of the U.S. role in Vietnam have argued that America's defeat was not the result of an illegitimate intervention or military shortcomings, but rather a failure of will because national leaders, principally Lyndon B. Johnson, forced the troops to "fight with one hand tied behind their backs." In this volume, Robert Buzzanco disproves this theory by demonstrating that political leaders, not the military brass, pressed for war; that American policymakers always understood the problems and peril of war in Indochina; and that civil-military acrimony and the political desire to defer responsibility for Vietnam helped lead the United States into the war. For the first time, these crucial issues of military dissent, interservice rivalries, and civil-military relations and politics have been tied together to provide a cogent and comprehensive analysis of the U.S. role in Vietnam.
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