Reddit reviews Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

Dereliction of Duty

"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C."

• H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion)

Seriously, they easily could have won. If the US was prepared to invade North Vietnam, rather than trying to bomb it to the negotiating table, it would have been a pretty easy victory. They weren't willing to do so.

McNamara's (shockingly incompetent and wrongheaded) plan was to gradually apply pressure to the North Vietnamese to get them to change their calculus. This was based on a failed reading of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which he thought the US won through a measured application of pressure. In reality, the USSR won it through brinksmanship. What ended the Cuban Missile Crisis was not the American blockade of Cuba, but rather the (secret) American agreement to remove its own medium-range nuclear missiles from Turkey. The Soviets got exactly what they wanted, and the US got the status quo ante.

So McNamara took the wrong lessons from Cuba and applied them to Vietnam. Rather than defeat the North Vietnamese, he planned to bolster the South Vietnamese government, keep them from collapsing, and apply enough pressure through strategic bombing of North Vietnam to get them to abandon their designs on the South. This fundamentally misread North Vietnam's appraisal of their own interests, and how much bombing they were willing to endure in order to achieve their goals. This misunderstanding was almost entirely centred in the White House; the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew damned well it wouldn't work but didn't have the political clout to get that through to Johnson.

I highly recommend Dereliction of Duty, by current National Security Advisor HR McMaster, for a thorough evisceration of the people who brought America defeat in Vietnam.

Can't wait for the sequel to his best-selling book:

Dereliction of Duty: Trump, McMaster, the Russians, and the Lies That Led to Impeachment

I think someone needs to put this book on his desk:

https://www.amazon.com/Dereliction-Duty-Johnson-McNamara-Vietnam/dp/0060929081

He also needs to keep his job and stay close to the president. He's the same man who wrote this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Dereliction-Duty-Johnson-McNamara-Vietnam/dp/0060929081

It's an American Victory. This guy is a fucking Jedi knight. He is so competent that I don't understand why he agreed to work for Drumpf.

Read his book and understand that he is NOT a PNAC warmonger. However, when he goes to war, he fucks shit up proper.

https://www.amazon.com/Dereliction-Duty-Johnson-McNamara-Vietnam/dp/0060929081

If you were really a Vietnam Vet, you would remember LBJ's falsification of the Gulf of Tonkin incident which he used to escalate the war in Vietnam, and his shameless recalling of jets sent to assist the USS Liberty (two times!) as it was under attack which Israel hoped would be blamed on Egypt, drawing US into the 1967 war. LBJ covered up the entire incident which left 34 dead and 171 wounded.

Can you possibly imagine the howls of outrage if Bush pulled BS like that rather than LBJ, especially if the attacker was Arab, not Israeli? Appalling.

> Because the rest of his team has zero credibility, he had to push McMaster out there to spew their bullshit

If anyone could be claimed to know how to not just "follow orders" it would be McMaster.

Zero sympathy. Get out, tell the truth and bring them down. It's the only right thing to do.

Unfortunately, no, this is his book: Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060929081/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_0SWqDbC69YFZD

But wouldn’t that be a dereliction of duty?

>Transgender bathroom issue

Trump relinquished federal authority. Giving up federal power is not very authoritarian.

> Neil Gorsuch

Based on his writings, Gorsuch could and likely would overturn judicial precedents that have allowed the Executive branch to continually and vastly broaden its powers, which would be a massive check on federal authority. In cases like the EPA, it's ever expanding in ways that aren't exactly legal. Rolling that back would limit the power of bureaucratic agencies that often operate with no checks.

>H. R. McMaster replacing Michael Flynn

I'm sure the guy that wrote a book condemning Vietnam-era generals for just rolling over to the President's wishes is going to roll over to the President's wishes.


Rolling back of federal authority is not authoritarian, and being impolite on Twitter doesn't make one a fascist. He has certainly talked about rather authoritarian wishes but has taken the opposite stance in his actions.

And he's riled the press to call him out on his shit, where they've taken a backseat in aggressively critiquing the executive branch for quite some time.