Editorial Reviews -
Dereliction of Duty
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
July 1997
A decorated troop commander in the Persian Gulf War and former history teacher at the United States Military Academy, Major H.R. McMaster, Ph.D., has written a new book that unearths disturbing new evidence concerning the Vietnam conflict. It deftly proves how America's top leaders in the 1960s and '70s forgot their responsibility to the American public while manipulating the country into a vicious war that it could not win. Major McMaster wrote Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies That Led to Vietnam after reflecting on his service in the Gulf. "As a cavalry troop commander in Operation Desert Storm," he writes, "I was struck by how easily I could connect our unit's actions with the stated war aims of the American government. The contrasts between America's military experience in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf were stark and analogies between the two were evident in public commentary. My experiences in the Gulf and my scholarly interest in recent American history sparked my desire to research and write about Vietnam."
McMaster's research included poignant interviews with key policy-makers of the Vietnam era; he was also one of the first people granted access to recently-declassified audio tapes and documents previously scuttled away in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the LBJ library. The resulting evidence showed how Lyndon Johnson, and his top civilian and military advisors, turned the problem of Vietnam into a full-scale American war that claimed 58,000 American and over1,000,000Vietnamese lives. Lyndon Johnson's role is shown to be much more prominent than he admitted in his own memoirs, and as Washington steadily lost control of the war, McMaster argues how much of it is due to arrogance and political agenda, including deliberate deception of the American public that would ensure Johnson's reelection in 1964 on the platform of a "peace candidate."
Dereliction of Duty is a sobering, well-written account of how the Vietnam War was all but conceded in closed meetings by top officials in Washington, D.C. long before battles in the bush, skepticism in the press, or protest on college campuses. The clear and factual details that McMaster relays reinforces the tragedy of Vietnam, a war essentially without a clear purpose and orchestrated by political figures who sacrificed lives not so much in the name of national security, but political greed. "I want readers to understand," says the author, "that the disaster in Vietnam was uniquely due to human failure and not an inevitable outgrowth of the Cold War mentality of containment. This failure resulted from a fundamental dishonesty, and an abdication of responsibility to the American people, on the part of Lyndon Johnson, top advisors like Robert McNamara, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Ed Offley
McMaster's book has drawn high praise from experts. . His dogged research unearthed thousands of pages of material denied other historians and writers.
Washington Post Book World - Arnold R. Isaacs
Well-written and full of enlightening new details, Dereliction of Duty adds significantly to the historical record of a great national failure.
San Francisco Chronicle
Brilliant. . . a penetrating analysis.
Tom Clancy
A fabulous piece of scholarship. This book will open a whole new chapter in our study of Vietnam.
Newsweek
Lately [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General] Shelton has been closely reading a book called Dereliction of Duty. Its thesis:that the Joint Chiefs of Staff lost the Vietnam War by failing to stand up to civilian leadership.
Edward M. Coffman
H. R. McMaster's new Dereliction of Duty stands out as a particularly well-documented, searing indictment of the civilian and military leadership. This is the clearest and most cogent argument as to the basic causes of the disaster.
Harry G. Summers
Invaluable. . . a most readable, yet meticulously documented history.
Frederick Franks
A tough, straightforward and hard hitting account of early decisions that set the course for the U. S. war in Vietnam. H. R. McMaster's book is vital in understanding those times and those critical decisions.
Harold G. Moore
Superbly researched, play-by-play, riveting inside story of the genesis of the American War in Vietnam. Assorted firepower explodes on every page.
Joseph L. Galloway
Here's everything you didn't read in Robert S. McNamara's book. Vietnam did not simply happen; it was not an accidental Cold War collision that killed 58, 000 Americans and a million Vietnamese. Men of power and responsibility caused that disastrous war and left their fingerprints all over it'and here are their names and what they did and said and decided in secret. McMaster has mined newly declassified records and, in these pages, sheds fresh light and understanding on how the best and the brightest, shielded by a bodyguard of lies and the words top secret, maneuvered and manipulated our country down the road to war and bitter defeat.
Donald Kagan
An outstanding example of historical research, interpretation, scholarship, and fair-minded analysis.
Eliot Cohen
Four star generals do not normally consult the writings of junior field grade officers for advice about career decisions. But it was widely reported that when Air Force Chief of Staff General Ronald Fogelman decided to resign in 1997, he did so at least in part on the basis of a careful reading of H. R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty. . . . "McMaster has written a scathing indictment of America's civilian and military leadership during the early phases of the Vietnam war, and he speaks. . . with unique moral authority. . . . McMaster earned his moral authority under fire. . . . By virtue of his actions [in the Gulf War], McMaster became a hero. . . . "[McMaster] speaks with unusual authority as a symbol of the confident young veterans of the Gulf. His call to his leaders to hold themselves to high standards of professional integrity is, therefore, an important one. No wonder, then, that General Fogelman, himself an acute student of history, would pay close attention to work that on nearly every page excoriates his predecessors for their unwillingness to speak and act as their positions required. . . . "Recently, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry Shelton, invited Major McMaster to lecture to the most senior generals in the American military about his book.
The Philadelphia Inquirer - Robert Anderson
An impressive study thorough in its research and summary in its judgments. [McMaster] doesn't shy from bold interpretation, or the damning insight, and his analysis, a model of clarity and economy, puts civil-military relations during the Vietnam war in an eerie, indeed Byzantine light.
Ronald Spector
What gives 'Dereliction of Duty' its special value . . . is McMaster's comprehensive, balanced and relentless exploration of the specific role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. . . . As a result, he is able to explode some longstanding myths about the role of the Chiefs. According to the most popular of these, the Joint Chiefs always knew what was needed to win in Vietnam but were consistently ignored or circumvented by Johnson, Robert S. McNamara and their associates. McMaster shows that the President and his civilian advisers did indeed ignore the Joint Chiefs whenever it suited them, but he also demonstrates that the Chiefs were willing, or at least silent, accomplices in this process. -Ronald Spector - The New York Times Book Review:
Paul F. Braim
This book is an excellent addition to the growing record of inadequacies in
senior leadership during that time of America's travail. McMaster's directcharge: Dereliction of duty by LBJ and his intimate advisors, and culpabilityby senior military leaders, in their commitment of our nation's most scarce and precious resource--our young soldiers--into a war under restrictions that produced high casualties and ultimate defeat for the United States. This provocative book brings the accused, alive and dead, before the bar of public justice. This reviewer's verdict: Guilty as charged! - Paul F. Braim - Parameters (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.)
Los Angeles Times Book Review - Brian VanDeMark
Thoroughly researched, clearly written and forcefully argued.
The Washington Monthly - Peter Arnett
A book to boggle your mind with new revelations of ineptness, duplicity, and arrogance amongst the senior-most officials of the United States. . . . McMaster pastes all the puzzle pieces together to reveal a plot Shakespearean in its proportions . . . McMaster's scholarship and presentation is exemplary in Dereliction of Duty. . . The author's arguments are coherent and convincing and important to the historical record.
Stanley Karnow
Carefully researched and vividly narrated, H. R. McMaster's book adds a new and disturbing dimension to an understanding of the decisions that propelled us into the Vietnam war. It should be read by anyone interested in the origins of one of the great tragedies in American history.
New York Times Book Review - Ronald Spector
What gives Dereliction of Duty its special value is. . . McMaster's comprehensive, balanced and relentless exploration of the specific role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. . . a devastating indictment of Johnson and his principal civilian and military advisers.
Paul Fussell
A stunning book:eloquent and highly effective. The word noble would not be going too far.
Washington Post Book World - Arnold R. Isaacs
Well—written and full of enlightening new details, Dereliction of Duty adds significantly to the historical record of a great national failure.
Washington Monthly - Peter Arnett
A book to boggle your mind with new revelations of ineptness, duplicity, and arrogance amongst the senior—most officials of the United States .McMaster pastes all the puzzle pieces together to reveal a plot Shakespearean in its proportion .McMaster's scholarship and presentation is exemplary in Dereliction of Duty .The author's arguments are coherent and convincing and important to the historical record.
Kirkus Reviews
An intriguing analysis that challenges the view that Cold War anticommunism was primarily responsible for American military intervention in Vietnam.
In his first book, McMaster, a US Army major and Persian Gulf war veteran, and a historian who has taught at West Point, zeroes in on the actions of Lyndon Johnson and his top advisers from the time LBJ became president in November 1963 to the July 1965 decision to escalate the war drastically. The author makes a convincing case that domestic political considerations were behind the development of the failed strategy of graduated military pressure. The actions of Johnson, his top civilian advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) were, moreover, characterized by "arrogance, weakness [and] lying in the pursuit of self interest." President Johnson heads McMaster's culpability list, which also includes Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, JCS head and US ambassador to South Vietnam Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Taylor's JCS successor, Gen. Earle Wheeler, and top advisers William and McGeorge Bundy. McMaster's touchstone is the unchallenged fact that Johnson wanted to fight the war on poverty, not the war in Vietnam. McMaster interprets virtually all of LBJ's actions as chief executive in that light. From November 1963 to November 1964 Johnson's overarching goal was to win the presidential election. After that, his main concern was enacting his Great Society programs. The fact that Johnson made Vietnam policy based on domestic-policy implications, McMaster believes, was a recipe for disaster in Vietnam. David Halberstam promulgated similar arguments in The Best and the Brightest (1972). McMaster, using newly released transcripts and other primary source material, pays more attention to the JCS's role. Unsparing in his analysis of the chiefs, McMaster takes them severely to task for their "failure" to provide LBJ with "their best advice."
A relentless, stinging indictment of the usual Johnson administration Vietnam War suspects.
What People Are Saying
Carefully researched and vividly narrated, H.R. McMaster's book adds a new and disturbing dimension to an understanding of the decisions that propelled us into the Vietnam War. It should be read by anyone interested in the origins of one of the great tragedies in American history.
—(Stanley Karnow, Pulitzer Prize—winning author of Vietnam: A History)
What People Are Saying
An outstanding example of historical research, interpretation, scholarship, and fair—minded analysis.
—(Donald Kagan, Bass Professor of History, Classics and Western Civilization, Yale University, and author of On the Origins of War)
What People Are Saying
Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory
A stunning book: eloquent and highly effective. The word noble would not be going too far.
What People Are Saying
Superbly researched, play—by—play, riveting inside story of the genesis of the American War in Vietnam. Assorted firepower explodes on every page.
—(Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, U.S. Army (Retired), coauthor of the New York Times best seller We Were Soldiers Once And Young)
What People Are Saying
What gives Dereliction of Duty its special value is...McMaster's comprehensive, balanced and relentless exploration of the specific role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...a devastating indictment of Johnson and his principal civilian and military advisers.
What People Are Saying
Carefully researched and vividly narrated, H.R. McMaster's book adds a new and disturbing dimension to an understanding of the decisions that propelled us into the Vietnam war. It should be read by anyone interested in the origins of one of the great tragedies in American history.
What People Are Saying
A book to boggle your mind with new revelations of ineptness, duplicity, and arrogance amongst the senior-most officials of the United States....McMaster pastes all the puzzle pieces together to reveal a plot Shakespearean in its proportions ...McMaster's scholarship and presentation is exemplary in Dereliction of Duty...The author's arguments are coherent and convincing and important to the historical record.
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