Gordon M. Goldstein
Auteur van Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam
Werken van Gordon M. Goldstein
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An infuriating book because I so hate how decisions were made about Americanizing the Vietnam War when they did not need to have been made IF McGeorge Bundy had been a better national security advisor, IF Lyndon Johnson had not cared only about his election, IF George Ball and others had been listened to, IF assumptions such as the domino theory had been discussed, analyzed, and considered fraudulent, IF war games' results had been paid attention to, and, most of all, IF Kennedy had not been assassinated, then and only then could so many lives have not been wasted. And all for what???? The parallels to what is happening today in Afghanistan and in the Obama administration are striking.… (meer)
LESSONS IN DISASTER by Gordon Goldstein is about how Kennedy and Johnson decided to go to war in Vietnam. The book is good but he does not put enough emphasis on how Eisenhower started the war. What I mean is that he prevented the resolution of the previous war and made a commitment almost certain to lead to the next one.
The Geneva Conference of 1954 negotiated a settlement of the colonial war that France militarily lost. Up to then Vietnam was universally considered a single country. The settlement established two temporary administrations for two years - explicitly not a division into two countries. Eisenhower and Kennedy both agreed that the war should not be settled on that basis and Eisenhower committed the US to support for a new regime in the south contrary to the settlement. At the end of the two years the situation was that Vietnam was one country with a civil war between two contending governments.
By preventing the end of the last war Eisenhower started the next. He was trying to get his war goals without sending in troops. His puppet regime did his fighting for him.
Goldstein does say that the division was temporary (page 50). But when on page 25 he writes of "The accounts of all of the other central protagonists in the Vietnam drama - from the beginning of U.S. military engagement [1961] ..." he leaves out the most central of all: Eisenhower started the war by proxy with the troops of his government in "South Vietnam".… (meer)
The Geneva Conference of 1954 negotiated a settlement of the colonial war that France militarily lost. Up to then Vietnam was universally considered a single country. The settlement established two temporary administrations for two years - explicitly not a division into two countries. Eisenhower and Kennedy both agreed that the war should not be settled on that basis and Eisenhower committed the US to support for a new regime in the south contrary to the settlement. At the end of the two years the situation was that Vietnam was one country with a civil war between two contending governments.
By preventing the end of the last war Eisenhower started the next. He was trying to get his war goals without sending in troops. His puppet regime did his fighting for him.
Goldstein does say that the division was temporary (page 50). But when on page 25 he writes of "The accounts of all of the other central protagonists in the Vietnam drama - from the beginning of U.S. military engagement [1961] ..." he leaves out the most central of all: Eisenhower started the war by proxy with the troops of his government in "South Vietnam".… (meer)
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Very good book and very good history of the writing of the book itself (qv, Goldstein working with Bundy before his death).