The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam
For all the countless books the Vietnam War has inspired--the  anguished analysis, revised history, and blow-by-blow reports--no  consensus has even been reached on precisely who, or what, is to blame  for America's failure in Southeast Asia. The antiwar movement, the  media, Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, Congress, and staunch military  hawks have all been implicated in the defeat, but a commonly accepted  explanation (or scapegoat) remains elusive.Jeffrey Record may not provide the final, binding word on Vietnam, but  inThe Wrong War, he is prepared to place blame squarely on the  shoulders of both the military and civilian leadership for their lack  of communication and inability to establish a clear objective. As a  former civilian State Department adviser in Vietnam and legislative  assistant to Senators Sam Nunn and Lloyd Bentsen, Record was close to  the action in Asia and Washington, and he believes the U.S. set itself  up for failure largely by overestimating the military's ability to  break the Viet Cong and underestimating the Vietnamese will to fight;  lessons that should have been learned by watching the French limp out  of Indochina several years before. The Americans, he stresses, were on  a blinding anti-Communism crusade, while there was much more at stake  for the Vietnamese than political ideology, particularly nationalistic  fervor and an insatiable desire to rid themselves of  colonialism. Though his book is a fiercely critical analysis, Record  attempts to draw important lessons from what he calls the "most  strategically reckless American enterprise of the 20th century."