[.ca] Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the ... (ISBN 0520229193)

From Amazon.com:
When the first American Marines marched into Vietnam in March 1965, historical consensus holds, they were there because there was no alternative. President Johnson's hand had been forced by the right-wing hawks and the Communists. The general public wholeheartedly supported defending South Vietnam, as did our allies in Europe. That's not really the case, argues Fredrik Logevall, in Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam. His provocative thesis--that Kennedy, Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, and Bundy chose to escalate American involvement when the war could have been avoided--is well supported by careful archival research and newly declassified documents. Logevall focuses on what he calls "The Long 1964"--18 critical months between August 1963 and February 1965, at the end of which President Johnson made the decision to "Americanize" the war. Despite many opportunities to negotiate a settlement, the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations were opposed to early negotiation--in part because they were worried about being seen as "soft on Communism" before the 1964 presidential election. Where this book is most interesting--and, in the long run, most valuable--is in Logevall's careful study of the conflict and American policymaking in international context. Looking at how the war played in London, Paris, Ottawa, Tokyo, Moscow, and Beijing--not just in Hanoi and Washington--reveals that even our allies had grave doubts about the probable outcome of a war. Both our allies and our enemies understood that "the Vietnam conflict's importance derived in large measure from its potential to threaten their own political standing--and their party's standing--at home." Compelling and controversial, Logevall's book is an excellent addition to the literature on the Vietnam War. --Sunny Delaney

Scathing & Illuminating Examination Of Why Vietnam....:
This fascinating, extremely readable, and carefully researched book by historian Frederik Logevall has an intriguing thesis closely paralleling that of several other emerging scholars regarding the origins and prosecution of the Vietnam War. Like David Kaiser's provocative indictment in "American Tragedy; Kennedy, Johnson, & The Origins Of The Vietnam War" of both the military and civilian advisors to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, the author presents a damning and quite convincing stream of evidence proving that it was in fact a series of individuals like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense Dean Rusk, and General William Westmoreland who arrogantly chose to pursue a war that many around them actively questioned and discouraged. The author's careful research shows a flood of documentary evidence indicating that these people and a number of like-minded others, deliberately chose to prosecute a war for which they had good reason to believe would not likely succeed. Unlike Kaiser in his excellent book, Professor Logevall chooses to concentrate impressively on a critical eighteen-month period spanning from the summer of 1963 to the early winter of 1965, and the fateful steps taken during that period toward a policy of escalation and direct involvement of American combat units. The author contends that any one of a number of important opportunities to step aside were deliberately ignored, often based on important information provided by key insiders such as McNamara. As the record also shows, this information was anything but the disinterested and objective assessment of the political, economic, and military situation on the ground in South Vietnam it was presented as. In this sense both President Kennedy and President Johnson were victims of a quite deliberate campaign of misinformation and self-serving worst-case analysis by Rusk, McNamara, and Westmoreland. It was in such a poisonous and duplicitous environment that Lyndon Johnson made a fateful series of decisions to escalate the war by "Americanizing" it, something Kennedy before him had quite insistently denied permission to do. The author also argues quite persuasively that both Kennedy and Johnson had stepped away from opportunities for disengaging from the involvement in Vietnam for domestic political reasons, including a concern with being seen as "soft" on communism in the period preceding the coming national elections of 1964. This is substantiated by Johnson's actions after Kennedy's assassination; while secretly initiating actions to escalate the war, Johnson self-consciously campaigned saying exactly the opposite. He understood the potential firestorm American involvement could have for both liberal and conservative criticism, and was therefore careful to mitigate his vulnerability by neutralizing it as a political factor until after the Presidential elections of 1964. Likewise, once committed to a policy of massive American participation in the war, Johnson feared the personal consequences both domestically and internationally were he to decide to withdraw and admit defeat. Yet world leaders almost uniformly distanced themselves from American involvement, and privately counseled Johnson to "cut and run". In addition, Johnson's own lack of appreciation for the potential damage our involvement in Vietnam might have on international relations resulted in a number of lost opportunities for détente and improvement in relations with both the Soviet Union and China. Based on his own personal frailties and the bad counsel of both his military and civilian advisors, he pursued the single most disastrous course imaginable; further escalation, condemning not only his own domestic program but nearly 60,000 American soldiers to untimely (and absolutely unnecessary) death. This is am intriguing, insightful, and important book, and the author writes both in an entertaining and accessible style. He mirrors the evidence presented in other recent books such as the aforementioned Kaiser tome, and also in Major H.R. McMaster's absorbing recent book, "Dereliction Of Duty; Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs Of Staff, And The Lies That Led to Vietnam", and handily helps to put the lie to the kind of neo-revisionist saber-rattling of armchair conservatives like Michael Lind ( one wonders if Lind was ever in the military; or if he is a "George W. Bush" kind of born-again macho clebrant of combat who has never had a shot fired at him, an armchair enthusiast who cheered from the sidelines as a passive noncombatant member of the Texas Air National Guard). Gee, let's fly planes over the vacant Texas tundra and we can call ourselves patriots! Lind would have us believe this was all God's work in his silly and wrong-headed narrative "The Necessary War". Since he was likely still in his nappies when the firestorm was raining all over the heads of the more than half million uneducated, largely blue-collar men and women we deployed at any one time to Vietnam, I wonder how he would know. Did he read about it at Yale? "Choosing War", on the other hand, is an excellent and carefully crafted work of scholarship, and one that helps to nail together a much more comprehensive understanding of how it was we were so badly and quite unnecessarily led into this most unfortunate of American wars.

Required reading for any serious student of the Viet Nam War:
I have just finished reading this superb book. Of my collection of over 450 books on the Viet Nam War this is without a doubt one of the most outstanding books I own. The author brilliantly demolishes the theory that the was was inevitable. He exposes the flawed thinking of the Johnson Administration as well as the downright deceit of some of Johnson's people. Alongside 'Dereliction of Duty' this book should be required reading for anyone who is serious about understanding the origin and nature of the Viet Nam War. This is the book Robert McNamara should have written instead of 'In Retrospect'. The book is not some stuffy academic treatise but wonderfully readable which I heartily recommend to any any student of history.

Escalation: By whom and why:
As the war in Vietnam escalated in 1994 and 95, I was a young naïve supporter of the war simply because I believed that whatever it took to stop and fight communism was justified. My first doubts about the justification of this war came when I would hear the causality figures at the end of each week on the nightly news. I can remember these figures e.g. 946 VC killed in the fighting this week; 94 Americans died. I simply did not believe that anyone knew how many VC were killed, and questioned the figures reported including those of American causalities. As things developed, I began to reassess my thoughts about the American involvement in this war. I read McNamara's "In Retrospect," Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie," Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History," But it was Fredrik Logevall's "Choosing War," that really gave me the insight to this conflict. It's the most enlightening account of the American involvement in Vietnam I've read to date. Last year I visted Ho Chi Minh City (formally Saigon). This is in itself was more of education than any of the books. It's my recommendation to all who are interested in the American involvement in Vietnam, to read this detailed and comprehensive account.

Choosing War:
Not only is Professor Logevall an excellent historian...he is an excellent teacher as well! I have taken one of his classes at UC Santa Barbara; they are the best and most popular classes on campus.

A good effort that comes up short:
Dr. Logevall does a tremendous job in detailing the events of 1964 and early 1965. However, I disagree with the heart of his thesis. That is, that President Johnson and his advisors were in a position where they could choose something other than "Americanizing" the war. Knowing the temperment of Johnson (based on Caro's biography so far) and the powerful hold that NSC-68 (a loss for freedom anywhere is a loss for freedom everywhere...\oI am paraphrasing\c)had on decision makers of the time, it is clear that there were alternatives to escalation, but there was no CHOICE during this time. The last thing a person like Johnson was capable of was allowing himself to be labeled as weak in the face of communist aggression, especially by Republicans in Congress. Its like trying to instruct a Manichaean about the merits of the color gray. That is my only source of heartburn with the book.