Hugh Van Es / AP

Hard Slog: Our strategy in Vietnam sought stalemate, not victory. Here, a wounded U.S. paratrooper near the border of Laos in 1969.

BOOK REVIEW

What Vietnam Teaches Us

A new look at the brilliant yet flawed McGeorge Bundy illuminates mistakes we're still making today.

By Henry Kissinger | NEWSWEEK

Published Oct 25, 2008

From the magazine issue dated Nov 3, 2008

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For America, the Vietnam War was the traumatic event of the second half of the last century. Entered into with a brash self-confidence after a decade and a half of creative and successful foreign policy, our engagement ended with America as divided as it had not been since the Civil War. As a result, Congress cut off aid to Vietnam two years after the troops had been withdrawn, and the last Americans left Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) by helicopter from the roof of our embassy. No account of that period adequate to the emotion and drama of the time has yet appeared. The dwindling number of witnesses of the period remains traumatized by its passions or divided by their own pasts. For younger leaders, an understanding of the controversies of their fathers has proved elusive, obliging them to slide into the same dilemmas in their contemporary policies.

"Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam" does not fill that vacuum. It does, however, illuminate the five years (1961–1966) during which the defense of South Vietnam was Americanized. Tracing the efforts of one of the most prominent public servants of the time, it seeks to come to terms with America's entry into its tragedy.

McGeorge Bundy was dean of the faculty when I was at Harvard. For an entire generation of Harvard graduates, Bundy was the beau ideal of the academician-activist whose intellectual acuity was matched by devotion to public service. Brilliant and fiercely articulate, he was a warm and thoughtful human being behind the Boston Brahmin crust. He had had a spectacular academic career. Elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows, he became eligible for a faculty appointment without having to acquire a doctorate. He became the dean of the faculty at the age of 34. At Harvard the conviction was widespread that the next change of administration (whether Republican or Democrat) would find Bundy (himself a Republican) in high office. Many of his contemporaries saw in him a future secretary of state.

In 1961, John Kennedy appointed Bundy as national-security adviser. At that time, this office was considered an essentially administrative position. In one of the most spectacular career misjudgments ever, Paul Nitze turned it down in favor of a midlevel job in an operating department. Bundy created the modern portfolio of the national-security adviser. Since the flow of memoranda from various departments concerned with national security had become too vast, Bundy's office turned into a clearinghouse. Ever since, the National Security Council has prepared—or, at least, is in perhaps the best position to prepare—the range of options among which the president chooses (including, if the occasion requires, options not put forward by any department). If that task is neglected, the president flies blindly, driven from crisis to crisis, without the guidance of strategy.

For five years, Bundy performed his duties with the articulateness and deftness with which he had managed the Harvard faculty. This included the Berlin crisis, the Cuban missile period and the nuclear test-ban agreement. Then his grip loosened with the decline in the fortunes of the Vietnam War, whose public advocate and, to some extent, co-manager he had become. He retired in 1966, never to hold public office again.

After leaving office, Bundy became the target of David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest," which used him to illustrate the thesis that the cream of the establishment led America astray in Vietnam. The book set the tone for most of the subsequent assessment of the war. Bundy bore the opprobrium with dignity, never answering the criticisms directly and perhaps privately agreeing with some of them. Toward the end of his life, he began, with a research assistant, to assemble materials for reconstructing the events that had pushed America from hope to despair. He died before he could begin the manuscript.

Bundy's researcher, Gordon M. Goldstein, has now turned their collaborative effort and some fragments of Bundy's writing into "Lessons in Disaster." It's his own effort, representing the researcher's view, not authorized by the Bundy family. It's also a strange yet fascinating book. No one is said to be a hero to his valet; this book permits one to extend the truism to research assistants. "Lessons in Disaster" is relentlessly hostile to its subject, not so much to Bundy's person—whom it treats respectfully—as his policies. With the hindsight of some decades, it helps explain many facets of Bundy's performance yet misses its tragedy. The book is an illuminating window into a seminal time. It is also further evidence of the inability of America to transcend the debates that tore it apart a generation ago.

Member Comments

Posted By: Concerned Canadian @ 11/01/2008 5:21:33 PM

WELL SAID BILL COSBY !!

'They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English.
I can't even talk the way these people talk:
Why you ain't,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be...

And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.

And then I heard the father talk.

Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads.
You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.

In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.

People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an Education, and now
We've got these knuckleheads walking around.

The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.

These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids.

$500 sneakers for what?

And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.

I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.

Where were you when he was 2?

Where were you when he was 12?

Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?

And where is the father? Or who is his father?

People putting their clothes on backward:
Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?

People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something?

Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?

What part of Africa did this come from??

We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa ...

I say this all of the time. It would be like white people saying they are European-American. That is totally stupid.

I was born here, and so were my parents and grand parents and, very likely my great grandparents. I don't have any connection to Africa, no more than white Americans have to Germany , Scotland , England , Ireland , or the Netherlands . The same applies to 99 percent of all the black Americans as regards to Africa . So stop, already! ! !

With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap .....And all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.

We have got to take the neighborhood back.

People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now.

We have millionaire football players who cannot read.

We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job.

Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.

We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.

" We cannot blame the white people any longer."
Dr. William Henry 'Bill' Cosby, Jr., Ed.D.
Posted By: Concerned Canadian @ 11/01/2008 2:19:18 PM

99 percent of African American registered Democrats in Mississippi voted for Barack Obama and not
Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries...case closed ..nuff said ...blacks are voting for Barack
only because he's black too ...and thats what is so detrimental to the problem in the US politics today
and it will greatly impact the rest of the free world. I also predict the next candidate to emerge from the
Democratic party down the road will be a Latino...why? ... because there will be a lot of Latinos and they want the power just like the African Americans want now...no matter the cost ...no matter the consequences ...they have a blind ambition to get one of their race in the White House...thank you Oprah!!
Posted By: Concerned Canadian @ 11/01/2008 2:02:15 PM

Two central issues in the election Barack Obama is wrong and misleading:

1) No tax increases to those earning $250,000 or less promised by Obama, then he
lowered this figure to $200,000, then the "Gift that keeps on Giving" Joe Biden says
the number is $150,000 and just yesterday Gov. Bill Richardson says the figure is
$120,000 ...and now a videotape is disclosed where it shows Obama recently stated
that in the interest of fairness with taxes is around $80,000.00!!
Sounds like good old fashion Democratic ???reverse auction ???tax policy they implement
after they break their campaign promise to the American people.

2) On national security ...Obama???s own VP running mate Joe Biden ... ???mark my words,
this guy Obama is going to be tested by a generated international crisis within 6
months of his Presidency..I guarantee it??? Obama will meet with USA's enemies with
no pre-conditions!
John McCain???s surge strategy in Iraq is working and its saving the lives of young
American men and women in uniform serving there...Obama won't admit to this day
the surge is working and he voted to cut funding for these military forces !!

John McCain is Commander-In-Chief material ....Obama is just a cardboard "cut-out"
candidate of the DNC.