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Originally Posted by CharlieAnderson
Do you think Vietnam could have been avoided?
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I'm currently reading "Road to disaster: a new history of American's descent into Vietnam" by Brian VanDeMark. Two things I found noteworthy, just from the introduction.
1. VanDeMark is trying to meld history and psychology, showing when and how our minds can follow incorrect ideas and create bad decisions, given that we humans operate under incomplete information and time stress. It's certainly an interesting attempt to look at decision making.
2. VanDeMark has previously worked as assistant on the memoirs of Clark Clifford and Robert MacNamara, so he brings some of their insight directly into the book. I've never been a fan of MacNamara, but he was a smart man who did try hard. He was also very introspective, and spent a lot of time during and after the war to try and understand where things went wrong. It's unfortunate that he couldn't get to the right answer in time.
There are very illuminating chapters up front on the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, useful to show how the Kennedy-Johnson decision-makers worked, and how the civilian heads began to mistrust the military side of the Pentagon. (I'll point out that the Joint Chiefs aren't doing so well in finding a better path, either. My reading so far is between Gulf of Tonkin and the arrival of the Marines.)
I should note this book is very focused on what happened in Washington, as the Cabinet and NSC members are the operators that are studied.