Dereliction of Duty (1997 book)

Blame for leaders

McMaster blamed leaders in Washington for losing the Vietnam War, writing:

The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of The New York Times, or on the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C., even before Americans assumed sole responsibility for the fighting in 1965 and before they realized the country was at war. . . . [It was] a uniquely human failure, the responsibility for which was shared by President Johnson and his principal military and civilian advisors.

Other themes

The book examines the failure of Robert McNamara and U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's staff, alongside the military and particularly the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to provide a successful plan of action to pacify either a Viet Cong insurgency or decisively defeat the North Vietnamese Army.

McMaster details why military actions intended to indicate "resolve" or to "communicate" ultimately failed when trying to accomplish sparsely detailed, confusing, and conflicting military objectives. In his opinion, the military is to be used appropriately in order to meet objective military targets and goals.

Reviews

Unusual for an active-duty officer, McMaster scolded the U.S. government for its

arrogance, weakness, lying in pursuit of self-interest [and] abdication of responsibility to the American people"

Retired Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard said that the book

is built around examining and interpreting four ... key Washington decisions that were of major influence on the American involvement in Indochina:

1. the August 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution
2. the February 1965 decision to conduct air strikes against North Vietnam
3. the March 1965 decision to introduce American ground troops into Vietnam
4. the July 1965 decisions to introduce substantial US forces while not mobilizing the reserves

A review in The New York Times by military historian Ronald H. Spector praised many aspects of the book, but criticized the author's emphasis on the shortcomings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the outcome of the war, as opposed to the strengths of North Vietnamese military strategy and tactics. Spector also notes that McMaster, like earlier authors, presented a

picture of Lyndon B. Johnson as a President chiefly concerned about keeping Vietnam from becoming a political issue, and with his portrayal of Johnson's advisers as men possessing a distinctive combination of arrogance, deviousness and disdain for expertise different from their own.

Influence

In a CNN report on Iraq in October 2006, the influence of the book in military circles is noted:

Pace said he and the other joint chiefs were debriefing commanders just back from the front lines, including one colonel recognized as a rising star and creative thinker—Major General H.R. McMaster, the author of 1997 book Dereliction of Duty, considered the seminal work on military's responsibility during Vietnam to confront their civilian bosses when strategy was not working.