Mac Bundy/Lessons in Disaster
Coondog
buck stopped with the president. That is also my belief but I don’t
think that gives the advisors a free pass. Not by a long shot.
And we have another Jack wouldn’t have escalated the war as Johnson
did. Perhaps Goldstein has some new insight. I doubt it.
I just ordered the book, Peter, but I am far behind in my reading. I
used to read a chapter a night but now I read four pages and go to
sleep. One more negative aspect of now being an old man I guess.
Bill Clarke
Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam
by Gordon M. Goldstein
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
“Among the surprising revelations: late in life Bundy came to regret
his hawkish ways, although he maintained to the end that the
presidents, not their advisers, were primarily responsible for the
outcome of the war. Vietnam, he said, was overall, a war we should not
have fought.”
From Booklist
“Therefore, this work does not derive from Bundy’s memoir; it is
Goldstein’s negatively critical consideration of Bundy’s role on
Vietnam. Flavored with anecdotes of Goldstein’s interactions with
Bundy as his research assistant, the narrative conveys Bundy’s hawkish
recommendations to JFK and LBJ, expresses Goldstein’s belief that the
former would not have escalated the war as Johnson did, and hints that
Bundy before his death might have been preparing a recantation on
Vietnam.” A vital volume for Vietnam War collections.