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"In Retrospect"

In Retrospect
By: Robert S. McNamara

Vietnam had long since been a place of controversy, and where the American government focused its fear of communism for many years. Throughout the Kennedy and Johnson administrations the government maintained that the war between the Communist north and the south could have only been won by the South Vietnamese, and that US military could not have won it for them. It stressed that the fall of South Vietnam to communism would threaten the rest of the western world.

McNamara's book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, begins with a dozen or so interesting but terse pages on the author's background; his schooling; his meeting, and marriage to, Margaret McKinstry Craig, to whose memory the book is dedicated; his wartime service as an air corps statistical control officer; and his postwar service with the Ford Motor Company. He had been president of that company for only seven weeks when John Kenn...

Posted by: Jessica Linton

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