The Best and the Brightest

As I write this review, the Taliban have entered Kabul with little apparent resistance. 20 years after going in after 9/11, all guns and modern technology blazing, the modern armies the the west (principally the USA) are staring ignominious defeat in the face, once again to a 3rd World rag-tag force. Eerily, the situation in Afghanistan looks like the fall of Saigon all over again.This book describes brilliantly how a group of exceptionally talented individuals at the highest level of the US government got Vietnam so terribly wrong. Intelligence, however, is not everything. As these individuals took power after Kennedy’s election in 1960, they looked an impressive bunch. However, as one seasoned political hack observed, he would have felt much happier if they had “ever actually run something”. Intelligence brings baggage with it, namely arrogance and hubris. LBJ decided, after JFKs death, to keep the ‘best and the brightest’ in place. This would prove a pivotal decision.This book analyses the fundamental mistakes made as the Vietnam conflict escalated. The Democrats, wounded by the apparent charge that they had ‘lost China’ a decade before, were terrified that they would forever be seen as weak in the face of communism. This fear helped shape their future decisions.Their strategy was based on a number of flawed assumptions. Firstly, that a 3rd world army was no match for a modern one, that AirPower was decisive, the South Vietnamese government would get better and win local support, and that in the short term Ho Chi Minh would be forced to negotiate. Lets consider each in turn.The Generals were trained and had experience of fighting conventional European style wars. The Vietcong could just melt away, strike at will and then disappear. Hanoi could also reinforce battalions with ease and send them down the Ho Chi Minh trail. The US, thousands of miles from home, had Congress and the public to deal with. Also, Ho Chi Minh was fighting for an idea- they were in it to change their country. The southern government was corrupt, repressive and unpopular, with coups a normal occurrence. No wonder the natives flocked to Ho Chi Minh. The ‘best’ also had a condescending view of the Vietnamese- surely these people, simple as they are, will see what we are doing for them? However, this book explains that the conflict owes at least as much to Nationalism as it did to Communism. The French Indo-China war had done for the colonial power, enhancing the growing sense of Vietnamese nationhood, which was further developed by subsequent US involvement. The fact that the French, a decent army, was beaten should have sounded alarm bells for the US, but again this apparent contempt for all this not American seems incredible in retrospect. AirPower alone, was never enough to force Hanoi, fighting in their own backyard and knowledgable of the terrain, able to replenish losses at will, to the negotiating table. It was a fantasy. The author describes Vietnam as a ‘tar-baby’ the more you struggle the more you get stuck.Finally, the US simply underestimated Ho Chi Minh as an adversary. Also, the book describes how the ‘reports’ that reached the desks of the Pentagon were always hopelessness optimistic - a lesson to all about the dangers of subordinates telling you what you want to hear rather than the truth.The best and the brightest is a seminal work that everyone who aspires to office should read. What’s clear is how few people appear to have done so.One haunting section has proven to be eerily prescient as the Talibon, today, enter Kabul with little apparent resistance. In the mid 60’s Robert McNamara was asked by a question by a subordinate. What, he asked, was to stop the Vietcong just waiting for the day when inevitably we would have to go home? Would they not just take over? McNamara paused, and replied that he had not thought of that. And so in 2021, over 40 years since the fall of Saigon, we see the exact same playing out again in Kabul.The Best and the Brightest is an important lesson for all of those who believe to much in themselves.

I found this book a fascinating. While having a basic understanding of the early years of the US effort in Vietnam, this book served as an in-depth introduction and then some. I did find it slow-going, with my having to refer to past pages or Google to keep a handle on the names & personalities, but just couldn’t put it down. It features a great deal of background to the US role in Vietnam as well as the machinations underway in the White House throughout this. I came away shaking my head at McNamara’s “data-led” approach, parsing the events into data - often misleading - and using that to make assumptions or increase efforts.In particular I really liked the background on the ‘loss of China’, and its ramifications on the State Departnent, McCarthyism and US strategy towards communism - and the erroneous belief that all SE Asian communist nations were extended arms of Moscow, rather than each separate movement being indigenous.

It's good but it's about two hundred pages too long and the author gets lost in his own verbal verbosity. Every character has the same bio which Halberstam takes ages on: they were godlike in their youth (which he describes in wildly poetic terms) then Vietnam bought them to their knees (which he describes with a King Lear like Shakespearean flourish). It gets slightly laborious. Read it by all means but prepare for a good yawn three quarters of the way through.

You don't buy this for an easy read but the subject is fascinating for those of us of a certain age, when Vietnam dominated the news. It is reassuring to learn that the most intelligent people are sometimes, or in some ways, pretty thick

A superb account of the key players and the decision making that led America deeper into Vietnam. The history surrounding the fall of the French in Indo-China and the loss of China to the Communists together with an explanation of domestic political issues is fully explored putting the decisions of the 1960's in context.An excellent book.

great book, once you start, you cannot stop until you finish

no issues

Fascinating/comprehensive book about American history and Vietnam. Very readable and enjoyable