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by Amazon Customer Reviews
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/themoneysit08-20
Osher Doctorow, Ph.D. reviewed:
| | 14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:  Professor David Kaiser's American Tragedy, May 8, 2001 Professor David Kaiser of the Strategy and Policy Department of the Naval War College tells us the real story behind the bureaucrats who put us into Vietnam, and in doing so lives up to the highest traditions of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps which have generally been far ahead of the other services in their resistance to bureaucratic pressures from politicians. The CIA refused to provide Kaiser with anything but token documents, violating the Freedom of Information Act. Kaiser shows how politicians including Presidents Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson grew up under the spell of Churchill's anti-appeasement speeches to believe that the USA had to become the World Policeman. When he became President, Eisenhower began U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia covertly and the Joint Chiefs of Staff except General Shoup of the Marines were badgered into accepting this. When John F. Kennedy became President, both his Senate and Navy service led him to oppose intervention for a long time, in agreement with the U.S. Senate Democrats (Mansfield, Humphrey, etc.) and isolationist Republicans (Dirksen, etc.). The State Department Bureaucrats (who controlled the CIA) and their allies in related departments and the Joint Chiefs so badgered and pressured Kennedy that he eventually collapsed under their bombardment and agreed to intervention in Laos. When Johnson came in as President, he made full scale intervention. Some readers may recall that I have reviewed biographies of Field Marshalls Montgomery and Slim of Great Britain and Marshall/General Zhukov of Russia but not Eisenhower. The Allies produced 4 creative geniuses in World WarII: Montgomery, Slim, Zhukov, and Admiral Nimitz. Eisenhower was not one of them. He was then and later more suited to bureaucratic Ingenious Follower status than to individual Creative Genius status, like Lyndon Johnson. Our British and French allies opposed the intervention (Churchill would probably have opposed it too) not because of De Gaulle's *intransigence* as the news media claimed, but because they are the two nations with the most creative geniuses (along with Italy) in world history. When all is said and done, World War II was needed to defend the USA, but most wars are not and were not (like World War I, which was a bureaucratic war and nothing more). I hope that we start thinking more about jobs and education and environment at home and less about creating overseas what we cannot do at home.
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