"McGB all wrong"

That's what McGeorge Bundy, National Security Adviser to Kennedy and Johnson, noted on a memo to Johnson he had written 29 years earlier. The memo asserted that South Vietnam was not lost and was not going to be lost. This appears in a fascinating review in the NY Review by William Pfaff of "Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam."

Pfaff likens the War on Terror with the Cold War. In both cases we believe that our very existence is in doubt unless we take decisive action.

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The book reveals that Kennedy invited General Douglas MacArthur to the White House to get his views on the Vietnam situation. MacArthur is quoted as saying "it would be foolish to fight on the Asiatic continent", "the future..should be determined at the diplomatic table" and "even if we poured a million infantry soldiers into that continent, we would still find ourselves outnumbered on every side."

Pfaff believes that there are parallels between today's wars and Vietnam. The belief that we are in mortal danger is one such parallel. However, Kennedy resisted that pressure, it does not appear that Obama has. The domino theory is advanced as a primary reason to resist today and 50 years ago; the theory has not been exactly on target - vide Vietnam today. The military wants to prove that Vietnam was not a waste; we can win a guerilla war. Some still believe that Congress and the American people - not the military - lost Vietnam.

Pfaff closes by listing the table of contents of the book he is reviewing:

1. Counselors Advise but Presidents Decide.
2. Never Trust the Bureaucracy to Get It Right.
3. Politics is the Enemy of Strategy.
4. Conviction Without Rigor Is a Strategy for Disaster.
5. Never Deploy Military Means in Pursuit of Indeterminate Ends.
6. Intervention Is a Presidential Choice, Not an Inevitability.

Read items 5 and 6 one more time.