At the very time that they were talking about keeping their options open, they were closing them off. They were not questioning the given or the assumption of Vietnam; they were determining that the country would stand, like it or not, able to stand or not. They were not distinguishing between Communism in Vietnam and why it was successful and the exterior Communist threat to other countries in the region. And they were not analyzing to what degree the people of South Vietnam did or did not sustain the Vietcong. McNamara made his assessments in a vacuum, and the kind of challenge to them that
...more
