Key to Failure

by Norman B. Hannah

Publisher: Madison Books, 1987. First Edition. Hardcover. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0819164402
• ISBN13: 9780819164407
• Release Date: November 1987
• Publisher: Madison Books
• Length: 335 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

If you can read only one book on the Vietnam War ...

There are now thousands of books about various aspects of the Vietnam War. I have read at least a hundred of them, trying to understand how the mighty U.S. could have been humbled by tiny North Vietnam. If you could read only one book -- and if you were trying to understand how America could lose a war to a 4th-rate outfit like North Vietnam -- this is the book to read. Author Hannah was uniquely positioned to see the war strategically, and to discover how and why critical decisions were made to ensure that America could not win (Hannah served as political advisor to the U.S. Commander-in-Chief, Pacific). He focuses on Laos, which he reveals as the key to America's failure. Despite the advice of all his generals in the field, as well as that of the South Vietnamese military and political leadership, Lyndon Johnson chose to hearken to the self-serving "political" advice of Averill Harriman, refusing to allow U.S. forces to cut North Vietnam's supply line through Laos into the South. Harriman's rationale is mysterious. Perhaps he just wanted to protect his exalted position as the essential man on Vietnam war policy. Johnson's nemesis was his irrational fear of "a wider war," and his lack of confidence in his own strategic abilities. The result was an endless war that could have been ended in a matter of months by a simple policy amendment allowing America, with its overwhelming preponderance of military force, to close down the enemy's supply lines through Laos, and thus quickly dry up the "insurgency" in the South. Richard Nixon, advised by the militarily obtuse Henry Kissinger, chose to continue Johnson's disastrous policy. If you have read other books that left you less than clear about how the U.S. could have been so foolish, this is the one that will cut through the confusion and show why the outcome was unnecessary but inevitable, given the decision to avoid winning. Hannah deals in specifics, citing names, dates, and places, and leaving no doubt about who was responsible for America's first lost war, and the abandonment of America's Vietnamese allies to a vicious tyranny.