The book “Looking Back: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam” by former US Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was published by Truth National Political Publishing House exactly 30 years after its introduction to readers in the US.
Robert S. McNamara was the US Secretary of Defense during the fierce period of the war in Vietnam.
In his book, for the first time after many years of struggle and torment, he had to publicly admit that: “We - those who worked in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations - participated in the decisions about Vietnam... But we were wrong, terribly wrong.”
It can be said that this is an unprecedented confession in American history. Therefore, as soon as it was published, the book shocked American public opinion and became one of the best-selling books in the US in the first months of 1995.
In his memoir, rather than attempting to comprehensively describe his seven years as Secretary of Defense, former Secretary of Defense McNamara chose to write only about Vietnam in a coherent narrative of the evolution of American policy that would otherwise have been impossible.
With 11 chapters and 1 appendix, the book “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam” by Robert S. McNamara is a document of special value, recording the decisions of the US administration starting from President Kennedy, the key stages in the process of US involvement in Vietnam, as well as the lessons learned about Vietnam. Without avoidance, without embellishment, through the memoirs distilled by the author from many highly reliable sources, as well as from the memories of the decision makers themselves, the book’s content “helps people understand why the war happened and what lessons it left behind, what needs to be done so that the tragedy of war does not repeat itself in the future.”
In the book’s preface, former US Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara’s son, Craig McNamara, hopes that through the book, Americans and Vietnamese – who once stood on opposite sides of the war – can look back at the past thoroughly and together heal the wounds of war. Those wounds still ache as an inconsolable reminder of the brutality, absurdity and persistence of war.
As someone who was born and raised when the entire nation was steadfastly carrying out the resistance war against the US to save the country, General Vo Nguyen Giap's son - Mr. Vo Hong Nam, when reading McNamara's Memoirs, expressed his impression of the book's content.
He believes that the book is not an excuse, nor an indictment, but simply a confrontation of conscience, wanting to find the root cause of America's mistakes in the war of aggression against Vietnam, to courageously admit past mistakes and wish to reconcile Vietnam-US relations.
With that meaning, the reprinting of this book in Vietnam contributes to an effort to demonstrate the progress in the historical awareness dialogue of the two nations and peoples, together deepening understanding, empathy and mutual respect, towards the future./.
Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/phat-hanh-sach-viet-ve-chien-tranh-my-viet-nam-cua-cuu-bo-truong-quoc-phong-my-post1045007.vnp
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