The War Managers

Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1977. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. 24 cm. ix, [3], 216 pages. Footnotes. Bibliography. Index. DJ is price clipped, worn and soiled. Gift inscription, not from author, on fep. Douglas Kinnard, a 1944 graduate of West Point, served in combat in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, retiring as a brigadier general. After receiving a Ph.D. from Princeton, he taught at the University of Vermont, retiring as a professor emeritus of political science. Subsequently, he was on the faculty of the Naval War College and the National Defense University. The landmark work, revealing that a large percentage of the Army generals who managed the war were uncertain of its objective, was followed by other highly regarded books, including one that recast the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower in a more positive light, and "The Secretary of Defense," an analysis of the evolution of the American national defense process. A penetrating view of the Vietnam War from the perspectives of the 173 U.S. Army generals then in command, based on Gen. Kinnard's postwar surveys and interviews. Army Brig. Gen. Douglas Kinnard was decorated for combat service in Vietnam and later as a college professor who conducted a high-profile survey showing that many of his fellow generals thought the war should not have been fought. Many historians have spoken critically of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which cost more than 58,000 American lives, but Gen. Kinnard provided a strikingly atypical voice of dissent against the war. A West Point graduate, he served in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam before embarking on a second career as an academic. He was the author of eight books, most notably "The War Managers" (1977), which reported that a large portion of American generals were critical of how the Vietnam War was run. Among other concerns, they said that the enemy casualties were exaggerated to show progress and that U.S. military tactics such as search-and-destroy missions were ineffective. He based his findings on a questionnaire sent to more than 170 generals who had been assigned to Vietnam between 1965 and 1972, the peak years of U.S. involvement. Gen. Kinnard sought only information based on firsthand knowledge and promised anonymity to any general who responded. More than 100 participated; Gen. Kinnard excluded himself from the survey. "I never thought there was a military mind in the crude meaning of the word - the notion that military people think like cavemen," he told the New York Times in 1977. "But I always thought there was a sort of military mind-set. Perhaps there is. But for the group who managed the war, it doesn't seem to be so." His survey, published by the University Press of New England, showed that 53 percent of the responding generals thought the war was not worth the death toll and civil disruption back home or believed that it should have ended at the advisory stage, the Times reported. After the book's release, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. military operations in the Vietnam War, said he agreed with some of the concerns raised by the officers quoted by Gen. Kinnard. "There was ample reason for us to get involved" in the war, he said. But he added, "We weren't allowed to win it." In 2011, military historian Cecil B. Currey wrote in the Journal of Third World Studies that Gen. Kinnard's "remarkable book" should resonate with the generals fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Generals were so deluded they had no idea what they were doing or how to evaluate success in prosecuting the 'other war' of winning hearts and minds," Currey wrote in his review after the book was reissued. "One pathetic general reported that he was pursuing this goal by sending divisional laundry to Vietnamese women to clean. Free fire zones killed hundreds of innocent Vietnamese as did curfews laid on people without watches.".