Adding to your good summary, the book basically ends in 1964 saying the die was cast by McNamara’s failures and Johnson’s subterfuge. Everything after that was preordained failure and McNamara knew it.
That’s right. The die was already cast before our first combat troops landed.
Anyone who believes that we had that war won at any point will be sadly disabused of that idea by the information McMaster uncovered in his book.
What they will learn is that LBJ and McNamara never had any plan for winning the war. LBJ had no intention of committing the vast resources that he was told would be required to defeat North Vietnam. It was nothing more than a show to “demonstrate resolve”, brought to us by the likes of McNaughton and the two Bundy brothers, lawyers, who were cavalier about the price to be paid by maimed and killed GIs.
When Nixon inherited the mess his goal was ‘Vietnamization’, training the ARVN to be able to carry on the fighting on their own. We did that, but South Vietnam was dependent upon America ammunition and fuel to do so. This is what the 1972 ‘Watergate’ Congress cut off entirely, dooming South Vietnam to communist conquest two and a half years later.