“I Made Mistakes”

Speaking to an advisor in 1966 about America’s escalation of forces in Vietnam, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara confessed: “We’ve made mistakes in Vietnam ... I’ve made mistakes. But the mistakes I made are not the ones they say I made.” In “I Made Mistakes”, Aurélie Basha i Novosejt provides a fresh and controversial examination of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara’s decisions during the Vietnam War. Although McNamara is remembered as the architect of the Vietnam War, Basha i Novosejt draws on new sources – including the diaries of his advisor and confidant John T. McNaughton – to reveal a man who resisted the war more than most. As Secretary of Defense, he did not want the costs associated with a new international commitment in Vietnam, but he sacrificed these misgivings to instead become the public face of the war out of a sense of loyalty to the President.

Aurélie Basha i Novosejt is a Lecturer in American History at the University of Kent in Canterbury.