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Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era. By Robert Buztanco. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xiv, 386 pp. $29.96, ISBN 0-521-48046-9.)
Robert Buzzanco, an assistant professor of history at the University of Houston, adapted this book from his 1993 dissertation, supervised by Professor Michael J. Hogan at Ohio State University. Declaring in his opening sentence that "Americans are still telling lies about Vietnam," Buzzanco believes "the specter of Vietnam has continued to haunt American political life and culture to this day." The book, he says, is "a response to [this] legacy."
"Four interrelated themes," he asserts, inform this work: (a) criticisms by military persons of the Vietnam War and the role of the United States there, (b) civilian responsibility for decisions to fight in Indochina, (c) political maneuvering between civilian...