Miller Center Presidential Oral History

[Penn]

The interview with Madeleine Albright is fascinating, they all are actually. Insightful, candid, and rarely accessible information make this material time well spent.

Having read her book, I chose Albright as a starting point to introduce this source here, This project presents a very interesting perspective on how policy is formed, decision are made, and responsibilities are met.

http://millercenter.org/oralhistory

http://millercenter.org/president/clinton/oralhistory

http://millercenter.org/president/cl...ine-k-albright

[Penn]

Now there are a few here who were deployed under Casper Weinberg, any thoughts?

His Interview: http://millercenter.org/president/re...par-weinberger

The doctrine grew out of the Vietnam experience. I’d been out of office all that time, was not in the Army or anything, but the Vietnam war was the first war we ever went into that we did not intend to win. I basically took the idea—with my basic unhappiness with that—and put the idea together that yes, we should use American troops when it was a matter of supreme national interest. And when it was, then we should not only use them, but we should use them with a clearly stated objective that we could achieve, and stay there and support them until we had achieved it, and then leave. But we shouldn’t go in piecemeal, and we shouldn’t do what we did in Vietnam, which was to feed twenty thousand, thirty thousand, a hundred thousand—each number was supposed to be enough to contain the north. We never wanted to defeat the north. This was a terrible thing to do, to ask people—our troops—to commit their lives to a cause that we didn’t consider important enough to win.

[Penn]

I hope some here are accessing this resource. It fills in so many gaps and addresses many of the question that have been asked here in various threads, with regard to policy and what were they thinking, with that in mind, if you have not read SoS Schultz interview, you should. Then read Kathleen Osborne interview, Reagans personal assistants interview contrasted to Schultz. It is truly worth the time.