The Pentagon Papers

I read the first hundred pages of the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers were a collection of documents assembled by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara containing secret information about the the Vietnam War and the United State's involvement in it. This included secret political, economic, and military decisions made by several administrations. The first hundred pages scrutinized the US's political and military decisions and compared them with the agreements made in the Geneva Accords of 1954 simply to show how the US flouted the Geneva Accords. First, it discussed paramilitary operations; the military had sent a navy Seals group to South Vietnam to first train South Vietnamese people to conduct secret operations and then secondly to wage pyschological war on North Vietnam to devastate the North Vietnamese trust in their communist government. This flouted an agreement prohibiting direct involvement in the Indochina region from Western countries made in the Geneva Accords. Then, it also discussed President Eisenhower's opinion on the Geneva Accords; Eisenhower identified it as a huge defeat and a massive forward stride of communism, which accounts for his authorization of paramilitary operations.

So far, I think the book is great. It's very intriguing because it divulges secret information that is not included in the textbooks. I also liked the book because it zoomed forward even though it was nonfiction. The authors' writing styles were direct and clear, so it was easy to understand; I could extract the information and then race off through the pages. Also, the authors didn't dwell on events or smother them in thorough detail, which accelerated the book and made it much easier and more enjoyable to read.

The book prompted me to contemplate where the line should be drawn on how much information the government can keep from the people of the USA. I know that some information is so important that the government has to keep it from the public. However, the people of the United States pay their taxes and elect politicians into office; as a result, they deserve to know some of that secret information. Also, my reading has hauled my mind to a shocking revelation: the government's ability to keep information can corrupt them and cause them to not serve the interests of the people. For example, American citizens may not want a war in the Middle-East, but the government can conduct secret operations in the Middle-East with Navy-Seals but with their power to keep things secret can conceal these operations from public knowledge. Therefore, they are not fulfilling the interests of the American people and are therefore sliding the power from the people to the few government individuals in the Executive Branch, but the power belongs to the people. 

However, I still have faith in our government and I refuse to believe that our government would ever deviate from their task to serve the American people's interests.

Overall, this was a great book and I recommend it to people who are interested in history and who possess a strong interest that can endure throughout the entire 500 page book.