Perspective Based Upon Good Scholarship
Zhou Enlai is reputed to have responded to the French Ambassador to China in the '50s when he asked what Zhou though was the influence of the French Revolution: "Its too early to tell." This book is a reaffirmation of the wisdom of that statement. Mark Moyar has provided those of us who served in Vietnam with a trove of information that we did not know. The book relies upon original sources not available to the journalists who were so critical in the 60s. His conclusions with regard to how the war could have been more successfully fought can be debated, which probably would suite him just fine. His treatment of the domino theory, important at the time, but forgotten later is worth the read by itself. He has added substantially to the historiography of the time. We can only hope that he continues and finishes the history to 1975. It looks as if the Department of Defense may realize the worth of someone who is as diligent as he is. (Certainly it would be unfortunate if that were left to amusing history departments such as that at the University of Iowa. It evidently prides itself more in serving the political views of the voters in the county in which it is located than history. It denied Moyar even an interview for a position.) No one is more interested in getting an accurate assessment of a war than those whose lives may some day depend upon fighting another one.
Some of us came away from the Vietnam war with an abiding belief in overwhelming force which is what Moyar details was lacking in Vietnam. Colin Powell certainly did as the first Gulf War evidences. Many oppose war no matter what the cause and they have a right to do so. However, if the administration and the congress decide that military action is called for they should be obligated to provide the will, means and leadership to make it successful. Incremental and limited war such as the one in Vietnam, which is described in great detail in this book, should be relegated to the dustbin of histroy. National will, including what inspires and sustains it, needs to be further examined.
A very important study
This book gives a very good account of the first ten years of the Vietnam war, ending just as LBJ was beggining the large American troop increases that would transform the war. Instead of being one of those books that wants to examine the 'origins' of the war with a view towards assigning blame for America's failure and tyring to figure out how America could have disentangled itself earlier, this book instead asks 'how could America have won' and 'who was responsible for our failure and our perception of early hopelessness?'
There is a need for such a book to fill the gap in scholarship on the early years of the war (rather than examinations of the late years, Nixon's Vietnam War (Modern War Studies)), when America truly was involved in advising the operation rather than directing it and literally sinking the country under the weight of 800,000 boots of its soldiers.
This book is 'revisionist' insofar as it does not accept the maxim that 'the war was a failure from the start and could never be won'. For those that understand other successful counter-insurgencies, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, it is clear that Vietnam could have gone very differently. The author may have overextended himself in complaining that authors and journalists such as halberstam are at all to blame for the failure, they are to blame for the perception of the inevitable failure. But it was the U.S armed forces and her allies, such as Diem, who receives a great deal of praise here, that were certainly responsible alongside the Communists.
A very neccesary and important book that will interests scholars of Vietnam as well as those with a generral interest in the war and war making in general.
Seth J. Frantzman
Great Perspective
I read this book during the three weeks I was visiting Vietnam with my family, 39 years after my first "vacation" there. I really enjoyed the historic background information on Vietnam and the formation of the country and it's relations with neighboring countries. While I was there in 1968 I always wondered what the plan was an although this book ends in 1965 it seems like the US strategy wasn't designed for an all out victory or whether that was even possible. Overall, I really liked the book. Having read some of the other critical reviews there are questions that should be answered. Mr Moyar promised to write another book covering the period from 1965 to 1975. I can't wait, I'll be a buyer.
Please Read William J. Duiker's Ho Chi Minh Biography
Ho Chi Minh was an independence-minded nationalist first and foremost, who used a Communist apparatus as the means to an end: the expulsion of foreign imperialists from his homeland.
This is the comprehensive portrait painted by William J. Duiker, the Western world's foremost authority on the life of Ho Chi Minh, and expert on Vietnamese and Southeast Asian affairs (You can find Duiker's biography of Ho here on Amazon).
This is a critical point, and the crux failure of Moyar's revisionism. The sole reason Ho assumed the mantle of the French Socialists (later Communists) in the first place was because of Lenin's provisions for the liberation of occupied peoples. He continued to believe, throughout his 30-year exile from Vietnam, that the Communist apparatus was the system best suited to channel nationalist fervor into a successful revolution and expulsion of FRANCE from Vietnam. This is why he intensively studied Communist revolutionary doctrine and action in Russia and China. He intended to return home well-equipped with a practical methodology for resistance.
Ho aggressively worked all sides after World War II. He vigorously sought recognition and aid from the United States. His letters to Truman were ignored. In his quest for Vietnamese sovereignty he took aid of all sorts...organizational, financial, material....from the USSR and China, but essentially by default. The West chose to support the re-colonization of the French in Vietnam. The strong majority of native Vietnamese sympathized with the Viet Minh effort against the (U.S.-financed) French occupation, especially in light of gross abuses against the civilian population by French occupying forces. In later years, when the French foreign presence was superseded by an American foreign presence, the strong majority of the native Vietnamese understood it simply as a continuum of unjust foreign occupation.
It is crucial to understand that the will of the majority Vietnamese population was sympathetic to the Viet Minh against the French, and saw the Viet Cong/NLF/NVA as essentially a continuum of the Viet Minh fight for independence.
The notion of triumph forsaken...our triumph...is ill-conceived. The Vietnamese spent the last thousand years expelling foreign invaders, most often the Chinese. Those who would insist upon the existence of a meticulously planned Red conspiracy to dominate Southeast Asia in brotherly Marxist solidarity must take pause and consider, then, why the Chinese invaded Vietnam after America withdrew (the Vietnamese expelled them that time, too).
Ho was not Mao. He was not a remorseless butcher. The key to understanding the history of the Vietnam war is understanding the life of Ho Chi Minh as an anti-French revolutionary, and the galvanization of the majority of the Vietnamese population for what was, essentially, a war of liberation followed by a short-lived declaration of independence. We....Americans....as the heirs to the French occupation of Vietnam, have to understand that we reneged on a pledge for a reunification vote, simply because we knew that, at that time, real democracy was inconvenient, and "our side" would badly lose the vote. We were complicit in the strategic hamlet program that herded peasants from their ancestral land, further galvanizing them in favor of the Viet Cong. We were complicit in the assassination of Diem.
The United States attempted to impose its preferred flavor of democracy from without, while there was a motivated grassroots effort for a different kind of liberation happening from within. If you follow the chain of causality to its logical end, the only available "triumph" for America would have been by way of complete decimation of Vietnam, engagement with mainland China, and, ultimately, a thermonuclear exchange of some sort.
A revisionist stand that is needed
The study of history is based on the historians perspectives. The popular negativity surrounding Vietnam has been validated by the thousands of books on the subject. Moyar's arguments are in contrast to the popular views held on Vietnam especially his argument that that Ho Chi Minh was a communist above a nationalist. While I dont necessarily agree with him on all of his views I do agree in his analysis of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations' ineptitude in dealing with Vietnam. It is a prime example of those in power not listening to those who are in the best position to make decisions. The administrations relied on McNamera more than they listened to the CIA and the military advisors in Vietnam.
He makes a major anti-factual statement that Vietnam could have been won with an invasion of North Vietnam in 1964. He gives good reasons why this is so, but one cannot say that the war could have been won with such an action. He would have been better to conclude that if the administrations wanted to defeat communism in Southeast Asia they should have launched a full scale invasion of the North as opposed to fighting a half war in the South. Whether an invasion would have worked or not is pure speculation; however, Moyar points out what Eisenhower told Johnson and that is he needs to go after the head of the snake not the tail.
Whether you inevitably agree with Moyar's views or not it is a good read that if nothing else will get you to reexamine your views on Vietnam.
