Vietnam War Collection: books plus

[SWJ Blog]

The Documentary “The Vietnam War”: Artistic License as History (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-documentary-%E2%80%9Cthe-vietnam-war%E2%80%9D-artistic-license-as-history)

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[SWJ Blog]

Honors and Errors: The Burns-Novick Vietnam War Documentary (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/honors-and-errors-the-burns-novick-vietnam-war-documentary)

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[SWJ Blog]

Was Vietnam Winnable? A New Book Suggests Yes and Offers Advice for the War in Afghanistan. (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/was-vietnam-winnable-a-new-book-suggests-yes-and-offers-advice-for-the-war-in-afghanistan)

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[SWJ Blog]

Lessons and Echoes from the War in Vietnam (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/lessons-and-echoes-from-the-war-in-vietnam)

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[SWJ Blog]

Honors and Errors: The Burns Vietnam Documentary (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/honors-and-errors-the-burns-vietnam-documentary)

Entry Excerpt:



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Read the full post (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/honors-and-errors-the-burns-vietnam-documentary) and make any comments at the SWJ Blog (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog).
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[davidbfpo]

I have merged twelve threads into this main historians thread, prompted by the SWJ article 'Honors and Errors: The Burns Vietnam Documentary'. Which now has 255 posts and 223,969 views.

There are two large, closed separate threads:The Advisory or Advisor Challenge (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/The Advisory or Advisor Challenge) which has 102 posts and 113k views; Vietnam collection (lessons plus) (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/Vietnam collection (lessons plus)) with 140 posts and 122k views.

If you search using Vietnam as a thread title there are thirty or so threads, with sufficiently different themes best left alone.

[davidbfpo]

Never heard of their involvement, although it makes sense - especially as a response to the RoK division being deployed.
Link:https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/north-korean-psychological-warfare-operations-south-vietnam?

[davidbfpo]

An offering from the US intelligence community via the CIA, so far only a short video discussion (9 mins):
As part of the Tet Offensive document declassification effort (https://www.intelligence.gov/tet-declassified), Intel.gov recently sat down with three Intelligence Community historians—all members of the IC Senior Historians’ Panel—to discuss the Tet Offensive, the IC’s role in the Vietnam War, and the impact of the Tet Offensive on both U.S. public support for the war and on the IC itself. The Tet Offensive has often been called an intelligence failure, but this discussion reveals that there’s more nuance and complexity to the story than that statement allows. Declassified documents, to be released in three tranches in 2018-19, will shed further light on the IC’s role in this critical conflict.
This video is part of a longer discussion around Vietnam and Tet, which will be released in its entirety in the coming weeks.
Link:https://www.intelligence.gov/tet-declassified/historians

They comment on the signs something was coming; from the Ho Chi Minh trail watchers and the never-ending flow of deserters. Was Tet a PR defeat, not a policy defeat?

Some documents are already available:https://www.intelligence.gov/tet-declassified

[davidbfpo]

A British military academic, Christopher Tripodi, has embarked on reading on the Vietnam War, with a focus on:
.....‘Village War’, i.e. the vast US backed pacification campaign mounted throughout South Vietnam from the early 60’s in an effort to weaken and dislocate Communist influence in that country.

So he offers a short list of books to read, only one of which I have read (Douglas Porch's tome).

A searing passage:
Even though still a relative newcomer to the war, it’s become obvious to me that this should be a compulsory field of study for anyone interested in the fundamental complexity of engineering satisfactory political outcomes at distance through the medium of military power. And the pacification campaign, in and of itself, has revealed such a panoply of theories, assumptions, judgements and practices that consistently crumpled in the face of the unrealistic expectations underpinning their employment in Vietnam that it makes one genuinely wonder why any US policymaker or academic contemplating similar escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan could possibly have thought they could get away with it.
Link:https://defenceindepth.co/2018/08/06/dsd-summer-reading-6/

[davidbfpo]

Found a pointer to this on a WW2 history blogsite and the author is an ex-USAF officer, then an academic:http://www.tom.pilsch.com/

It may be useful:http://www.tom.pilsch.com/Vietnam.html



(http://www.tom.pilsch.com/Vietnam.html)

[davidbfpo]

Spotted via Twitter a new book from Helion (UK) and the publisher's abstract states:
During the United States’ involvement in the war in Vietnam, the decision by the US Marine Corps to emphasise counterinsurgency operations in coastal areas was the cause of considerable friction between the Marines and the army commanders in Vietnam, who wanted the corps to conduct more conventional operations. This book will examine the background to the Marines’ decision and place it in the context of Marine Corps doctrine, infrastructure and logistical capability. For the first time, this book brings together the Marine Corps’ background in counterinsurgency and the state of contemporary counterinsurgency theory in the 1960s - combining this with the strategic outlook, role, organisation and logistic capability of the Marine Corps to provide a complete view of its counterinsurgency operations. This book will argue that the US Marine Corps successfully used counterinsurgency as a means to achieve their primary aim in Vietnam – the defence of three major bases in the coastal area in the north of the Republic of Vietnam – and that the corps’ decision to emphasise a counterinsurgency approach was driven as much by its background and infrastructure as it was by the view that Vietnam was a ‘war for the people’. This book is also an important contribution to the current debate on counterinsurgency, which is now seen by many in the military doctrine arena as a flawed or invalid concept following the perceived failures in Iraq and Afghanistan - largely because it has been conflated with nation-building or democratisation. Recent works on British counterinsurgency have also punctured the myth of counterinsurgency as being a milder form of warfare - with the main effort being the wellbeing of the population - whereas in fact there is still a great deal of violence involved. This book will bring the debate ‘back to basics’ by providing an historical example of counterinsurgency in its true form: a means of dealing with terrorist or guerrilla warfare at an operational level to achieve a specific aim in a specific area within a specific period of time.
Link: https://www.helion.co.uk/military-history-books/spreading-ink-blots-from-da-nang-to-the-dmz-the-origins-and-implementation-of-us-marine-corps-counterinsurgency-strategy-in-vietnam-march-1965-to-november-1968.php?sid=409edbb10498930f17b3bef2344451cf