Vietnam War Collection: books plus

[Steve Blair]

COL Gentile and Shek both sent me copies - Share many of the same opinions of the article. There is some merit to the argument that development is impossible without baseline security, and security requires force. Therefore, Westmorland was right to do 'search and destroy', and his 'search and destroy' ops enabled Abrams to focus on pacification.

Sure, but again I tend to think the discussion is another case of "either/or" thinking. Westmoreland was right to use 'search and destroy' to push main force units back from the population centers, but he was also remiss in not focusing some real priorities on population security or at the very least insuring that ARVN could do so (which its training effectively precluded since it was focused on main force combat).

Andrade is one of the historians at the CMH and has written on both the Phoenix program and some aspects of SOG. He also wrote a good study of the Easter Offensive. Steve (Metz, that is) might be more familiar with him.

[Cavguy]

Sure, but again I tend to think the discussion is another case of "either/or" thinking. Westmoreland was right to use 'search and destroy' to push main force units back from the population centers, but he was also remiss in not focusing some real priorities on population security or at the very least insuring that ARVN could do so (which its training effectively precluded since it was focused on main force combat).

Andrade is one of the historians at the CMH and has written on both the Phoenix program and some aspects of SOG. He also wrote a good study of the Easter Offensive. Steve (Metz, that is) might be more familiar with him.

I think we're in violent agreement. I can't subscribe to his assertion that pacification and security must happen in parallel and not sequentially (though targeted and scaled).