Vietnam War Collection: books plus

[Bob's World]

Moderator Adds

This post was copied from another thread: Strategy begins with empathy: Netflix series "Colony" and lightly edited to sit here.(Ends).

The attached link is to an perspective on Vietnam that closely mirrors my own assessment of the nature of that conflict. For those who buy into the uniquely American perspective that "we defeated the insurgency in South Vietnam, and it was only after we left that the state of South Vietnam was defeated in traditional combat by the state of North Vietnam," this will require taking a more empathetic perspective.

I have heard General Keane state in person, but many other "experts" as well, and certainly the dominating theme in US written histories of the conflict is the "we won but they lost after we left" perspective. That is, IMO, not being able to see the strategic forest for the tactical trees.

A good read, regardless of personal perspective:

http://discover.wooster.edu/jgates/p...ar-in-vietnam/

[davidbfpo]

With the catalyst of Bob's Post and it's link I have merged eleven small threads into this main thread. Some had 9k views, but only one post.

When you search for Vietnam in thread titles there are just over thirty, but for the purposes of the history of the Vietnam War a small number, all closed appear very appropriate:

1) The Advisory or Advisor Challenge, with 102 posts and 90k views:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...hlight=vietnam
2) Vietnam collection (lessons plus), with 140 posts and 82k views:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...hlight=vietnam

Neither can be merged in, as the sequence of posts would be crazy.

[davidbfpo]

A new book 'A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA' by Joshua Kurlantzick and a WoTR article reviews the arguments. It starts with:

If you work at it, you can make a case that Americans fought on the right side in Vietnam. There is an argument — not conclusive, but defensible — that with all its faults, the anti-Communist side offered South Vietnam’s people a freer and more prosperous future than they would face if the Communists won. That didn’t mean war was a wise choice or that its goal justified the death and destruction it caused. But Americans looking for some moral comfort could at least tell themselves that they were fighting for a better outcome for the Vietnamese. By contrast, it is harder to find anything morally defensible in American actions in Laos and Cambodia. U.S. operations in those countries, including among the heaviest bombing in military history, were conducted to support American objectives in Vietnam rather than for any achievable benefit for its smaller, weaker neighbors. That was also the reason for U.S. air support and military aid that kept weak, ineptly led local Laotian and Cambodian ground forces in the field long after it was clear they had no chance of winning against their stronger North Vietnamese enemies.

Link:https://warontherocks.com/2017/02/th...ormed-the-cia/

His Amazon bio:

Joshua Kurlantzick is a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been a correspondent in Southeast Asia for The Economist, a columnist for Time, the foreign editor of the New Republic, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, and a contributing writer for Mother Jones. He has written about Asia for publications ranging from Rolling Stone to The New York Times Magazine. He is the winner of the Luce Scholarship and was selected as a finalist for the Osborn Elliot prize, both for journalism in Asia. He is the author of four previous books on Asia. For more information on Kurlantzick, visit CFR.org.

Link to Amazon, with very mixed reviews:https://www.amazon.com/Great-Place-H...+to+have+a+war

[davidbfpo]

I have reviewed a number of the Vietnam-related threads in this area and merged eight of them into this the main thread.

Five others remain in this arena, I have added Vietnam to the title field so they can be readily identified. They remain separate as they are large and merging would destroy the posts in response. A larger number in various places refer to Vietnam.

Possibly the most significant is a "lessons learnt" thread:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=1041