Quote Originally Posted by stanleywinthrop View Post
Another problem I have with Pearlstein's piece is his seeming dumbfoundedness at Moyar taking communist internal communications at face value, like all communitsts lie right? A more careful reading of Moyar reveals a much more studied treatment of communist propagandizing--for instance Pearlstiens quote of how Moyar treats the communist reaction to the deposment of Diem. Yes the communists were excited about this because they felt it would help thier effort in the long run, Moyar puts this in his book because the facts bear this out when looking back at history--in other words Moyar takes the communist reaction at face value because what they predict is actually what happened! Why would a professional historian ignore such an important piece of forbearance?
Or perhaps the Communists were simply putting a good face on their reaction to events --- that Diem's death would automatically be good or bad for their cause was up in the air and, I would argue, still not definitively proven to be a positive good. I was not convinced by Moyar's thesis that Diem was popular amongst the South Vietnamese peasantry, that GVN was on its way to unstoppable victory against the VCI under Diem, that ARVN would have won the battle of Ap Bac if not for the bungling Americans, nor did I buy his spin on the joys of the Strategic Hamlet program. I did, however, like his passage on how Madam Nhu, that exemplar of moral probity, brought the whorehouses of Saigon to a stop, with American servicemen reduced to playing tic-tac-toe with virtuous barmaids, and how this was a reason why the Western press turned against Diem. With this sort of clear-eyed history, how could Moyar have failed to gain tenure?