Vietnam War Collection: books plus

[Gian P Gentile]

[INDENT][I]....What hostile media gets out in print hours or days after the event becomes the narrative that stands for decades until disinterested, objective historians analyze declassified information and publish what really happened for the benefit of the small audience who still cares after such a long time.

Agree with the responses to your post that Shek, Norfolk, Ken White, et al have made about the myth of the media loosing the Vietnam War. I think the Parmaters article already mentioned provides a pretty compelling case by a professional and relatively unbiased historian that the Media was not to blame.

Moreover with regards to your point about today and the influence the media has on establishing the narrative i think you are correct in this statement. The media, especially print media when it comes to the later writing of history, are one of the first ones to "document" events which become the stuff of history and help build an early narrative of an issue.

However, in the case of Iraq today, and this goes contrary to what the legions of neo-cons write, I think the print media has done a pretty good job at reporting the war in Iraq. Especially over the past few months major papers like the NY Times, WaPost, and others have really tried not to overly report the violence in place of good things happening there.

What has been most interesting to me about reporting on the Iraq War is how pundits--like those happy travelers from AEI--have become almost like actual newspaper reporters. Other pundits like Trudy Rubin from the Philly Enquirer have also had their opeds started to be treated like traditional newspaper reporting. And in this regard the cumulative effect of traditional and pundit reporting has been a largely positive reporting of the war. In fact one can make the argument that the media has been glossing over some important factors that tend to look less positively on the lowered violence in Iraq and what brought it about.

So if you are trying to build an early case for a blame-the-media argument for Iraq I do not think that you have history or contemporary reporting by the media on your side.

gian

[bourbon]

Vietnam Histories

This release consists of six declassified histories volumes and describes the CIA's role in Indochina during the Vietnam War. These histories written by Thomas L. Ahern, Jr., are based on extensive research in CIA records and on oral history interviews of participants. The release totals some 1,600 pages and represents the largest amount of Vietnam-era CIA documents yet declassified.

Document List

CIA and the Generals (13.2 MB PDF)
Covert Support to Military Government in South Vietnam

CIA and the House of Ngo (13.1 MB PDF)
Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954-63

CIA and Rural Pacification (71.3 MB PDF)

Good Questions, Wrong Answers (2.7 MB PDF)
CIA's Estimates of Arms Traffic through Sihanoukville, Cambodia, During the Vietnam War.

The Way We Do Things (7.1 MB PDF)
Black Entry Operations into Northern Vietnam

Undercover Armies (29.2 MB PDF)
CIA and Surrogate Warfare in Laos

[jmm99]

for those interested in Vietnam. The only "but" is that the DL is over 130 MB - so broadband is needed. My plan is to burn a CD here and take it home where I am limited to dial-up. Will be interesting to compare these with the Pentagon Papers.

[Steve Blair]

Looks interesting. I haven't looked through all of them yet, but there have been the usual "excisions" in sections of the text. These range from single words to entire paragraphs.

[Mike in Hilo]

Thanks for posting. So far, I was able to peruse the piece on Pacification. To be sure, this was an interesting read for me.....although, frankly, I found it unimpressive insofaras I didn't learn any new information or see conclusions that deviated from the arguably superficial ones offered by popular journalism.
Anyway, I would be hard put to consider any CIA document on pacification that relegated the enemy's Shadow Supply System to one line anything but a disappointment. (Perhaps this topic, which was highly sensitive at the time, remains classified. In fact, this assumption has constrained me from offering more than similar, minimalist one-liners about this successful enemy enterprise that helped to convince me that Phoenix was more of a failure than a success. ...Those in present company with the necessary clearances who are interested might try key words Shadow Supply System MR-III, 1970-73. )

Edit: A bit more, although still terse, on the Shadow Supply System on page 111 of the piece on CIA and the Generals, which I have begun reading.

Cheers,
Mike.

[PeterJensen]

At the home page of the U.S. Department of State is it possible to browse through the Foreign Relations of the United States series and find plenty of documents from the administration of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon concerning the war in Vietnam.

You can visit the Foreign Relations of the United States at:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/index.htm

A real gold mine for people with historical interests

[pjmunson]

See the National Security Archives at GWU for a treasure trove of declassified documents on Vietnam and other issues. Some of these are original top secret memos declassified and scanned in as PDFs. Great stuff. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

[Old Eagle]

I'll send a link on Mon

[PeterJensen]

Well, I'm amazed! Thank you for the link. A very interesting collection of documents at the National Security Archives. Do you know other on-line collections of documents concerning counterinsurgency in American history in the 20'th century?
Thanks in advance.

[Steve Blair]

Texas Tech's collection is certainly first-rate. You can also find after-action reports and the like scattered throughout this collection.

[PeterJensen]

There is plenty of literature about the Vietnam War.
Despite that, can any of you readers of SWJ recommend works (books, articles, etc) concerning the Vietnam War historiography with a specifically focus on COIN and how the American decision makers viewed and applied between COIN versus conventional warfare during the conflict?
I am very interested in the different positions in the historiography.
Thanks in advance.

[Steve Blair]

This is actually something of a "bone of contention" among historians at the moment. One of the more balanced treatments, even though it is older, is Palmer's The 25 Year War. Nagl's "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife" is interesting mainly for the way it examines how the Army learned (or failed to learn) from Vietnam. It is NOT a history of the Vietnam War, but rather an examination of organizational learning. Krepinevich and "The Army in Vietnam" takes an opposing view, seeing the war as mostly a COIN-type effort that was ignored by Big Army.

My advice? Start with Palmer and then work your way around.

[jmm99]

somewhat akin to the 1000 lawyers in chains sinking to the ocean floor.

Palmer's book is, however, written from a high level, starting at an O-5 & O-6 level in the early 1950's when he was at the Army War College (with an excellent analysis then made by him and others re: the Indochina War and the relative unimportance of Indochina in the larger US-scheme of things). It mostly deals with the O-7 through O-10 levels.

Here are four SWC threads with links to a number of resources.

Resources on the French defeat in Indochina?

CIA Vietnam Histories

CORDS / Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future

McCuen: a "missing" thread ?

This stuff may or may not help - it depends on what you are looking for.

Cheers

Mike

[davidbfpo]

My Vietnam book collection is limited, but I do commend two books: 'Victory At Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam's General Vo Nguyen Giap' by Cecil Currey (Pub. in the UK 1997) and a much older 'America in Vietnam' by Guenter Lewy (Pub. in the USA 1978).

[Sigaba]

There is plenty of literature about the Vietnam War.
Despite that, can any of you readers of SWJ recommend works (books, articles, etc) concerning the Vietnam War historiography with a specifically focus on COIN and how the American decision makers viewed and applied between COIN versus conventional warfare during the conflict?
I am very interested in the different positions in the historiography.
Thanks in advance.

I recommend the following:

Robert A. Divine, "Revisionism in Reverse," Reviews in American History, 7:3 (September, 1979): 433-438.

Robert A. Divine, "Vietnam Reconsidered," Diplomatic History, 12:1 (January 1998): 79-93.

Gary R. Hess, "The Unending Debate: Historians and the Vietnam War," Diplomatic History, 18:2 (April 1994): 239–264.

[outletclock]

Andrew J. Birtle. "PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians: A Reappraisal." The Journal of Military History 72.4 (2008): 1213-1247.

might be of use.

It probably should be read in the context of Lewis Sorley's "A Better War," since IIRC it tends to quarrel with some its (Sorley's) claims.

OC

[tequila]

The Birtle article was the subject of a Gian Gentile article and some SWJ posts here:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/200...provn/#c005780

Agreed that it was a thought-provoking article by an excellent scholar.

Also, Phil Ridderhof contributed this to SWJ about DoD's critical assessment of III MAF Pacification efforts (the CAP program) in the same vein.

[Pete]

The other day a thread touched upon the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968. On the Tom Ricks blog I stumbled upon this link to MACV's unclassified report of significant events in February 1968. It's interesting reading.

[Sasquatch]

So, is there one? And what should be on it?

Not for the SAMS students (Althougth their input is welcome), but what should the recomended reading list for the average company grade officer and NCO contain? I'm sure this issue has been covered before, but evergreens are everpresent for a reason.

Background: Twice recently I have witnessed people (OK, guys) asking about specific Vietnam Wars books at my local public library; They were both asking about widely distributed works of literary merit. Needless to say, my local public library does not own either one.... (OK, I have issues with them).

So, what ten books (Fiction/Non Fiction) are most useful to understanding Vietnam in the context of American History? Let's go for a maximum of four Fiction and the rest non fiction.

And ten books is optimistic; then you have to select five that will engage the average buck seargeant....

[Brad Carr]

I would recommend Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press), 1966.