Re: comparing VN to Afghan---Sure, you've got to be perceived as the likely winner before the people will bet their lives on you--Isn't that a given in any insurgency?

In General, strikes me the differences well outweigh the similarities, even on a fundamental trait, viz., the eagerness of a Pushtun to pick up a gun to shoot the foreigners...

An SWJED post on the reissue of the book prompted a reread of my 1972edition of Race's War Comes to Long An. Usually overlooked is Race's finding that nationalism was not innately prevalent among Long An people at a virulent, politically useful level. Evidence is presented that "the Party" used resentment against the feudal landlords to mobilize the peasantry, and only subsequently inculcated in them the necessary nationalist, anti-imperialist sentiment. Concern with local societal inequities was the motivator, according to Race, with nationalism posing not quite the inexorable, primal force axiomatically arrayed against a foreign presence. Mirrors my own, anecdotal observation of a comparative absence of such xenophobia in the true Southerners, i.e., natives of the greater, cultural Mekong Delta...[Aside: In this, as in other cultural traits, there are significant differences among South, Central and North Vietnamese.]

Cheers,
Mike.