Vietnam War Collection: books plus

[SWJ Blog]

Was Vietnam Winnable?

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[SWJ Blog]

Ken Burns Talks About the Vietnam War, the Wall and His New Documentary

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[Azor]

By Robert Farley at War is Boring: https://warisboring.com/could-the-un...on-in-vietnam/

Introduction:

Mark Moyar, the scholar of U.S. foreign and military policy, recently had the opportunity to update an older argument on the viability of the Vietnam War.

Moyar argues that the historical consensus on the war is wrong on several points, and that in fact the United States could have won the war and preserved the Saigon government at acceptable cost.

While Moyar’s argument is worth consideration, he still fails to make his case against the long-standing consensus on the war.

Moyar's key points:

• South Vietnam was a viable state by 1972, afflicted but not overwhelmed by insurgency
• Local Communist forces in South Vietnam had been mortally wounded in 1968
• With U.S. support, South Vietnam could blunt and even defeat North Vietnamese offensives
• Saigon was far more democratic and less repressive than Hanoi
• The war was less unpopular in the U.S. at the time than it is presently

Farley’s “realities”:

• South Vietnam could not survive on its own in the way of South Korea
• Hanoi was unified whereas Saigon was prone to infighting
• The U.S. could not have stopped North Vietnamese aggression
• The war was unpopular enough that Nixon faced no opposition in 1972 for abandoning South Vietnam, and Ford could not generate any support for re-engagement in 1975
• The U.S. could have militarily won by invading and occupying North Vietnam or have merely remained engaged in the South indefinitely, but both options would have been very costly politically and materially

[Bob's World]

Gotta disagree with Mark, as he is arguing based upon the US narrative on the war, rather than the Vietnamese reality. The "states" of North and South Vietnam were legal fictions created by the US in an effort to deny the Vietnamese people the victory they had won to remove the French and attain a self determined government. The victors came from across Vietnam and were forced to withdraw into what became North Vietnam. Meanwhile the insurgency continued in the Maoist model of ebb and flow until they finally prevailed. Sure, we could have delayed their independence even longer than the 30 years we did, but it would have happened eventually. Conflicts are what they are, caring little for how they are named or perceived by various parties. The US completely misunderstood and mis- defined that conflict. A mistake we are repeating in a few places currently as well.

[davidbfpo]

There are a number of SWJ articles on this question and two caught my attention:

1) In 2009'A Better Understanding of the Vietnam War'byColonel Gian Gentile and there is a telling quote:

...the war could [not] have been 'won' in any meaningful sense at a moral or material cost most Americans deemed acceptable.

Link:http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...he-vietnam-war

2) In 2011 'Vietnam Postmortem: A Senseless Strategy' by David Maxwell, that is a pointer to a Parameters article by Colonel John Collins. This led to thirty-five comments. Amidst them is one by Ken White, cited in part, with my emphasis:

If we cannot discuss history and current activities then we may have to fight them again as you say -- but I do not believe it will be a like it or not problem. It will be a choice on our part. I for one submit that Vietnam was a mistake in all aspect

Link:http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/vie...eless-strategy

[davidbfpo]

Maybe timely a new PBS series is due, by Ken Burns and The Guardian has a report. The headline and sub-title:

Ken Burns returns to take on Vietnam – 'a war we have consciously ignored' Burns’s new 10-part, 18-hour epic film covers the conflict from all sides, and hopes to ‘shape more courageous conversations about what took place’

The war in south-east Asia is now the subject of an epic 10-part, 18-hour series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Burns is America’s premier documentary film-maker....
The series, which premieres on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on 17 September in the US and will be released in full on DVD in the UK, includes rarely seen archival footage, photographs, TV broadcasts, home movies and secret audio recordings from the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations, as well as music of the period....

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...oreign-policy?

[SWJ Blog]

7 Important Weapons Used By the United States in the Vietnam War

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[SWJ Blog]

Documentary Review - Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ‘The Vietnam War’

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[SWJ Blog]

Ken Burns’ Vietnam War Docu-Series Premieres Today

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[SWJ Blog]

Navy Completes Vietnam War Book Series

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[SWJ Blog]

The Documentary “The Vietnam War”: Artistic License as History

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[SWJ Blog]

Honors and Errors: The Burns-Novick Vietnam War Documentary

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[SWJ Blog]

Was Vietnam Winnable? A New Book Suggests Yes and Offers Advice for the War in Afghanistan.

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[SWJ Blog]

Lessons and Echoes from the War in Vietnam

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[SWJ Blog]

Honors and Errors: The Burns Vietnam Documentary

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[davidbfpo]

I have merged twelve threads into this main historians thread, prompted by the SWJ article 'Honors and Errors: The Burns Vietnam Documentary'. Which now has 255 posts and 223,969 views.

There are two large, closed separate threads:The Advisory or Advisor Challenge which has 102 posts and 113k views; Vietnam collection (lessons plus) with 140 posts and 122k views.

If you search using Vietnam as a thread title there are thirty or so threads, with sufficiently different themes best left alone.

[davidbfpo]

Never heard of their involvement, although it makes sense - especially as a response to the RoK division being deployed.
Link:https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-po...south-vietnam?

[davidbfpo]

An offering from the US intelligence community via the CIA, so far only a short video discussion (9 mins):

As part of the Tet Offensive document declassification effort, Intel.gov recently sat down with three Intelligence Community historians—all members of the IC Senior Historians’ Panel—to discuss the Tet Offensive, the IC’s role in the Vietnam War, and the impact of the Tet Offensive on both U.S. public support for the war and on the IC itself. The Tet Offensive has often been called an intelligence failure, but this discussion reveals that there’s more nuance and complexity to the story than that statement allows. Declassified documents, to be released in three tranches in 2018-19, will shed further light on the IC’s role in this critical conflict.
This video is part of a longer discussion around Vietnam and Tet, which will be released in its entirety in the coming weeks.

Link:https://www.intelligence.gov/tet-dec...ied/historians

They comment on the signs something was coming; from the Ho Chi Minh trail watchers and the never-ending flow of deserters. Was Tet a PR defeat, not a policy defeat?

Some documents are already available:https://www.intelligence.gov/tet-declassified

[davidbfpo]

A British military academic, Christopher Tripodi, has embarked on reading on the Vietnam War, with a focus on:

.....‘Village War’, i.e. the vast US backed pacification campaign mounted throughout South Vietnam from the early 60’s in an effort to weaken and dislocate Communist influence in that country.

So he offers a short list of books to read, only one of which I have read (Douglas Porch's tome).

A searing passage:

Even though still a relative newcomer to the war, it’s become obvious to me that this should be a compulsory field of study for anyone interested in the fundamental complexity of engineering satisfactory political outcomes at distance through the medium of military power. And the pacification campaign, in and of itself, has revealed such a panoply of theories, assumptions, judgements and practices that consistently crumpled in the face of the unrealistic expectations underpinning their employment in Vietnam that it makes one genuinely wonder why any US policymaker or academic contemplating similar escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan could possibly have thought they could get away with it.

Link:https://defenceindepth.co/2018/08/06...mer-reading-6/

[davidbfpo]

Found a pointer to this on a WW2 history blogsite and the author is an ex-USAF officer, then an academic:http://www.tom.pilsch.com/

It may be useful:http://www.tom.pilsch.com/Vietnam.html