Just the other day I realized I know more about King Philip’s War than Vietnam and decided to rectify that. To do this, me being me, I went and got a book. The book is Vietnam A History by Stanley Karnow.
What I was wondering is how good overall is the book? What is its bias? The blurb on the back claims it is without bias and that has me worried as I doubt that is possible. I think if you say you are without biases you are at best just ignorant of them. However, the author’s introduction seems to recognize the complexity of the conflict and and seems show that he put some thought into the writing.
I’m going to read it anyway as it seem to be a pretty good overview, but I’d like to keep any possible deficiencies in mind as I do.
So anyone read it before and have an opinion they want to share?
Very good. It was assigned reading when I took a Vietnam class. Among its strengths:
1- He goes a lot into the history of Vietnam before the U.S. involvement from French colonization in the 17th century to WW2, which is necessary to understand Dienbienphu and all that came afterwards (especially the Buddhist/Catholic frictions and Europeanization of the upper echelons of the society)
2- Karnow’s writing from experience since he was there from the beginning of U.S. involvement as a correspondent and was still on speaking terms with many of the people he knew from that era. (In the documentary miniseries that the book is the companion to he’s actually the unseen interviewer of Madame Nhu [in exile in Rome {and batshit crazy}] and Nguyen Cao Ky [owner/operator of a chain of convenience and liquor stores in the Anaheim area] and and others.)
3- He does a good job of showing the war from both sides.
In my Vietnam course two of the other required texts I remember as being excellent were
Fire in the Lake- a standard work of social history of the era- won the Pulitizer and lots of other prizes. The title ‘fire in the lake’, incidentally, comes from the rather poetic pictographic symbol/simile for ‘revolution’.
A Rumor of War- considered one of the best of the memoirs by American soldiers. Philip Caputo went to Vietnam as a soldier in 1965 and returned as a journalist after 3 TODs.
They’re both well worth reading, but I’d do Karnow first as he puts it in historical perspective.
Just in case you’re not familiar, Karnow’s book was a companion to the PBS documentary series Vietnam: a Television History, which I can’t recommend strongly enough. If you have the time it’s one of the best documentaries ever made; basically imagine Ken Burns’ Civil War if he’d actually been able to interview the participants and show actual footage of Atlanta under siege.
Thanks for the comments. I’ve never had a history class make it past WWII so what I know about Vietnam is mostly from picking up bits here and there. I’m looking forward to this book.
Actually thats one one the reasons I picked it up (It is in gold on the front cover). I have a liking for PBS and they always seem pretty trustworthy so I thought it’d be a good bet that the book would be the same.
Excellent book. It does a fine job of trying to get some N. Vietnamese perspective on the conflict as well. I’ve also read Sheehan’s book, which I recommend.
You also might want to check out Harry Summers’ “On Strategy”, which is a look at Clausewitz’s principles of strategy and how America’s poor application of them led them to lose the war (and North Vietnam’s use of them led them to win it).
Philip B. Davidson, former Army head of intelligence for Gen. Westmoreland in Vietnam, makes the case in Vietnam at War that the US could have won and were winning militarily, but lost the war on the home front because it became so unpopular and the leaders were fearful that ramping things up any more could have brought China and/or Russia into the fray. He says that we withdrew our troops and abandoned the South Vietnam government before they were ready to take on their own self-defense.
It’s a good book from a high-level military participant’s point of view.
A book I’d highly recommend is Embers of War by Fredrik Logevall. It’s an excellent history of the French involvement in Vietnam and how America ended up taking over the war.
What’s Davidson’s opinion on the validity of those concerns? Does he feel there was no chance of China or the Soviet Union intervening?
If there was a realistic possibility that the cost of defending South Vietnam would be a major war with China and the Soviet Union then I’d say the politicians had every reason to be fearful and probably made the correct decision that South Vietnam wasn’t worth that high a price.
He mentions several times that there was a fear within both the Johnson and Nixon administrations that too much escalation could bring in Russia or China. He never comes out and says that there was no chance of either of them coming in, but as I read the book there was no mention of evidence that either was so inclined, even after Nixon went into Cambodia and pushed the bombing further north to Hanoi. It seems to me that the lack of any action from Russia or China was evidence that they wouldn’t come in.
But by then antiwar sentiment in the US had taken over, and the focus was to get out, even if it meant the fall of South Vietnam.
The generals on the scene locally said the same thing in the Korean War. Local commanders in the field may have insight into the conditions around them (although the Tet Offensive indicates Davidson might not have had that) but they have no more information about world affairs than what you can read in the papers. I would trust the President to have better information about what was being planned in Moscow and Beijing than I would trust a general in Saigon.
I’ve read his book and it’s decent enough, but he is a bit of an apologist for Westmoreland’s performance ( understandably, given his position ). I don’t really buy his contentions about winning except at a tactical level. Strategically the U.S. was pretty much spinning its wheels, as the NVA seemed prepared to accept their heavy manpower losses for as long as it took and their supply chain ( USSR via China at the height of the Cold War ) was adequate to make good any equipment losses.
Could the U.S. have invaded and occupied North Vietnam/Laos without a severe Russian/Chinese reaction? Maybe. Could they have built a stable, properous, popular regime in some part of Vietnam? There is certainly no evidence for it. Would they still have been wracked by an insurgency a decade or three after that? Probably. If not technically unwinnable, Vietnam was for all intents and purposes as close to it as you could practically get. The U.S. withdrawal was pretty pragmatic, really.
While we’re making book recommendations, I’d recommend We Were Soldiers Once … and Young: Ia Drang - the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam, by Joseph L. Galloway and Hal Moore. It’s got a very narrow focus, specifically the organization and training of the first Airborne Cavalry battalions and two major engagements they fought in the Ia Drang Valley early in the war (LZ X-Ray, which the movie We Were Soldiers more or less centers on, and LZ Albany, which occured a few miles away a day or so later).
The book compares and contrasts the two battles, which involved many of the same forces (an American battalion and several NVA units that had just withdrawn from X-Ray ran into each other again) but under very different circumstances. Also, if you’re only familiar with the Mel Gibson movie, the book has some major differences (the movie was a Hollywood film, after all).
Another recommendation is Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds, which is actually quite a bit broader in scope and doesn’t center directly on Vietnam. The book follows ace pilot Robin Olds’s career from serving as a fighter pilot in WWII, through various Cold War assignments including as a staff officer at the Pentagon, as a Wing Commander in Vietnam (where he mostly discusses air tactics/strategy and an ongoing thread regarding Air Force leadership and culture), and finally his last few stateside assignments as Commandant of Cadets at the Air Force Academy and with the Office of the Inspector General.
Probably a quarter to a third of this book takes place in/around Vietnam, and as I mentioned above, Olds’s main topics of discussion regarding that conflict regarded Air Force doctrine and tactics, and various issues he had with them (such as the Air Force’s adoption of the lackluster AIM-4 Falcon air-to-air missile, or the lack of dogfight training for Air Force pilots, meaning that only the very most senior officers in any given wing in South East Asia likely ever received any formal training in the art, due to serving in WWII). Mostly I recommend the book because it’s entertaining as hell, due to Olds’ being a bit larger than life and largely lacking in any sense of tact.