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Title: The Army and Vietnam by Andrew F. Krepinevich ISBN: 0-8018-3657-3 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Most Interesting book I've read on the Vietnam War
Comment: This book deserves to be far more widely read than it is--and I have no idea why it isn't. Krepinivich's thesis is a brilliant one--the US army was "conceptually" unprepared to fight the Vietnam war: it brought a cold war mentality to the jungles of Vietnam and spent the first seven or eight years of the war trying to "find" this war. The US army imagined that the Viet Cong was a variant of the Soviet army--they "must" have been controlled by a central organization and "must" have had "hidden armies" lurking in the jungle. Decively defeating them would, the Army believed, end the war.
In fact, Krepinivich convincingly argues, the VC was not in the jungle at all--but in the cities along the coast. "We should have done less 'flit'in' and more 'sit'in'", he says.
The war was actually fought more effectively after US troop reduction prevented the "jungle search" strategy from being implemented. This was something akin to what the Marines performed in I Corps: rather than participate in large scale jungle sweeps, troops were divided up and put in small villages with radios. The strategy was more hazardous as troops, because of their small numbers might be overrun. However, it was more effective because it allowed allied forces to prevent the VC from retaking a village after they had withdrawn from their major operation.
This book should eventually allow for US military operations in the first part of the war to be put in the context of greater US cold war culture. The "willing blindness" of the US military during much of the sixties came from what amounts to a cultural fixation on a way power was imagined to function. Even in '71, Nixon believed that the Vietnamese communists was controled by a "COSVN", which functioned like a sort of "tumor": nip the tumor and the body will fall. This, Krepinivich proves, was all part of the American imaginary. Our blindness went far beyond the generals: it was part of our culture.
Rating: 4
Summary: Army unprepared for war in Vietnam
Comment: This is an excellant book that should be read by every military professional and anybody interested in civil-miltary relationships and what happened in Vietnem. The authors premise is that the Army was unprepared for a war in Vietnam. Krepinevich states that Army training, doctrine and organization was geared toward a conventional conflict like what had happened in WWII and Korea. The Army was not prepared to fight a counterinsurgency against a foe that was only going to fight when they had to and when the circumstances and odds were in their favor. The senior leadership of the Army thought the war would be won be killing VC and NVA. According to Krepinevich this is all wrong. To defeat an insurgency you must protect and convince the people of the country you are trying to save that their fortunes lay in siding with you. If the people aren't going to back you then you will lose. It doesn't matter how many VC you kill. The Army's senior leadership did not want to deal with the pacification programs that would have won the war. Many in the military like to lay the blame for the loss in the war at the feet of the politicians in Washington. And there is justification for that. But Krepinevich makes a strong arguement that the war would have still been lost due to the poor/lack of strategy by our military leaders. Reading this book really angered me. Prior to this I had just finished reading "Street Without Joy" by Bernard Fall and I could not help but note the similarities between the failed French efforts and our own. It was like reading the same book over again except the units and the names of the leaders were different. There were almost no lessons learned by our senior leadership from the French debacle.
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Title: On Strategy : A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War by Harry G. Summers ISBN: 0891415637 Publisher: Presidio Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Friend by Day, Enemy by Night: Organized Vengeance in a Kohistani Community (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology) by Lincoln Keiser, R. Lincoln Keiser, Louise S. Spindler ISBN: 0030533325 Publisher: International Thomson Publishing Pub. Date: November, 1997 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Revolutionary Change by Chalmers A. Johnson, Bernard Crick ISBN: 0804711453 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: January, 1983 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues With Sikh Militants (Series in Contemporary Ethnography) by Cynthia Keppley Mahmood ISBN: 0812215923 Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Pub. Date: December, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam by Samuel L. Popkin ISBN: 0520039548 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: June, 1979 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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