|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
What the Army Learned in Vietnam
| Article
# : |
11357 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1986 |
2,277 Words |
| Author
: |
Philip Gold
Philip Gold is senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery
Institute and a frequent contributor to the Washington Times.
|
THE ARMY AND VIETMAN
Andrew F. Krepznivich, Jr.
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986,
318 pp., cloth
ADVICE AND SUPPORT
The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam 1941-19
Ronald H. Spector
Free Press, 1985
391 pp., $10.95 paper
THE RISE AND FALL OF AN AMERICAN ARMY
U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1968-1973
Shelby L. Stanton
Presidio Press, 1985
411 pp., $22.50 cloth
U.S. Army Col. Harry G. Summers was spending a depressing April (1975) in Hanoi. At one point of his diplomatic mission, during the wait for Saigon's fall, a North Vietnamese colonel came up to him and, in a gesture of military courtesy, said, "Don't feel badly. You did everything you could."
Summers replied, "You know you never defeated us in the field."
The American was right. One searches in vain for any evidence of U.S. failure of arms in the field. True, there were patrols that didn't come back, platoons and companies that got mauled, and battalions that took consistently heavy casualties. But a major defeat in the field it simply never happened. Even Text '68, initially viewed as a disaster, proved upon further analysis a devastating defeat for the enemy.
And the North Vietnamese colonel knew it. He replied, "That may be so." Then he added, "But it is also irrelevant."
In recent years, this vignette has become symbolic of a certain form of revisionist scholarship on Vietnam, a scholarship which centers on the question, why was victory attainable (as originally thought) but irrelevant? A minimal consensus has formed on this question. Victory was irrelevant, suggests this consensus, because it was never actively sought. According to the theory of "limited war" so fashionable among the Kennedy and Johnson administrations' Best and Brightest, combat had no
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
