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Summary: Tell Us Something We Don't Know
Review: I read this book a few years ago and the only significant thing I can remember clearly is the way John Paul Vann dies. That's because the author's bitterness toward the military colors everything he says. Endless criticism of military officers. But little criticism of the Presidents who ordered those officers to do what they were doing and say what they were saying. In fact, in the author's mind it was the Generals running the show and poor Kennedy and McNamaara and Johnson were their puppets. Isn't it nice to have a scapegoat to yell about when your political heroes have dragged the country into a 10-year nightmare?
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Summary: A Bright Shining Lie
Review: This book answered many questions I had about the Vietnam conflict. Having served two 1 year tours in Vietnam between 1964 and 1968 I saw quite a bit, but the behind the scene stories in this book answered many of the mysteries. The book was very accurate and the author did a very good job at describing the battles, the countryside and even the smells. I was an Army officer and pilot who flew both fixed and rotary wing aircraft. I have covered Vietnam from the DMZ to the southern tip of the Mekong Delta and this book was tremendous.
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Summary: One of the best books about Vietnam and a man's role
Review: Neil Sheehan spent a considerable amount of time to write this epic about John Paul Vann in particular and the Vietnam experience in general. He was motivated to write this book after attending Vann's funeral. This book is not for, or against the Vietnam war, but a detailed description and over-view of it, and its developments in the early, middle, and latter stages. It also told of Vann's personal background and professional moves, which were very relevant and interesting. This book detailed military strategy, current social and political events in N. and S. Vietnam during Sheehan's time spent there. The Vietnam experience can be looked at from many aspects. Many labeled it a "political" war but it was a "bureaucratic" one as well. The Bureaucratic machine operated in very strange ways. High-Ranking officers would make critical decisions, waste lives, and and carry out defeatist tactics and procedures for the sole purpose of getting a promotion called, "getting starred." Self-interests came first in Vietnam on the part of the Military. Harkins, McNamera and Westmoreland, were buffoons who would not listen to factual reports that didn't agree or support their fallacial versions of reality. They were incompetent. John Vann believed in what he stood for, and for his honestly he was labeled a "maverick" and "trouble maker," which he was not. He simply wanted to win the war, and keep innocent Vietnamese from being maimed and killed. The My Lai massacre was not an aberration; it was the norm. This historical account can give the reader the impression, that although our support for the South was noble, it was a mixture of he Ugly American and Catch-22. This is a fascinating book.
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Summary: What were we doing?
Review: My husband, a Vietnam veteran, read this book and recommended it to me. I'm glad he did! It is a wonderful explanation of the stupidity of those in charge of our policy during that time period. John-Paul Vann may not have had all the answers but he certainly saw that what we were doing was not the answer and had viable suggestions as to what might have worked had the policy been implimented immediately. I'm not saying the U. S. was wrong getting involved in Vietnam (although, after reading this book, I'm not sure we were right, either); I am saying that the policy of those people who were charged with winning that conflict was a policy guaranteed to bring about the most destruction, the most loss of American lives, and the least co-operation by the Vietnamese peasants as possible. This book sheds a lot of light on what the news media was trying to say and why the public didn't understand what the news media was trying to say. Excellent book!!!!
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Summary: Disturbing
Review: I must admit I gave this book away because I found it too disturbing to see on my shelf! It is a superb chronicle of the Vietnam War, and asks more questions than it answers. You can't really ask for more.
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Summary: THE ONLY BOOK TO MAKE SENSE OF A FAILED WAR
Review: I SERVED UNDER "VANN" IN PLEIKU WHEN HE WAS KILLED.AT THE TIME HE WAS THE CLOSEST THING TO A HERO THAT WE HAD. HIS RESCUES WERE SOMEWHAT FAMOUS. THE BOOK SHOWS LIKE OUR EFFORTS IN THE WAR HE WAS ALSO FLAWED.I THINK THIS BOOK CAN ANSWER THE QUESTION THAT VETS AND NONVETS HAVE ABOUT OUR FAILURE DESPITE A GALLANT EFFORT FROM OUR TROOPS. THE WAR WAS DOOMED BY THE FAILURE OF OUR LEADERS TO RECOGNIZE THE TACTICS OF OUR ENEMY WHO SAW MILITARY EFFORTS AS SUBORDINATE TO POLITICAL GOALS.THIS BOOK SHOWS THE THINKING AND TACTICS WHICH DOOMED OUR EFFORTS
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Summary: Could Not Put It Down
Review: Having served in Pleiku for two years (4/68-4/70)in the II Corps Interrogation Center as an MACV Team 21 advisor to the ARVN, I turned two days ago to the last third of the book that has been in my library, untouched for years, to read about Vann's time as II Corps Advisor after I had left Pleiku. This was all I planned to read. But once I started I could not put it down --going to sleep was difficult. Mr Sheehan has performed a critical service by exposing how our system operated, and he has been justly recognized for it. I think Mr. Sheehan's readers can confirm what they probably already suspect: That all "great powers" operate like this -- from the beginning of time, and I'm sure to the end. The US was, tragically, no different than the English, Germans, French, Spanish, Medieval Popes, Chinese, Arabs, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, you name them at their respective heights. The difference, which I believe Mr. Sheehan was telling us, is that in our relatively free and democratic system there is a greater likelihood that the truth will be communicated in an unvarnished manner, and acted upon, but this did not happen in Vietnam for the many and varied reasons so vividly explained by Mr. Sheehan. What is so incredibly amazing, and I think a tremendous strength in this book, is how close one man, John Paul Vann, got to making the truth crystal clear at a high enough level where it might have done some good at the crucial time just prior to the beginning of the US military buildup. Think about it -- a lowly Light Bird Colonel ready to give the briefing of his life at one of the highest policy levels, and it was stopped only hours before the dam could have been burst. One area I was hoping Mr. Sheehan would cover was the number of deaths our 30 year involvement in Vietnam led to, which I believe is perhaps as many as 2,000,000 Vietnamese, out of a population of perhaps 16,000,000, or an equivalent of nearly 35,000,000 Americans. Whenever I hear people talk about our 58,000 plus dead or our MIA (and I cried at The Wall last year suddenly and unexpectedly), I cannot help but think of the millions lost by an incredibly brave people - a people who fought the Chinese for four thousand years and who (nearly) all cried when Ho Chi Minh died -- right in the middle of the war! Mr. Sheehan made me think and feel deeply about my two years in Vietnam for the first time in many years. I remember very clearly my Vietnamese counterparts (but I only remember two Americans by name, Captain Matz and Lt. Gerber), and I often wonder what happened to them -- I wrote to Ha Van Cuong until 1973 when Pleiku fell and then communications ceased. I deeply respect a system which allows a literary and reporting genius like Mr. Sheehan to educate us and thereby improve our chances that such a human disaster will not happen again, at least not on our American watch, for however much longer we will hold this top dog position. At the same time, I believe it is true, as historians tell us, that they need about 50 years before they can get a good grasp on the significance of an event like our involvement in Vietnam. There is still much we do not know as regards how our involvement in Vietnam may have had an impact in China and Russia that helped avoid an even larger conflict. I hope that the many who served in Vietnam who need some societal support to accept their involvement will eventually learn that their experience is being viewed by future historians in a more positive way. And I wish the Vietnamese their well-deserved place in the world as a people who truly understand the word FREEDOM.
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Summary: Stupendous!
Review: OBSL should be required reading in high school. This book is exceptionally well researched. I just cannot say enough about it. READ "One Bright Shining Lie", it will forever change your opinion of the Vietnam conflict. If you thought "The Best and the Brightest" was good, well, you ain't read nothing yet!
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Summary: THE BEST BOOK I HAVE READ SINCE 1991
Review: I am a young guy so to speak, at age 27. So I haven't read a lifetime of non-fiction. But this is the 2nd best, and a close 2nd at that, non-fiction book I have ever read. Second only to "All the President's Men." I think this book took 16 years to write, and the effort and diligence show. A wonderful lesson for me, on the real vietnam conflict. Maybe one of three books in the last 10 years that I literally couldn't put down. Sheehan really puts value in the endless but relevant details he has researched, and skillfully puts them together in a way that answers the most confusing foreign policy puzzle of the last half of our century.
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Summary: Single Best Book Yet Written About Americans In Vietnam
Review: Sociologist C.Wright Mills once wrote that the key to meaningful social analysis was to understand the actions of an individual in the context of his or her social situation, to place the person in a historical context so as to better appreciate the aspects of the social environment that motivate the individual to act and react in a particular way. Thus, to understand the actions of a middle aged German Jew in the context of the 1930s, one must understand the nature of the Nazi society he lived his daily routine within. Here we can observe how brilliantly this principle can be used with journalist Neil Sheehan book, "A Bright Shining Lie", a book in which he not only tells the story of a single man, John Paul Vann, but also explains the history of American involvement in Vietnam. This is a marvelous tale of a modern tragedy, not only for Vann himself, but for the American people and of course, the poor Vietnamese, who had nowhere to run when the bombs started falling. Vann began his involvement with Vietnam as an Army Lt. Colonel. Because of both some personal troubles and his outspoken criticism of the ineffective and unnecessarily cruel way in which the war was being conducted, he was in effect cashiered, and he returned briefly to civilian life back in the United States. Yet Vann couldn't help but be drawn back into this country he had fallen in love with while doing his initial military tour. He found the opportunity to return to Vietnam as a civilian supporting the American military mission, and threw himself into the opportunity with characteristic energy and enthusiasm. He seemed to have an almost instinctive understanding of how to conduct an effective counter-insurgency operation, and based on his tireless efforts and his success in pacifying the area he was assigned, he gained increased credibility and influence within both the American military as well as the South Vietnamese government, and as a result became much more influential and powerful. Yet in the moments of his success Vann began to fatefully turn away from precisely those perceptions regarding the nature of the conflict and the need to be effectively engaged at the micro-level, and he, like many other individuals prosecuting the war, turned to more traditional and massive intervention techniques such as carpet bombing, that were not only indiscriminate, but also tended to be counterproductive in the longer term. Vann's slow but inexorable corruption by power and influence is a familiar tale, and indeed sadly documents one specific example of a widespread phenomena which continues to this day within our military; that of careerism. It is easy to understand how the quest for rank in order to do what one believes is right gets twisted into an eventual accommodation with the very devil one is combating in order to get ahead. Of course, once makes the necessary accommodation to succeed in a military career by mindlessly following orders, then when the particular officer eventually succeeds in getting promoted (by going along with the wrong-headed policies of his or her superiors) he or she becomes exactly that corrupted and compromised type that he or she was originally so motivated to replace. This, then, is the true tragedy of both John Paul Vann in particular and the American Army in Vietnam in general. In my humble opinion, everyone in the officer corps shared this dirty little secret of co-option that made each of them, to some degree, at least, un-indicted co-conspirators in a quite deliberate and systematic campaign to murder countless men, women, and children in living in nameless hamlets and villages in Vietnam. Of course, I am not alone in this view, and former officers such as Col. David Hackworth and Lt. Col Anthony Herbert have written poignantly about this very subject. This is a wonderful book about a terrifying truth, and one all Americans should read to understand the true dimensions of the tragedy in Vietnam.
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