Rating: 
Summary: Definitive Political History of the War in Vietnam
Review: A riveting narrative and an encyclopedic source of information regarding how we became involved in Vietnam, including who made the decisions each step of the way, and why they made them. Unprecedented, definitive and indispensible to anyone interested in both politics and the war in Vietnam. Although the book has been criticized for leaving out other subjects relating to the war, such as its impact on the U.S., and the details of the fighting in Vietnam, those topics were properly left by the author to be treated elsewhere. A true masterpiece!
Rating: 
Summary: Another unfortunate representation
Review: As much as America needs a real understanding of the Indochina conflict, this work falls drastically short. The sources sighted are the typical biased rationalizations void of depth and understanding. Anyone with an elementary wish to finding truth in mid to late twentieth century Indochina has merely to check whether actual primary participants were used in the construction of this work. Clearly, they were not. As an examination of American political decision making it may have certain merit. It is however impossible to gain a full understanding of the decisions without knowledge of the depth of the situations. This book does not do that. Clips taken out of context from the FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States) compilations are not a substitute for scholarly research. This work is long on pages, but short on understanding.
Rating: 
Summary: What Ho?
Review: Don't ask me why I would consider this book just a political primer, though the title, A GRAND DELUSION/AMERICA'S DESCENT INTO VIETNAM suggests that the bottom of anything was not America's initial position. I took a look at the Books portion of the Bibliography on pages 791-7, in which the top seemed to be a long way from Nam, starting with the book by Jonathan Aitken listed first, which is NIXON: A LIFE, and then the two books by Stephen E. Ambrose also have titles which start with that famous name, NIXON. Is it funny if a nickname might be spelled the same way as the abbreviation at the beginning of the title of the book by Louis Baldwin last on page 791, HON. POLITICIAN: MIKE MANSFIELD OF MONTANA? as in, Hon who? As jokes about Nam go, this might not be as funny as anything I could ever say in a review about my Hosea knock, knock joke, which might get to be more than offensive with each book that I might try to relate it to. In the case of Nam, all my knock knock jokes (Stella who? Stella nutter Hon. Politician?) ought to relate to how many Vietnamese were knocking on America's door, pleading for American forces to drop more bombs someplace in Asia.The Introduction, on pages 1-5, with its concise list of key lessons, possibly overexerts itself in showing how capable it is of shocking readers who don't think that democracy automatically means peaceful. When things go wrong, all hell breaking loose shoves us into the realization of how, both evenly and oddly, a mind can assert possibilities like, "Without a war in Vietnam and the political turmoil it sparked, it is unlikely that Richard Nixon, and perhaps even Ronald Reagan, would have been elected president." (p. 2). In following Mann's attempt to illustrate a web of delusions, myths and illusions, and how they had their way with us, I counted more than a dozen uses of the word "political," three uses of policy, politics, and election or elections in the Introduction. Other key words seemed to be: apathetic, democratic ideals, electorate, issue, legacy, partisan, politically, policies, promises, and voters. The Prologue, about Senator Frank Church, on pages 7-18, attempts to show that, strictly speaking, Senator Church should not be considered a pacifist or isolationist, a position which had been popular out in Idaho and still made a certain amount of sense before 1939. History used to be different, but in February, 1965, it was American bombs which "would fall on North Vietnam for the next three-and-a-half-years." (p. 9). In that context, Senator Church was likely to be called anything for using the word, "self-defeating," (p. 10) and whatever his intellectual powers and logic, "negotiations" (p. 11) weren't being considered as a solution to whatever problem Vietnam became in the: Knock, knock, Who's there? situation of those years. Big books on the subject of Vietnam, like Robert McNamara's, constantly surprise me in the number of things they do not know. In this book, I think the numbers are particularly bad for November, 1946, when I was about to be born. As reported by Robert Mann, "In November, the French shelled the northern city of Haiphong -- then under Vietminh control -- and killed several hundred Vietnamese civilians." (p. 69). This did not generate any news reports in the United States at the time it happened, so it isn't surprising that modern history is a bit vague about how much bombardment took place. Back in 1967, THE UNITED STATES IN VIETNAM by George McTurnan Kahin and John W. Lewis claimed, "The mounting tension culminated on November 23 with the French naval bombardment of Haiphong, where at least 6,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed. The Vietminh retaliated by launching coordinated attacks against the French in Hanoi, which touched off major hostilities." (Kahin, p. 27). As far as the civilians who died on November 23, 1946, were concerned, this might have been more like being one of the civilians in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, than the people from all over the world in the twin towers that day, since the people of Haiphong in 1946 were overwhelmingly not French. The dispute was about control of the customs of the port, and I have read that it was the Chinese section of Haiphong which was shelled, targeting the merchant class more than the indigenous Vietnamese. Perhaps the French should ask Osama bin Laden how they ever could have done that? I thought it might be good for me to read this book, in case it ever looks like the United States might get into some war for the sake of some former friends who now might be turning against us, and who might be impressed by a similar attack in their part of the world, but it isn't obvious from this book that such an attack would be a good idea.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful Look Into Our Decent Into The Vietnam Quagmire!
Review: In an interesting, provocative, and well-written addition to the growing body of thoughtful monographs about how the American imbroglio in Vietnam came to pass, Author Robert Mann has extended the circle of unindicted co-conspirators to include both houses of Congress and shows how through active participation as well as cravenly benign neglect they allowed the executive branch of the federal government to run amok. In so doing he has raised the level of intellectual discussion regarding the origins and prosecution of the war in Vietnam. Using a range of new archival materials only now available, he carefully constructs an intriguing and disturbing portrait of both individuals and governmental institutions out of control. Not one to quibble over words, Mann early on describes the perspective of American officials leading us into the quagmire was nothing more than a fateful series of delusions. In this sense this book is a worthy companion piece to both David Kaiser's wonderful "American Tragedy" as well as David Halberstam's memorable book, "The Best And The Brightest", in the fact that it argues that it was a number of specific individuals with their own personal credos, private agendas, and belief systems that led to the deepening involvement in Southeast Asian affairs. Unlike previous tomes such as Halberstam's as well as Stanley Karnow's excellent book, "Vietnam", that portrayed President Eisenhower's policies of global containment of communism as extremely cautious and careful, Mann uses an approach that, like Kaiser's, presents a veritable wave of documentary evidence which serves to indicate that it was precisely those decisions and policy predispositions established by Eisenhower, including a willingness to use nuclear weapons tactically, that later led to the fateful moves toward greater involvement by Lyndon Johnson. Even more interesting, Mann offer credible evidence regarding a number of policy changes President Kennedy enacted which serve to illustrate his own deep concern and reticence regarding involvement in the former French Indochina. While JFK did in fact sanction escalation by way agreeing to more military advisors, he repeatedly quite specifically denied, (both verbally and in documented minutes of meetings with advisors) specific authorization to escalate through introduction of any direct combat involvement. With Kennedy's assassination in late 1963, events moved quickly and fatefully toward a blind involvement in a situation we neither appreciated the complexity of nor had any real strategy to deal with. Instead, Mann contends, we deluded by the so-called facts that officials like Robert McNamara twisted and turned to support his policy decisions and recommendations to Lyndon Johnson. In this fashion, then Lyndon Johnson became the single worst possible foil for the efforts by McNamara and Army General William Westmoreland to massively escalate the war by introducing forty-four combat battalions to the conflict. Likewise, Johnson's successor, the erstwhile Cold Warrior Richard Nixon, did no better. After shamelessly interfering in the internal political disposition of the South Vietnamese government through Madame Chennault in order to ensure his place in winning the closely contested 1968 elections, Nixon soon found himself stuck to the waist in the sucking quicksand of continuing involvement in the war and a terrifying related national debate approaching a revolutionary fervor. He waited four long and painful years before finally ending American involvement. Against all evidence to the contrary, he deluded himself and his advisors that an "honorable Peace" was achievable. This is a wonderfully written book, and the author's style is both entertaining and edifying. He handily deals with a myriad of issues, complexions, and countervailing situations with aplomb, honesty and verve. He makes the otherwise inexplicable descent into national madness and the nightmare of Vietnam all too understandable and human. Personally, I am not as magnanimous; I still believe that Robert McNamara, General William Westmoreland, and a number of others should be tried as war criminals for crimes against humanity; after all, otherwise to try Serbians and Croats for their detestable deeds in the former Yugoslavia is utter hypocrisy). Books like this one can help us understand how the ritual abuse of power by officials not democratically elected can itself become an anti-democratic force profoundly affecting not only the lives of our citizens, but people everywhere in the developing world. Hopefully books like this will help us to come to understand and accept the reality of what the American government did in our name to Vietnam. We need to understand how we came to export our darkest emotional suspicions and a sense of national paranoia about a monolithic communist threat into an incredibly murderous campaign that almost exterminated a whole generation of Vietnamese by way of indiscriminate carpet bombing, deliberate use of environmentally horrific defoliates, and creation of so-called "free-fire" zones, where everything and anything moving was assumed to be hostile, whether it be man, woman, child, or beast. All of this was visited on the world in general and the Vietnamese in particular for little or no reason other than the extremely aggressive and ultimately dangerous can-do macho world-view of the power elite. The sooner we recognize this, the better it will be for us as citizens of a democratic government, and the more likely it is we will stop the next set of so- inclined bureaucratic monsters from acting in this way again. I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: A war now relegated to history
Review: Robert Mann offers a well-researched account of the Vietnam War, beginning with its Cold War roots. He meticulously charts the progress of the war from the French attempt to re-annex Indochina after World War II to its conclusion in 1975 when the Americans finally pulled out of this quagmire. It was a 25 year ordeal that left over 3 million Vietnamese dead. But, it was the continual loss of French and American soldiers that wore down the resolve of these two nations. Mann begins by noting the early protest to the war in the Senate chamber in the mid 60's. He shows how this dissent was ignored for the most part by the various presidential administrations over the years, as the US found itself locked into a battle with communism and was bound and determined not to lose Vietnam, as it had China and North Korea. Even those who had their reservations early on, such as Mike Mansfield, chose to defer to the president, assuming he had information Congress was not privy to. If all this sounds like the Iraq War, then take note because Mann states that the lessons have yet to be learned from America's most humiliating war. Yet, Mann avoids making too much commentary, relying instead on a wealth of material to present one of the best overall pictures of the war. If there is one shortfall to the book it is that Mann divorces Vietnam from all the other events going on at the time. The Civil Rights movement gets scarcely any mention, which was Johnson's main concern. Yet, it was Johnson who made the plunge into Vietnam following the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Mann uncovers information that casts sufficient doubt if any attack on American vessels ever took place in the Gulf of Tonkin, yet is careful to note that Johnson was acting on what he believed to be good authority. From that point on, it was a series of battles which the US felt it was winning, yet the Vietcongs continued to hold their ground. Mann notes the savvy of Vietnamese generals in this war of attrition, and how American generals continually underestimated their opponents. The book lacks the immediacy of "Dispatches," and other first hand accounts. Mann has firmly placed this war in history, allowing the reader to view it at a distance. For those who still view Vietnam as a part of the present, this book might lack punch, but it makes up for it with a thorough body of research that helps the reader understand some of the reasons for the decisions that were made, as ill-fated as they were.
Rating:
Summary: A war now relegated to history
Review: Robert Mann offers a well-researched account of the Vietnam War, beginning with its Cold War roots. He meticulously charts the progress of the war from the French attempt to re-annex Indochina after World War II to its conclusion in 1975 when the Americans finally pulled out of this quagmire. It was a 25 year ordeal that left over 3 million Vietnamese dead. But, it was the continual loss of French and American soldiers that wore down the resolve of these two nations. Mann begins by noting the early protest to the war in the Senate chamber in the mid 60's. He shows how this dissent was ignored for the most part by the various presidential administrations over the years, as the US found itself locked into a battle with communism and was bound and determined not to lose Vietnam, as it had China and North Korea. Even those who had their reservations early on, such as Mike Mansfield, chose to defer to the president, assuming he had information Congress was not privy to. If all this sounds like the Iraq War, then take note because Mann states that the lessons have yet to be learned from America's most humiliating war. Yet, Mann avoids making too much commentary, relying instead on a wealth of material to present one of the best overall pictures of the war. If there is one shortfall to the book it is that Mann divorces Vietnam from all the other events going on at the time. The Civil Rights movement gets scarcely any mention, which was Johnson's main concern. Yet, it was Johnson who made the plunge into Vietnam following the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Mann uncovers information that casts sufficient doubt if any attack on American vessels ever took place in the Gulf of Tonkin, yet is careful to note that Johnson was acting on what he believed to be good authority. From that point on, it was a series of battles which the US felt it was winning, yet the Vietcongs continued to hold their ground. Mann notes the savvy of Vietnamese generals in this war of attrition, and how American generals continually underestimated their opponents. The book lacks the immediacy of "Dispatches," and other first hand accounts. Mann has firmly placed this war in history, allowing the reader to view it at a distance. For those who still view Vietnam as a part of the present, this book might lack punch, but it makes up for it with a thorough body of research that helps the reader understand some of the reasons for the decisions that were made, as ill-fated as they were.
Rating:
Summary: Laser-like
Review: Sure the book is lengthy, but so was American involvement in Vietnam. The value of Mann's work is as a single volume history that focuses laser-like on the backdoor political story, an aspect of the conflict that usually gets much less attention than headline-grabbing military or protest developments. All in all, the book sheds much needed light on 30 years of deceitful shenanigans in Washington that left 3,000,000 Vietnamese dead, 50,000 Americans dead, and generations of wounds, emotional and physical, that will probably never heal. As the book shows, Americans are correct in not trusting their government, especially as it behaves abroad.
Mann walks us through a revealing series of presidential administrations and policies, starting with Truman's, and ending with Ford's. Each has a role in gearing up the meat grinder, some more honorably than others, but none comes off looking good as the country spirals ever downward toward disillusion and defeat. Ditto for the senators who opposed the war (Fulbright, Mc Govern, Mansfield, et. al.), lawmakers who, despite hours of pious rhetoric, could never get their legislative act together. Scarce mention is made of military or protest developments except when either influences major political decisions. As a much needed political chronicle of that 30 year span, the book succeeds admirably.
Mann's perspective is primarily a liberal one (which probably explains one particularly misleading review), but favors no individuals, liberal, conservative, or radical. He emphasizes the extent to which official hands were tied by red-baiting rhetoric of the cold war, in which every communist, be he nationalist or internationalist, was seen as taking his marching orders from Moscow. Such cramped thinking refused to distinguish a national liberation movement from an international communist conspiracy, thereby setting policy on a one way track from which there was no exit. On these matters, Mann is on solid ground. But on the allied topic of the domino theory, there is more truth to that theory than liberals such as Mann like to admit. The problem for defenders of the theory is that southeast Asia is not where the dominoes fell. Rather they fell in Central Africa (Angola, Mozambique, the collapse of the Portuguese empire) and Central America (Nicaragua, El Salvador, to a degree Guatemala). As more recent documentation has shown, rebel movements in each of these contested venues were boosted considerably by US defeat, demoralization, and subsequent lessening of a will to intervene. So in the rather ironical sense of being right for the wrong reasons, conservatives understood better than liberals the global stakes of intervention in southeast Asia. Be that as it may, Mann has written a very readable and revealing account of how Washington got us into that bloody mess in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: Laser-like
Review: Sure the book is lengthy, but so was American involvement in Vietnam...The book's value is as a single volume history that focuses laser-like on the backdoor political story of Vietnam, an aspect usually getting much less attention than headline-grabbing military or protest developments All in all, the book sheds much needed light on 30 years of deceitful shenanigans in Washington that left 3,000,000 Vietnamese dead, 50,000 Americans dead, and generations of wounds, emotional and physical, that will probably never heal. As the book shows, Americans are correct in not trusting their government, especially as it behaves abroad. Mann walks us through a revealing series of presidential administrations and policies, starting with Truman's, and ending with Ford's. Each has a role in gearing up the meat grinder, some more honorably than others, but none comes off looking good as the country spirals ever downward toward disillusion and defeat. Ditto for the senators who opposed the war (Fulbright, Mc Govern, Mansfield, et. al.), lawmakers who, despite hours of pious rhetoric, could never get their legislative act together. Scarce mention is made of military or protest developments except when either influences major political decisions. As a much needed political chronicle of that 30 year span, the book succeeds admirably. Mann's perspective is primarily a liberal one (which probably explains one particularly misleading review), but favors no individuals, liberal, conservative, or radical. He emphasizes the extent to which official hands were tied by red-baiting rhetoric of the cold war, in which every communist, nationalist or internationalist, was seen as taking his marching orders from Moscow. Such cramped thinking refuses to distinguish a national liberation movement from an international communist conspiracy, thereby setting policy on a one way track that no one could get off of. Here Mann is on solid ground. But on the allied topic of the domino theory, there is more truth to that theory than liberals such as Mann like to admit. The problem for defenders of the theory is that southeast Asia is not where the dominoes fell. Rather they fell in Central Africa (Angola, Mozambique, the collapse of the Portuguese empire) and Central America (Nicaragua, El Salvador, to a degree Guatemala). As more recent documentation has shown, rebel movements in each of these contested venues were boosted considerably by US defeat, demoralization, and subsequent lessening of a will to intervene. So in the rather ironical sense of being right for the wrong reasons, conservatives understood better than liberals the global stakes of intervention in southeast Asia. Be that as it may, Mann has written a very readable and revealing account of how Washington got us into that bloody mess in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: Completely Worthless!
Review: Thankfully I checked this out of the library rather than buying it. Unless you know absolutely nothing about the Vietnam War, you will find this book completely worthless. Mann presents no new facts about the Vietnam War - his use of sources can only be described as primitive. He has a large bibliography and list of interviews/oral histories that he claims he performed. But what does he actually cite in his footnotes? Each chapter has perhaps 20 to 60 footnotes - very few indeed for a work of this length. By and large he cites secondary sources, newspaper articles, and Foreign Relations of the United States volumes. In short, if he truly did any original research, his footnotes do not reflect this. What he has written is basically the world's longest undergraduate research paper (written by a grade grubber who writes ten times more than the professor requires). Furthermore, he offers no new analysis. This work is entirely superficial and uncritical. Mann is not apparently familiar with any of the historiographical controversies on the Vietnam War - or at least he chooses not to discuss them. He spends 800 pages regurgitating the views of others (e.g. Karnow, Reeves, Schulzinger, Hoopes, Ambrose), and the world is no better off for this effort. The reader would be advised to read these authors in the original, rather than reading Mann's reprocessing of them. There are quite a few howlers in this book. One of my favorites is the argument that at home, America "became a stronger nation because of its tragic experience in Vietnam." Oh yes, America was definitely stronger after the complete destruction of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus forged during World War II, and after the American people learned to mistrust the government. This work also lacks focus. Mann spends most of his time discussing the views of the Presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon, but he also lengthily examines the views of Congress, particularly Fulbright, Mansfield, and McGovern. No doubt this is because Mann is a former Senate staffer, but the effect is to protract an already unnecessarily prolix work. Mann would have been better off writing a book ONLY about Congress and the Vietnam War, since that is his putative area of expertise. Such a work might have been shorter, more readable, and possibly more useful (though I doubt it, since Mann seems only capable of presenting the standard establishment view of events). Other authors have approached this subject in a more cogent and succinct manner. I recommend David Kaiser's "American Tragedy" rather than this work.
Rating:
Summary: What happens when rational, reasoned dissent is ignored
Review: The American experience in Vietnam is one with many lessons, only some of which have been learned. There have been many dramatic changes in the world since that apparently endless conflict concluded. I personally will never forget watching the morning news show after Saigon fell and the announcer saying, "It is hard to believe that it is finally over." Of course, in the minds of many and the thread of history, it is still very much with us. The muddled sequence of events that caused the United States to commit over a half million troops to the conflict is an incredible lesson in how the American political leadership can utterly fail.
The executive and legislative branches of the American government entered into a cynical bargain over the American involvement. Several presidents chose to lie to congress and the people about the situation and most of the legislators agreed not to critically examine the evidence. The facts in this matter are indisputable, and this description of the sequence of events is incredible reading. Some of the most powerful senators knew they were being lied to, yet they felt that it was necessary to support the policies of the president. While they do come across as being simplistic dupes, in fact the problem was that they had no alternative. This was not because they were inept but simply due to the fact that there was no option that did not involve a communist victory. It seems clear now that the overwhelming historical trends were that Vietnam would be unified and it would be under the leadership of the only credible nationalistic force, the communists of the north. Since any political force with a communist label was automatically labeled as an enemy, the American leaders felt there was no alternative to escalating the war.
As Mann correctly identifies, there were two main events that led to the massive American involvement. The first occurred when the French attempted to regain that part of their empire. Had the US recognized the desire for the Vietnamese nationalists led by Ho Chi Minh to unify the country and allowed it to happen, there would have been no war and China and Vietnam would have returned to their "normal" state of being traditional enemies. It is one of the greatest tragedies that at that time the communists succeeded in gaining power in China. The anti-communist firestorm that erupted in the US led to the destruction of anyone who had the intelligence to predict it based on the ineptness of the Nationalists and the dedication of the communists. While Mann points out that no one in the US foreign policy establishment understood Vietnam, I doubt that even seasoned experts would have made a difference. Anyone with the courage to argue that the inevitable should be acknowledged would have been sacrificing their career. Furthermore, the idea that the US could have prevented the communist victory in China is ridiculous.
The second point was when Diem was toppled and then executed. He was the only figure in South Vietnam with any type of popular mandate and once he was removed only massive US military involvement could prop up his successors. The American involvement in Diem's overthrow is chronicled in a fair way, with the American players given more benefit of the doubt than they probably deserve. They thought they knew what was best for a country they did not understand and removed the only one who could have made South Vietnam a viable political entity.
Throughout the book there is the inexorable presence of Richard Nixon. He first appears as a representative from California with a shrill and deceptive voice against communism. His electoral victory was one "earned" via half-truths and deceptive character assassination. He followed that by championing the French cause as Vice President under Eisenhower. His re-emergence after years in the political wilderness is one of the most cynical actions that any US politician has ever committed. As a friend and confidant of South Vietnamese President Thieu, he encouraged him to reject all peace overtures during the 1968 campaign for president. Nixon concluded, probably correctly, that if there had been significant progress in the peace talks, it would have swayed the election in favor of Humphrey. His actions were most certainly treasonous, raising the likely possibility that he bought the presidency at the cost of several more years of war. Lyndon Johnson knew this but could not make the information public because it had been illegally obtained. The data was obtained in ways similar to those that toppled Nixon in later years.
In reading this chronicle of the American involvement in Vietnam, I was struck with the seeming inevitability of it all. No one really bothered to thoroughly examine the circumstances, truly believing that American management techniques could be transplanted into an ancient culture. Those who objected, whether publicly or privately, were shunted aside and ignored. I disagree with the title. The word "Inevitable" should be inserted after America's. If anything positive came out of these events, it is that the American public and legislators no longer take the President at his word. This is the most illuminating history book that I have ever read.
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