Rating: 
Summary: In Vietnam, We Lost a Battle But Won a (Cold) War!
Review: For every one who ever looked for a silver lining in the cloud that was America's involvement in Vietnam, Michael Lind's book: "Vietnam: The Necessary War," is a breath of fresh air. He contends that our involvement was necessary to preserve America's credibility as an ally world-wide. Had we simply capitulated, Third World nations would have rallied to the U.S.S.R. Sounds like a right-wing propaganda, right? Wrong!
Mr. Lind indeed ridicules New England based noninterventionists for their head-in-the-sand approach to foreign policy that advocated staying out of Vietnam all-together. However he also takes aim at the far right that pressed for removal of all military restrictions. World War III would have almost certainly been the result. Gen. Westmorland and the military also gets the "Voltaires (poison) Pen" treatment for fighting an unconventional war with conventional tactics, with inevitable results.
Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's theory that "missed opportunities" prevented a settlement that would have been acceptable to both sides is ridiculed by Mr. Lind. If he is right, McNamara and Company were sold a bill of goods by the Communists in his book, "Argument Without End." I would love to hear Lind and McNamara debate the subject!
In the end, Mr. Lind puts the war in perspective. Vietnam was a small, hot-spot in a global cold war. He states we were right to go in to preserve our credibility and also right to leave in order to preserve a concensus to contain communism world-wide; a conflict we clearly won. He ends with the observation that, "Americans want "real wars" like World War II and the Gulf War, not limited wars like Korea and Vietnam." Unfortunately, this is not likely to happen in the future. Lind says, future American soldiers will have to learn to "swim in quagmires," like Vietnam in order to maintain the United States' position as a dominant world power.
I admit a certain bias in favor of this work. Lind says many of the things I have felt before and verifys them with well researched and effectively presented data. His work deserves careful consideration by military strategists and students of international relations in order to implement a foreign policy that recognizes the most likely threats to our security and develops a supporting military, that is trained and structured to fight the next war, instead of the last one.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative; But Not Everything that Was Promised
Review: I bought this book while nonchalantly glancing through the World History section of a bookstore, and was intrigued by the title, and by the cover flaps which promised a book that would prove why the Vietnamn was not evil, and was somewhat necessary. However, this is NOT what the book gives in the end.Lind writes excellent backdrop pieces on certain aspects of the Vietnamn War, so if you are young, and have not experienced the Vietnamn War times, this book is not only thought provoking but is also worth reading for good, analytical and factual knowledge of Vietnamn. Nevertheless, 'Vietnamn: The Necessary War' is just like every other opinionated book on Vietnamn. As a matter of fact, Lind only bluntly discusses his thesis in the first chapter, and then spends the rest of the book telling you, the reader, where we were mistaken. It's a good book, a little tough to digest, but still very informative. But you should be forwarned before you invest the money in buying it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a 'Reinterpretation'
Review: I do not believe that Mr. Lind's book is a reinterpretation of Vietnam because I do not believe that many serious scholarly works have been written on the topic. The history of Vietnam has largely been written by partisan participants in the war and thus the result is passionate propaganda. Fortunately, Mr. Lind has looked at the facts and produced a ground breaking dispassionate work.
No longer are the war protestors, the screamers and shouters who have written most of the books on Vietnam to this point, heroes fighting an unjust war. As the babyboomers grow older, I believe that the next generation of scholars will produce a more balanced history. My favorite aspect of the books is that he looks at the faults and fallacies of all sides during the war.
Too often, such as in Jeffrey KImball's "Nixon's War," the President and supporters of the war are portrayed as pure evil while the protestors are completely pure and just. These type of hackneyed scholarly myths have run their course and I look forward to seeing new balanced scholarship such as "Vietnam: The Neccessary War."
Rating:
Summary: A Breath of Fresh Air
Review: In 284 pages, Mr. Lind shows us why we had to fight the Vietnam War. He also explains a strategy that probably would have brought victory for the United States. He also debunks much of the liberal mythology surrounding the war. There were no "missed opportunities" to befriend the murderous North Vietnamese Communists. There was no opportunity for a Coalition Government in South Vietnam. South Vietnam's government was at least as legitimate as the North's and certainly preferable. The U.S. and South Vietnam did not violate the 1954 Geneva Conference requiring Vietnam wide elections because neither nation ratified this agreement. Lind also debunks some of the right wing orthodoxy too. An invasion of North Vietnam would have been counterproductive if not disasterous. Also, lavish use of bombing was probably counter productive. The only criticism I have is that this book is relatively short compared to its theme. Despite this, Mr. Lind makes compelling arguments and backs them up with quality research. I HIGHLY recommend this book to all who seek truth!
Rating:
Summary: Thank God for the information revolution
Review: In this most balanced historical rendering of the reasons, causes and effects of the long war in Indochina, Lind provides extensively nuanced opinions and facts. Published in 1999, it has the factual gravitas that goes with being a beneficiary of the West's access to the post-communism Soviet archives, which became available after the fall of the wall and the implosion of its, as Ronald Reagan would accurately say, Marxist-evil empire. These considerable facts reveal the calumny, continuing even today, of the hard left-wing socialist utopians in America to distort the realities of the Indochina war of the 1940's-1970's to the American people in a successful attempt to miss portray the entire Cold War effort, particularly the battle for Vietnam. Lind makes clear how the Communist regime in the USSR (who provided comprehensive air defenses for Hanoi unseen since Nazi Germany's defense of Berlin in WWII), aided by the Communist's in Beijing, (who provided the crucial assistance of +/- 317,000 Maoist Communist soldiers to Ho Chi Minh's Communist thugs, who in turn used them copiously in logistical support efforts for the war), were the difference in stifling America's military intervention which focused on stopping the spread of Communism in the greater southeastern Asian land mass. That the American and European Left not only denied this now overwhelming reality, but successfully portrayed it as a civil war with Ho Chi Minh as merely a "leader of his people", calls them to task for perpetrating a barbarous falsehood for which they've yet to apologize. Lind illustrates the importance of remembering that this was the first foreign war fought on television, which made it easier for the overwhelmingly Left-wing press in America to mischaracterize the war by engaging in a grossly fraudulent display of the fallacy of inductive logic, where a specific event is elevated to create the misperception that it represents the "whole"; think the Tet offensive in February 1968. Interestingly enough, this same upside-down one-sidedness of the western press is ongoing today in the reporting of the current war in Iraq. Lind covers in detail the origins of the Cold War (really WW III) where the West, while involved in a siege in Western Europe with the Soviets, was compelled to fight proxy wars in other parts of the world, specifically in the Asian theatre. In fact, Lind breaks the Cold War into two wars separated by the Tet offensive in 1968 and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. He remonstrates on Russian adventurisn in Africa, Central America, and Afghanistan in the face of America's lack of resolve to fight the Cold War in foreign lands after Tet. He also points out that without the loss of China to Maoist Communism we would never have had to face the conflict in Korea or the subsequent one in Indochina. Of note, we still haven't had to lay down American lives to protect Taiwan, but the jury is still out on whether or not the Red Chinese will get crazy enough to start a conflict with us there. Lind also points out the need to keep weaker more militarily dependent nations on our side by citing a "bandwagon effect" where, like female elephant seals in a harem flock to the newly dominant male who has vanquished the previous alpha-male of the flock. This was on international display in the 1970's. For those who are economically ignorant, there is not enough room here to explain why this is important. If you don't understand it then do your military history homework, something undemanded in academia today. Lind comments at length on why those in America, both pro and anti-war, seem to be that way due to historical geographical positioning. It's a fascinating discourse and one that by itself makes this a great book. Not only does his commentary dwell on why some go to war while others are restrained, but it also calls into question why those who don't cannot change their minds, even in the face of an overwhelming necessity to pay closer attention. The whole discussion is a paradigm for why all great cultures throughout history have imploded from within due to a moral rot at the core. Sometimes it happens slowly, other times over a much long period, but it always seems to happen. It makes one ponder, what is it in the minds of men...? I'm sure Shakespeare understood this seemingly elusive concept as he seemed to capture about every other theme on human nature that one could imagine. In the end, Lind makes his case for why Vietnam was a war of necessity for America. Again, this is a wonderfully nuanced book just chock full of interesting facts and insights, but it won't change the minds of those "true believer's" in socialism as the ideal system for operating societies in what we today call western civilization. Indeed, these Marxist-socialist utopians in the west hate capitalism so much that they continue to root against America's capitalist system both domestically and internationally. This is consistent with their opposition against any country abroad (think Israel) that seems to be a successful arm of it. What makes this book a timely read, is the one-sided reporting (the kind that consistently occurred during the Indochina war) of events occurring in Iraq. The marginalization of beheading an American citizen on worldwide television with the fraternity hell-week hazing of Iraqi killers held prisoner in the Abu Ghraib prison (the site of some of Saddam's many brutal torture cells) being just one example. By the same token, the Communist's in Vietnam regularly beheaded village chiefs and their South Vietnamese followers, and then put their heads on pikes in the conquered villages in a successful attempt to intimidate and cow the inhabitants. For an understanding of why countries go to war in the first place, this is a great and timely book. You won't hear its salient points discussed any where in academia, Hollywood, the major print media, or on the major networks including PBS/NPR, or CNN. If you're a budding intellectual, this is a book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Thank God for the information revolution
Review: In this most balanced historical rendering of the reasons, causes and effects of the long war in Indochina, Lind provides extensively nuanced opinions and facts. Published in 1999, it has the factual gravitas that goes with being a beneficiary of the West's access to the post-communism Soviet archives, which became available after the fall of the wall and the implosion of its, as Ronald Reagan would accurately say, Marxist-evil empire. These considerable facts reveal the calumny, continuing even today, of the hard left-wing socialist utopians in America to distort the realities of the Indochina war of the 1940's-1970's to the American people in a successful attempt to miss portray the entire Cold War effort, particularly the battle for Vietnam. Lind makes clear how the Communist regime in the USSR (who provided comprehensive air defenses for Hanoi unseen since Nazi Germany's defense of Berlin in WWII), aided by the Communist's in Beijing, (who provided the crucial assistance of +/- 317,000 Maoist Communist soldiers to Ho Chi Minh's Communist thugs, who in turn used them copiously in logistical support efforts for the war), were the difference in stifling America's military intervention which focused on stopping the spread of Communism in the greater southeastern Asian land mass. That the American and European Left not only denied this now overwhelming reality, but successfully portrayed it as a civil war with Ho Chi Minh as merely a "leader of his people", calls them to task for perpetrating a barbarous falsehood for which they've yet to apologize. Lind illustrates the importance of remembering that this was the first foreign war fought on television, which made it easier for the overwhelmingly Left-wing press in America to mischaracterize the war by engaging in a grossly fraudulent display of the fallacy of inductive logic, where a specific event is elevated to create the misperception that it represents the "whole"; think the Tet offensive in February 1968. Interestingly enough, this same upside-down one-sidedness of the western press is ongoing today in the reporting of the current war in Iraq. Lind covers in detail the origins of the Cold War (really WW III) where the West, while involved in a siege in Western Europe with the Soviets, was compelled to fight proxy wars in other parts of the world, specifically in the Asian theatre. In fact, Lind breaks the Cold War into two wars separated by the Tet offensive in 1968 and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. He remonstrates on Russian adventurisn in Africa, Central America, and Afghanistan in the face of America's lack of resolve to fight the Cold War in foreign lands after Tet. He also points out that without the loss of China to Maoist Communism we would never have had to face the conflict in Korea or the subsequent one in Indochina. Of note, we still haven't had to lay down American lives to protect Taiwan, but the jury is still out on whether or not the Red Chinese will get crazy enough to start a conflict with us there. Lind also points out the need to keep weaker more militarily dependent nations on our side by citing a "bandwagon effect" where, like female elephant seals in a harem flock to the newly dominant male who has vanquished the previous alpha-male of the flock. This was on international display in the 1970's. For those who are economically ignorant, there is not enough room here to explain why this is important. If you don't understand it then do your military history homework, something undemanded in academia today. Lind comments at length on why those in America, both pro and anti-war, seem to be that way due to historical geographical positioning. It's a fascinating discourse and one that by itself makes this a great book. Not only does his commentary dwell on why some go to war while others are restrained, but it also calls into question why those who don't cannot change their minds, even in the face of an overwhelming necessity to pay closer attention. The whole discussion is a paradigm for why all great cultures throughout history have imploded from within due to a moral rot at the core. Sometimes it happens slowly, other times over a much long period, but it always seems to happen. It makes one ponder, what is it in the minds of men...? I'm sure Shakespeare understood this seemingly elusive concept as he seemed to capture about every other theme on human nature that one could imagine. In the end, Lind makes his case for why Vietnam was a war of necessity for America. Again, this is a wonderfully nuanced book just chock full of interesting facts and insights, but it won't change the minds of those "true believer's" in socialism as the ideal system for operating societies in what we today call western civilization. Indeed, these Marxist-socialist utopians in the west hate capitalism so much that they continue to root against America's capitalist system both domestically and internationally. This is consistent with their opposition against any country abroad (think Israel) that seems to be a successful arm of it. What makes this book a timely read, is the one-sided reporting (the kind that consistently occurred during the Indochina war) of events occurring in Iraq. The marginalization of beheading an American citizen on worldwide television with the fraternity hell-week hazing of Iraqi killers held prisoner in the Abu Ghraib prison (the site of some of Saddam's many brutal torture cells) being just one example. By the same token, the Communist's in Vietnam regularly beheaded village chiefs and their South Vietnamese followers, and then put their heads on pikes in the conquered villages in a successful attempt to intimidate and cow the inhabitants. For an understanding of why countries go to war in the first place, this is a great and timely book. You won't hear its salient points discussed any where in academia, Hollywood, the major print media, or on the major networks including PBS/NPR, or CNN. If you're a budding intellectual, this is a book for you.
Rating:
Summary: This shows Now is worse than Then
Review: It is fortunate that VIETNAM/ THE NECESSARY WAR/ A REINTERPRETATION OF AMERICA'S MOST DISASTROUS MILITARY CONFLICT by Michael Lind was published in 1999, long before the attack on the world's greatest buildings, including the American Pentagon, for sure, on September 11, 2001, when it became perfectly clear that the United States of America has hardly any real allies in the world, and Americans could begin to think about the rest of the world as the underlings. The last Vietnamese that Americans really worried about was Ngo Dinh Diem, a leader who had such a mind of his own that Lind can easily compare him with a situation that was begging for the 9/11 attacks. "If South Vietnam's dictators were no worse than South Korea's, they were not as bad as some of the despots in the Middle East whom the United States has aided in the service of its global grand strategy. Many of the Muslim mujahideen . . . are now taking part in a murderous jihad or holy war against America and the West." (p. 234). These people are turning out to be the people that America should have been protecting the world against, "But that is the wrong standard of comparison. Compared to America's other allies in East Asia, the Saigon elite does not appear to have been uniquely bad. And in retrospect they appear relatively enlightened, compared to most of America's allies in the Middle East." (p. 233). Since September 11, 2001, it seems like America has only one ally in the Middle East, and the rest of the area is festering at the prospect that America will treat their governments as underlings in the kind of virtue and morality that are most important to America until their governments can be undermined and replaced by some form of control which is more to our liking, though Iraq seems to be failing in the manner that Vietnam failed to be an ideal place to which to send American troops. People who still remember enough Vietnamese poetry to dream their poems might be inspired by the few poems in this book, and a report on the aftermath of the war. "Doan Van Toai, a South Vietnamese dissident who was imprisoned after the communist conquest of the South in 1975, recalled an incident in jail: `As we chime in with `At night I dream I see Uncle Ho,' I realize that several voices in the choir are changing `I see' to `I kill.' No doubt the new version corresponds more closely to the reality of their dreams." (p. 244). This reminds me of current internet polls asking whether it would be more important to capture Osama bin Laden, the radical rich guy who was really waging war on America, or Saddam Hussein, the former government official in Iraq whose people might not be sure whose underlings they are until he is disposed of. When we have to pick from choices like this, I doubt that we have any real allies in the Middle East, and even the underlings don't seem to like the waiting involved while we resolve which parts they are going to be asked to play. The Preface tried to make a parallel that depended entirely on air superiority. "Reluctantly the president ordered the bombing of the communist-nationalist dictator's homeland, hoping that air power alone would compel the dictator to abandon his campaign of aggression. . . . To escalate the war by introducing ground troops would be to risk a bloody debacle and a political backlash. Every choice presented the possibility of disaster." (p. x). Slobodan Milosevic ended up as a defendant in war crimes proceedings for activities which took place as a result of his dream of a Greater Serbia, but it is still not clear if Osama or Saddam would be equally guilty of the charges brought against him. "Milosevic armed, supplied, and directed Serb paramilitary units engaged in mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Kosovo, and other parts of the former Yugoslavia; Ho armed, supplied, and directed Viet Cong guerillas in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia who waged war . . ." (p. xi) and the American army supported my presence in 2 of those 5 areas, but I didn't want to stay in the army long enough to get shipped to Iraq. VIETNAM/ THE NECESSARY WAR is all about how to have proxy wars, in which the great powers crush the underlings without ever getting into each other's way, except indirectly. As long as the jihad was being waged by the opponents of Soviet expansion, in was in America's interest to support it, and this book maintains the kind of geopolitical slice and dice approach to who is fighting who that is the only way of viewing things that is going to make sense. Trying to picture the world as America's underlings, or the Middle East as Israel's underlings, or Libya and the Middle East as oil's overlords, and seizing the assets of anyone who tries to challenge the economic picture by wiping out tourists, museums, rice paddies, villages, foliage, marshes, exploding oil pipelines, newspapers, TV stations, and most people who start shooting rifles in the air in Iraq whenever they are mad about something, threatens to become an awful picture. This book has a good index, which even has an entry for Operation Flaming Dart, against Dong Hoi, North Vietnam, early in 1965. You might want to think about that one, for a minute, before you look that up.
Rating:
Summary: At last!
Review: Lee Kuan Yew (the George Washington of Singapore and one of Asia's senior statesmen) has stated over and over again that America's involvement in Vietnam was a noble cause. So did Ronald Reagan. So does the author, and he documents why. Nice to see the truth told for a change. I spent a year there (June 1968 to June 1969) and agree 100% with the author's very persuasive history and logic.
Rating: 
Summary: The Unnecessary Book
Review: Like Lind, I have spent a good deal of time in Viet Nam; Like Lind, I am not a Viet Nam veteren; unlike Lind, I have read the history of colonialism and unlike Lind I did not begin my thinking with an ideological fixation and revisionist ideology. This book, simply put, is garbage. Its protrayal of Ho Chi Minh is a gross caricature, its description of contemporary Viet Nam could only have been written by someone with no curiosity and no sense of ambiguity.
Rating:
Summary: A book that puts the Vietnam conflict in a global context
Review: Lind has written a book that takes a look back at the Vietnam conflict as it related to the Cold War and superpower competition in the post-World War II world. There is none of the historical revisionism or disinformation that pervade so many of the books that attempt to label Vietnam as a war that was a civil conflict that should not have been fought by the United States. His reasoning is sound and compelling and cites historical facts. For this veteran, this book has reaffirmed the belief that Vietnam was fought for all the right reasons and contributed to the overall victory of the West that concluded the Cold War a decade ago. The men lost in Vietnam did not die in vain and Lind's book proves that point. Semper Fi.
|
