Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did

Rating:
Summary: Too bad it didn't get read by our leaders
Review: I can't add to the description of the book, except to say that it's too bad more people haven't read it. Especially our leadership. It's horrendously important to recognize the failures that we're repeating in Iraq.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent critque of US imperialism
Review: NATO's assault on Yugoslavia is remarkably similar to the USA's war of aggression against Vietnam. Loren Baritz's excellent book Backfire: a history of how American culture led us into Vietnam and made us fight the way we did, (Morrow, 1985) presents the US Government's pattern of thought, in some detail. The McGeorge Bundy report of February 1965 "concluded by informing the president that if he kept his focus on what the NLF was doing in the South as the cause of our bombing in the north, the world's criticism of the bombing could be dealt with. If the American players would continually emphasize the atrocities of the guerrillas, 'the international pressures for negotiation should be quite manageable.' America must not get sucked into negotiations for peace except for what amounted to an unconditional surrender of the guerrillas." "While he (President Johnson) was destroying the country with bombing, defoliation and napalm, he could without cynicism speak of peace and progress. He believed that the destruction was unfortunately necessary before the construction could occur. That was Ho Chi Minh's fault." "During the debate about whether the United States should send its bombers to help the French at Dien Bien Phu, the Chief of Staff of the army, General Matthew B. Ridgway, recalled that in Korea, where he had been in command, 'We had learned that air and naval power alone cannot win a war ... It was incredible to me that we had forgotten that bitter lesson so soon - that we were on the verge of making that same tragic error.' The lesson we had learned in World War II was forgotten before it was relearned in Korea, and was forgotten again in Vietnam. Old myths apparently neither die nor fade away. Before America withdrew from Vietnam, we dropped four times more bombs on Vietnam than all the bombs we dropped all over the world during World War II. It did not work, as the CIA regularly said it would not." "LBJ had received the advice to start the air war to prevent the ground war." But a failed air war provoked pressure for a ground war. "The decision to send in the marines was based on the assumption that they would serve only 'security', not combat, objectives. The war planners did not have to admit to themselves that they were in an Asian ground war. The President did not inform the American public about the decision to send the marines when he had the opportunity to do so. America soon learned what was happening, and Secretary Rusk explained, if that is the right word, that the marines were ordered to avoid combat, only to return enemy fire." Paul Warnke, the appropriately-named Pentagon hack, said, "There is no question of the fact that we can keep on winning the war forever. We always win and we always will, and it won't ever make any difference. Our wins won't make a clear dent because there is no way in which we can bring about political progress in South Vietnam. ... The more of an American occupation you engage in the longer you're going to stay." "Guerrillas do not need to win; they simply must avoid losing. Conventional forces must win. Guerrillas can wait for the expense of foreign expeditionary forces to wear down the enemy's economy, and for the accumulating casualties to enrage the home front. Guerrillas are at home to start with. They never need to fight set battles unless they choose to. Because they can wait, time is on their side and is therefore a test of the enemy's patience and will in a distant land." "General Westmoreland's 'strategy' was to fight a 'war of attrition', to kill as many guerrillas and North Vietnamese troops as possible. Then they would quit. Then we would win. The killing became the objective. General Westmoreland did not know what else to do: 'What alternative was there to a war of attrition?'" But, as a standard military textbook said, "Attrition is not a strategy."

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and provocative analysis of the U.S. role in Vietna
Review: The subtitle of "Backfire" - "A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We did" - sums up the contents well. But it fails to suggest the great evil and ignorance which Baritz's scholarly analysis reveals. Example: G.I.s spent a full year in Vietnam; officers were rotated in and out every six months. Reason: Officers needed to "punch their tickets" (i.e. serve in Vietnam) if they wanted to rise up the ladder of promotion. So military policy was formulated based on that priority, not on the obvious fact that just as officers were becoming really experienced combat leaders, they were sent home and replaced by inexperienced officers. The resulting cost of American lives amounts to a war crime on the part of senior military leaders who put the policy into effect, a war crime against their own men! Another example: U.S. soldiers derided Vietnamese men as "fags" because they saw them holding hands. They were ignorant of Vietnamese culture in which such conduct has nothing to do with sexual preference. Thus, "why fight for a bunch of fags" became a prevalent attitude. Baritz's book is different than almost any other on Vietnam - and more thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and provocative analysis of the U.S. role in Vietna
Review: The subtitle of "Backfire" - "A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We did" - sums up the contents well. But it fails to suggest the great evil and ignorance which Baritz's scholarly analysis reveals. Example: G.I.s spent a full year in Vietnam; officers were rotated in and out every six months. Reason: Officers needed to "punch their tickets" (i.e. serve in Vietnam) if they wanted to rise up the ladder of promotion. So military policy was formulated based on that priority, not on the obvious fact that just as officers were becoming really experienced combat leaders, they were sent home and replaced by inexperienced officers. The resulting cost of American lives amounts to a war crime on the part of senior military leaders who put the policy into effect, a war crime against their own men! Another example: U.S. soldiers derided Vietnamese men as "fags" because they saw them holding hands. They were ignorant of Vietnamese culture in which such conduct has nothing to do with sexual preference. Thus, "why fight for a bunch of fags" became a prevalent attitude. Baritz's book is different than almost any other on Vietnam - and more thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Rating:
Summary: Hard book to put down
Review: This is a remarkable book that I found very hard to put down. If you are interested in discovering why we went to war, and how we lost it, Backfire if for you. The author avoids the usual mantra of both the left and the right and gives us what may be the most comprehensive analysis of this war written to date. Although I will take issue with some of the authors assumptions, this book should be must reading for the politicians and military who wage war, and for parents who send their children to fight wars.

It is difficult to find fault with the author's contentions that we fought the wrong war. Our enemy fought a political and psychological war, a war against American culture; whereas we fought a conventional war and were trapped by our own cultural assumptions of American invincibility. It is the author premise that American foreign policy was, and is, driven by our cultural myth of America as the City on a Hill. Baritz observes that as Americans we see ourselves as the new Israel, God's chosen people. The author contends that because of this myth the American people see themselves as a moral example to the world, Baritz wrote: It means that we are a Chosen People, each of whom, because of Gods favor and presence, can smite one hundred of our heathen enemies hip and thigh. . . . We believe that the people of the world really want to be like us, regardless of what they or their political leaders say. So Baritz takes the Ugly American approach to our foreign policy.

In a sense, he is right. Our belief in our own invincibility, and that the Vietnamese people wanted to be like us and welcome us drove the war. It was inconceivable to us that they would not share our values, applaud our intentions or embrace our presence. It led us to trust in our guns and to our failure to state our national objectives for this war.

Here are a few of the remarkable insights the author gives us:
There was a tendency for American war planners and policy makers to think the job was done when their plans and policies were approved, leaving no one to monitor whether or not what they decided was effective. He points out that we supported a regime that had little popular support and our conventional military tactics made the problem worse because bombing, artillery, napalm and Agent Orange would wound and kill the very people whose support we needed. After Tet, the Viet Cong insurgency was defeated and the Phoenix program of the assassination of Viet Cong leaders had decimated the leadership of the Viet Cong. By 1970 General Giap had concluded the only way the North could win the war was through regular war, the very kind of big-unit engagement American Generals had hoped for. But by this time, the political war at home was lost. Yes, the press was partially to blame for our defeat. The constant stream of defeatism by the Press, especially during and after the Tet offensive cannot be underestimated in turning American opinion against the war.

Baritz takes issue with the claim that the war could have been won if the military had been allowed to fight it differently. Not because we could not win, but because the American culture at the time precluded such a victory. Vietnam was not perceived as a  threat to American, there was no anger in the American public to support such a war.  In the end, the North Vietnamese understood American culture, they believed they could win if they did not lose. All they had to do was to outlast American patience. The Americans war leaders believed that they would lose if they did not win. The failure to achieve quick and decisive victory doomed the American war effort.

Has the America changed? Are we now willing to do what we were incapable of doing in the 1960's? that is to wage an effective war? Or has the American public, like that of ancient Rome as the barbarians gathered on their frontiers, grown tired of defending its freedom? Only time will tell.  

Rating:
Summary: Hard book to put down
Review: This is a remarkable book that I found very hard to put down. If you are interested in discovering why we went to war, and how we lost it, Backfire if for you. The author avoids the usual mantra of both the left and the right and gives us what may be the most comprehensive analysis of this war written to date. Although I will take issue with some of the authors assumptions, this book should be must reading for the politicians and military who wage war, and for parents who send their children to fight wars.

It is difficult to find fault with the author's contentions that we fought the wrong war. Our enemy fought a political and psychological war, a war against American culture; whereas we fought a conventional war and were trapped by our own cultural assumptions of American invincibility. It is the author premise that American foreign policy was, and is, driven by our cultural myth of America as the City on a Hill. Baritz observes that as Americans we see ourselves as the new Israel, God's chosen people. The author contends that because of this myth the American people see themselves as a moral example to the world, Baritz wrote: It means that we are a Chosen People, each of whom, because of Gods favor and presence, can smite one hundred of our heathen enemies hip and thigh. . . . We believe that the people of the world really want to be like us, regardless of what they or their political leaders say. So Baritz takes the Ugly American approach to our foreign policy.

In a sense, he is right. Our belief in our own invincibility, and that the Vietnamese people wanted to be like us and welcome us drove the war. It was inconceivable to us that they would not share our values, applaud our intentions or embrace our presence. It led us to trust in our guns and to our failure to state our national objectives for this war.

Here are a few of the remarkable insights the author gives us:
There was a tendency for American war planners and policy makers to think the job was done when their plans and policies were approved, leaving no one to monitor whether or not what they decided was effective. He points out that we supported a regime that had little popular support and our conventional military tactics made the problem worse because bombing, artillery, napalm and Agent Orange would wound and kill the very people whose support we needed. After Tet, the Viet Cong insurgency was defeated and the Phoenix program of the assassination of Viet Cong leaders had decimated the leadership of the Viet Cong. By 1970 General Giap had concluded the only way the North could win the war was through regular war, the very kind of big-unit engagement American Generals had hoped for. But by this time, the political war at home was lost. Yes, the press was partially to blame for our defeat. The constant stream of defeatism by the Press, especially during and after the Tet offensive cannot be underestimated in turning American opinion against the war.

Baritz takes issue with the claim that the war could have been won if the military had been allowed to fight it differently. Not because we could not win, but because the American culture at the time precluded such a victory. Vietnam was not perceived as a  threat to American, there was no anger in the American public to support such a war.  In the end, the North Vietnamese understood American culture, they believed they could win if they did not lose. All they had to do was to outlast American patience. The Americans war leaders believed that they would lose if they did not win. The failure to achieve quick and decisive victory doomed the American war effort.

Has the America changed? Are we now willing to do what we were incapable of doing in the 1960's? that is to wage an effective war? Or has the American public, like that of ancient Rome as the barbarians gathered on their frontiers, grown tired of defending its freedom? Only time will tell.