Top 5 Books On JFK & Vietnam

[James DiEugenio]

This is the reason why I think that academia and the MSM rose up like the lions out of Eisenstein's film Potemkin.

Because Stone revealed that they had blown it on the Warren Report.  And they had missed the point that after the 26 volumes had been released, 3 months later, the first combat troops were going ashore at DaNang. And this was done to protect the planes already involved in Rolling Thunder.

In other words, the air and ground war that JFK would not commit to was now being performed.

Three months after the cover up of his murder was completed.

Please show me where any journalist put those two points together.

And this was the main point of Stone's film.  It was like a slap in the face to them.  How could you have missed this?

[James DiEugenio]

In a related thread, Newman talking about Max Taylor.

The newest work he has done reveals that the Kennedys might have made a mistake trusting him.

Just consider four things:

1. He suspected the infamous coup cable was really a plot by the cabal at State to snooker JFK on a weekend when he was not in DC and none of the other principals were.  But he did not call him to tell him that.

2. The year before, knowing that JFK did not want any combat troops in Vietnam, he went ahead and submitted a report that did that.

3. It was Taylor who inserted the OPlan 34 A missions, which were removed in September of 1963.

4. As in 1961, knowing that JFK wanted a troop withdrawal in his 1963 report, Taylor allowed that to be taken out by Sullivan. Kennedy had it placed back in upon their return.

JFK was so isolated in the White House on Vietnam.

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Did I miss something?

Did anyone wish us all a Happy Easter?

Ron usually does that.  Its still Easter on the west coast.

So if no one did, here is a belated one.

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 4/7/2023 at 6:20 PM, James DiEugenio said:

The very idea that Mike says Selverstone is a JFK admirer shows how biased he is.

Selverstone has an agenda from his opening chapter.  He tries to say that JFK was a Cold Warrior, which is  false.  And this is one of the points I go after him on.  Selverstone completely distorts books he has read in order to make that phony judgment. 

Books like Robert Rakove's Kennedy, Johnson and the Non Aligned World. The whole point of that book is to show how Kennedy battled Foster Dulles and Ike in the fifties to try and come up with an alternative foreign policy.  Kennedy himself said this to Harris Wofford, namely that if Symington or LBJ won the nomination, we might as well be working for Acheson and Dulles.  We had to break out of the Cold War paradigm.

And JFK did just that in Congo, the Middle East, Indonesia and Indochina.  Ike told JFK the day before the inauguration, that he had to go all the way In Laos. JFK did not do that.  He went for a neutral solution.

But Selverstone is even worse than that.  He calls Kennedy's civil rights program, "halting".  Which is loony.  Kennedy did more for civil rights in three years than FDR, Truman and Ike did in three decades. And I proved that.

Selverstone's book is not an attempt to tell the truth about Kennedy and Vietnam.  Its part of the Culture Wars, just like Burns and Novick's pitiful series was. 

Stay tuned.

We get back once again to your rabid far-left ideology where you see anyone who disagrees with you as the enemy and cannot deal with certain issues objectively because doing so would require you to abandon some long-held far-left myths.

I say that Selverstone is a Kennedy admirer because he most certainly is. The fact that you would accuse me of bias for noting this fact only shows that you have no clue what you are talking about. 

Why don't you read Selverstone's introduction in his edited compilation A Companion to John F. Kennedy and then come back and tell me he is not a JFK admirer?

You fault Selverstone for his passing comment that JFK's support of civil rights was "halting." You even call this brief observation "loony." Good heavens. This is further proof that you have no business passing judgment on these matters in a public forum. Far from being "loony," Selverstone's passing comment has been echoed at much greater length by scholars from all across the political spectrum.

I could literally fill many pages with statements from black civil rights activists who have attacked JFK for not doing nearly enough in their eyes. Julian Bond accused JFK of being a "do nothing" president on civil rights. Yes, JFK did more than FDR, Truman, or Ike, but that is not saying a great deal. Selverstone's passing comment about JFK's civil rights policy is valid, but you have not done enough reading to know that. 

You say that JFK was not a Cold Warrior. You ignore the voluminous evidence that proves that JFK most certainly was a Cold Warrior, and that he believed firmly in the Domino Theory. I should add that you ignore 99% of the evidence that Selverstone presents on this issue. 

JFK was not the pro-colonialist Cold Warrior that Ike and the Dulles brothers were, but he most certainly was a Cold Warrior. The problem is not that Selverstone "completely distorts books he has read in order to make that phony judgment." The problem is that your reading has been so limited and one sided that you don't realize that Selverstone's point is indisputably valid and massively documented. 

In your Kennedys and King review, you incorrectly claim that Selverstone uses Rakove's book Kennedy, Johnson, and the Non-Aligned World in an effort to "turn Kennedy into a Cold Warrior." Anyone who reads the page in question (p. 18) will see that this is not true, that Selverstone only cites Rakove regarding a specific point about JFK's views on neutralism in the context of the Domino Theory, which you seemingly admit in the introductory clause to your attack, but then you go on to portray his use of Rakove as misleading.

Regarding JFK and a neutral approach in Vietnam, you wave aside Selverstone's evidence and rely on a single page from a book written by 9/11 Truther James Douglass. Seriously???  

Yes, JFK did ignore Ike's (very sound) advice on Laos, and opted for a supposedly "neutral" solution, but that approach quickly proved to be a terrible blunder, and in the following years that blunder cost many thousands of American and South Vietnamese lives.  The Chinese and the North Vietnamese ignored the neutrality deal, and the North Vietnamese seized firm control of the crucial southeastern sector of the country, which later included a key part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

People who read your Kennedys and King review of Selverstone's book, and who read Selverstone's book, will notice immediately that you have simply ignored a vast amount of the evidence that Selverstone presents. You typically cite one or two bits of evidence for your argument on an issue; then you ignore most or all of the evidence that Selverstone presents on the issue; and then you act like you've refuted Selverstone's point.

It is unbelievable that in your Kennedys and King review, you once again repeat your far-left claim about the 1954 Geneva Accords, namely, that "those peace accords were shattered in 1956 when Eisenhower refused to conduct the national elections which were to unify Vietnam, after a division that was only temporary." This is an inexcusable repetition of Communist propaganda. Even Max Hastings dismisses this argument. 

You obviously chose to ignore the evidence that I presented to you on this issue in our discussion on the Vietnam War in another thread, such as the fact that even Senator John F. Kennedy argued against holding those elections. 

We've known for many years now, thanks in part to newly released/newly available North Vietnamese sources, that the North Vietnamese had no intention of honoring the Geneva Accords and viewed them only as a necessary evil to give them time to prepare to attack South Vietnam. And, as Max Hastings has noted, the North Vietnamese severely violated the Accords from the outset, long before Diem's refusal to hold the 1956 elections.

This brings up the point that Diem was the one who refused to hold the elections, not Eisenhower. Ike opposed holding the elections, as did JFK, but he was not the one who refused to hold them. That decision was Diem's to make, and Diem needed no convincing from Eisenhower on the subject.  

Finally, in your review, you repeat the claim that Kennedy’s withdrawal plan was unconditional. You don't lay a finger on Selverstone's evidence against this claim--in fact, you ignore it. Moreover, you fail to mention that even James Galbraith, whom you cite as support for the unconditional-withdrawal claim, has acknowledged that the withdrawal plan called for continued aid to South Vietnam and for leaving behind some support troops for supply purposes, as I have documented in this thread and in other threads. 

Edited April 10, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[James DiEugenio]

Mike:

The Geneva Accords were a dead letter due to violations on both sides.  All one has to do is read the Accords.  I mean OMG, the USA sent in a whole new military advisorship team replacing the French, and installed a whole new government: clearly those were massive violations.  The infiltration by Hanoi into the south were also clear violations.   Diem voided the elections?  Diem at that time was our puppet. Plain and simple.  Lansdale was his chief manipulator.  The Chinese were very worried about going to war again with the USA after Korea, so they made Hanoi accept this breakage. Without the US being there, I do not think they would have.  Eisenhower later admitted he was not going to allow the elections since he knew Ho Chi MInh would win big. Ike, LBJ and RMN all refused to be the president who would let the north have their DIen Bien Phu victory.  Only Kennedy countenanced it, and that was after the 1964 election. Maybe because he had been there back in 1951?

But LBJ took care of all this with his declaration of war on Hanoi did he not? 

I take a back seat to no one on Kennedy's civil rights program.  JFK began on civil rights the night he was inaugurated--that was the beginning of affirmative action.  Which no president had done before.  That's halting? I could have gone further with this as Selverstone calls Kennedy a conservative in economics also.  What BS.  Heller was his chief economics advisor. Heller used to make jokes about Milton Friedman and the Chicago school. Kennedy went at it with the Fed through James Saxon. JFK's tax cut was targeted to the middle and working class. This is conservative? No, its Selverstone doing a caricature for political purposes. Fitting with his Cold Warrior labeling.  (Mike, in that book Selvestone edited , you leave out the guy he picked to write about JFK's assassination.  It was John McAdams.) This is part of the man's agenda in this book in trying to say that Kennedy would have made an open ended commitment. Nutty.

This idea you have that Selverstone has all kinds of new evidence that changes the equation is simply false.  This is like saying that Posner had new evidence in Case Closed.  If you quote a witness from the Warren Commission, that is still the Warren Commission.  Same with Selverstone.  The things he says about an adjustment in flow concern the 1964 election, which we all knew was the case long ago from O'Donnell and Powers. The 1965 end date was unconditional. Or else why would Kennedy demand it be placed back in after Sullivan took it out of the Taylor McNamara report? Selverstone cherry picked a quote that had been out there and which, as I note, was explained by Newman. And he does not discuss the McNamara debrief does he? Since that closes the case.

Does he deal with those 19 witnesses I connected to JFK whom he all told he was leaving in 1965?  Not that I can see.  And you leave out how he was all so eager to chalk all this up as embellishment after the fact e.g. Forrestal. Which is the real point of the book.  And, with help from Scott, I  proved he was wrong on that, and exposed him as a zealot.

Selverstone's idea that a thousand advisors and the ARVN was going to stop an invasion from the north is utterly ludicrous. I knew guys over there.  They told me that when Nixon announced VIetnamization, they knew the war was over.  There was no way the ARVN could stand up to the combination of the north's army and the Viet Cong. And this was many years later, after supplies, air power, good equipment and training had all been implemented for a long time. To say that in 1965, it would have been different? Please.  (Just a hint, Mike Swanson just wrote that right after Kennedy was killed Giap sent three batallions south. I think he may have known something.)

The most disgusting part of Selverstone's worthless book is when he says Johnson thought he was fulfilling Kennedy's policy in VIetnam.  I just about threw up at that one.   Not only is it false, but Kennedy's advisors who stayed over knew it was false. Which is, one by one, the reason they all left. Johnson caused such a sea change in policy that it was stunning. It took a long time for some of these men to get over it, like McGeorge Bundy. When i asked Newman about his talks with McNamara, he said it was pretty tough to get him to talk  about those years.  I said, why do you think that  was?  He said, "Jim, if you helped cause the death of 2 million innocent civilians, you would be reluctant also."  The number was actually 3.8 million.

To this day, I think McNamara started the Pentagon Papers because of this sea change in policy.  Notice that in the NY TImes version of the PP they do not include the long "Phased Withdrawal" section that is in the Gravel version.  

 

PS For the record, I do not see how being a Kennedy Democrat is being Far Left. I think that it a smear by Mike.

 

Edited April 10, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[W. Niederhut]

Jim,

Anyone left of right field seems to be smeared as "Far Left" by some conservatives nowadays.

It would be a useful exercise to see where Education Forum members actually rate themselves on the Political Compass.

The Political Compass

I'm very close to the center on this Compass (just slightly left of center.)

[Michael Griffith]

Dr. Edward Moise, a decidedly liberal scholar on the Vietnam War, says the following about the Kennedy withdrawal and the aides who later claimed that JFK told them he was going to abandon the war after the election:

          The contemporary records of the Kennedy administration give a pretty clear picture of planning for a withdrawal that was conditional on the war going well. By far the best 
evidence that Kennedy had made a decision to withdraw even if the war went badly--to 
abandon Vietnam--was in the memories of a few of his associates, who said, years after 
his death, that they remembered his having told them that he had decided to abandon 
the war. This reviewer has never found these witnesses’ testimony convincing; it is too 
difficult to reconcile their memories of Kennedy’s thinking with the picture one gets from 
contemporary records. (H-Diplo Article Review No. 265c)

Historian Scott Racek on the movie JFK , NSAM 273, and Kennedy's withdrawal plan:

          There are several historical inaccuracies with this conversation. While it makes great moviemaking, there was no conversation between Garrison and an “X”. The closest 
person to matching X is Col. L. Fletcher Prouty USAF (Ret.), who wrote the book JFK: 
The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy and from whom Stone 
has taken most of his material. . . . While Prouty did work with some of the 
same people who formulated the withdrawal plan, there is no evidence that he himself 
worked on it. The memo to which Prouty refers is National Security Action 
Memorandum (NSAM) 273. This memo did not give a timetable for leaving Vietnam,
but recommended that if South Vietnam was able to support their own operations the
Americans would leave. It is historical fantasy for Stone to argue that the troop 
withdrawal was going to happen definitively and without caveats.

          JFK also highlights the reaction of the military to the pullout decision. It further 
assumes that Johnson was allied to the military industrial complex. Neither of these facts 
holds up under scrutiny. An earlier version of NSC Memo 273 was created on November 21, 1963, while Kennedy was still alive and was expected to sign once he returned from his Texas trip. This earlier version, says, in part:

          "We should concentrate our own efforts, and insofar as possible we should persuade the Government of South Vietnam to concentrate its efforts, on the critical situation in the Mekong Delta. This concentration should include not only military but political, economic, social, educational and informational effort. We should seek to turn the tide not only of battle but of belief, and we should seek to increase not only our control of land but the productivity of this area wherever the proceeds can be held for the advantage of anti-Communist forces."

          Rather than discussing an active pullout in the memo, it predicts a higher level of 
commitment. When X claims that the Vietnam War lay in NSC memo 273, it was based 
on a document initially drafted under Kennedy. . . .

          About the potential pullout McNamara says [on the White House tapes] “…we can say to the Congress and people that we have a plan for reducing the exposure of U.S. combat personnel.” Kennedy responds: “(M)y only reservation about this is, if the war doesn’t continue to go well it will look like we were overly optimistic.” This statement reveals not only the challenging nature of Vietnam as early as 1963 (when there was an increase to sixteen thousand advisors in the country), but it also reflects the fact that pullout was not necessarily a foregone conclusion. It does reveal that Kennedy and McNamara were potentially trying to find a way out of Vietnam. But both knew that that pullout was not without serious political ramifications. And while one thousand troops were sent home in December 1963, Karnow [another decidedly liberal scholar] argues, “…their departure was essentially a bureaucratic accounting exercise." They were not sent home as a precursor for a larger withdrawal. In the next scene, McNamara repeats the charge that Kennedy was going to pull all troops out by the end of 1965. He claims that Kennedy had essentially “announced” the withdrawal of U.S. troops by drafting NSC 273, when in fact, Kennedy was implying the opposite. 

          There is more evidence to support the argument that Kennedy was going to 
continue U.S. presence in the region. This is seen in the minutes from that National 
Security Council Meeting. It was McNamara and General Taylor who suggested that the 
military could finish their ‘mission’ by 1965. This ‘mission’ was solely to train the South 
Vietnamese military for battle against the North and NLF. It was not to fight the war on 
their behalf. Indeed, whether South Vietnamese troops would be ready for this responsibility was an open question in 1963. . . .

          Finishing the mission by 1965 was more wishful thinking than reality. Moreover, if Kennedy was interested in avoiding further escalation, why would he have implicitly agreed to the removal of Diem? It seems that if Kennedy had wanted to disengage, he would have washed his hands of the country once the coup occurred. Kennedy had publicly proclaimed in July of 1963 “in my opinion, for us to withdraw from that effort [in Vietnam] would mean a collapse not only of South Vietnam, but Southeast Asia, so we are going to stay there.” While this may have been posturing, it would have been hypocritical for Kennedy to make such a strong point and then pull out. Kennedy also made a public statement in an interview with Walter Cronkite in September of 1963 in which he argued:

          "I don't think that unless a greater effort is made by the Government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. . . . [I]n the final analysis it is the people and the Government [of South Vietnam] itself who have to win or lose this struggle. All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear. But I don't agree with those who say we should 
withdraw. That would be a great mistake. I know people don't like Americans to be engaged in this kind of an effort. Forty-seven Americans have been killed in combat with the enemy, but this is a very important struggle even though it is far away."

          While it is certainly possible that Kennedy could have said one thing publicly and 
another privately, to put himself in that corner plainly points to Kennedy keeping troops 
beyond 1964. Overall, in his term, Kennedy increased the number of advisors in Vietnam from nine hundred to sixteen thousand and thirty. He substantially enlarged the number of Special Forces (specifically Green Berets). Kennedy believed that using counter-insurgency troops and tactics was the best way to deal with the “Vietnam thing”. This commitment to irregular troops was designed to show the South Vietnamese that the United States was there to help them. It was not a commitment to leaving. (JFKChapter12R.pdf)

[James DiEugenio]

This is not the point, and believe me I am familiar with Moise.

I talked to him about this subject since I found his essay on it unconvincing.

This is the point: as I noted in my review, the Easter Offensive would have succeeded if not for the immense bombing campaign from the Air Force and the Navy.  In 1975 when that did not happen, Hanoi overran Saigon in two months with a logistical crew there.

That would have happened in 1965.  

Selverstone does not want to admit that since it makes his argument  null.

So what does he do?

He tries to say, and this is really bad, that somehow LBJ was doing what he thought JFK would do.  

Which is ridiculous to the point that its absurd to even talk about. yeah JFK would have declared war on North Vietnam. (And you can  trust me when I say that was all planned out in advance by LBJ.)

The idea that somehow JFK would have reversed course, and as I noted, would have done what Johnson did in just three months, what JFK did not do in three years? Which of course is NSAM 288.  Which LBJ cooperated on with the JCS?  As I also noted, Kennedy did not even want those guys going to Vietnam at all, period.  Because he knew they would militarize the war.

And this is why the book is ersatz.  

Edited April 11, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

I did not want to start another thread on Selverstone's book.

So in case you are wondering what we are arguing about, here it is.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-kennedy-withdrawal-by-marc-selverstone

And let me add, you may think this might be long.  It is not.  It could have easily been twice the length since that is how many dubious pieces of information and tenets are in the book.

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 4/7/2023 at 6:31 PM, Gerry Down said:

Thanks for that Selverstone YouTube interview link. Must have a look.

What are your top 5 book choices? 

I guess you've studied this area for a long time and so have probably formed a set opinion which means your book recommendations are likely to match that opinion. I haven't formed an opinion yet which is why my top 5 books are a bit diverse.

Gerry, sorry for the delayed response. Yes, the Vietnam War has been a research interest of mine for a long time. I became interested in the Vietnam War long before I began studying the JFK case. I've maintained a website on the Vietnam War for many years (LINK). I would guess I've read about 70 books on the war and at least 100 articles. I've also read scores of primary sources on the war, most of which are available on government websites (such as the DTIC website). 

Three of my top five books on "JFK and Vietnam" are broader in scope than the narrow issue of JFK's withdrawal plan and his post-1963 intentions. They mainly deal with what was happening with the war while Kennedy was in office. With this understood, my top five books are as follows:

-- Dr. Marc Selverstone, The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard University Press, November 2022). This is the most comprehensive study of JFK's withdrawal plan and his views about the war. The wide range of scholars who have praised the book speaks for itself.

-- Dr. Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2006). One of the important things that Moyar documents, partly with newly released/newly available North Vietnamese sources, is that the officials who were telling JFK that the war was hopeless, that the war was going terribly, that Diem had to be replaced, etc., were the ones who were misleading him. The officials who were telling JFK that the war was not hopeless, that progress was being made, and that Diem was doing a decent job under the circumstances--they were the ones who were telling him the truth (or at least were giving him information that was more accurate than what he was getting from the other side). 

A little bit about Dr. Moyar: He earned his B.A. in history from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University. From 2018 to 2019, he served as the Director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Previously, he directed the Project on Military and Diplomatic History at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University. He also taught at the U.S. Marine Corps University, the Joint Special Operations University, and Texas A&M University. He joined Hillsdale College in 2021 as the William P. Harris Chair in Military History.

-- Dr. Geoffrey Shaw, The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem (Ignatius Press, 2015). Shaw, a Canadian historian, makes extensive use of newly released/newly available North Vietnamese sources. He examines in exhaustive detail the standard attacks on Diem. His 19-page chapter on the situation in Laos during JFK's presidency is one of the best analyses of the subject ever published, if not the best. Ditto for his chapter on the Buddhist protests. Shaw's book is also valuable because of the insight it provides about the political machinations that were going on among American officials in South Vietnam and the conflicting messages they were sending to the White House and the State Department. Another valuable aspect of the book is that Shaw makes use of British diplomatic and military sources who were in South Vietnam at the time. 

-- Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History (Houghton Mifflin, 1987, reprinted by Indiana University Press, 1999). As many scholars have observed, this is an indispensable book on the Vietnam War. Any Vietnam War 101 course would certainly include this book as required reading. The first 14 chapters cover the period from the Japanese occupation of Vietnam to the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963. Bui Diem had firsthand knowledge and insight about South Vietnam during JFK's presidency, specifically, about the Viet Cong, the situation on the ground in 1962 and 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem's rule, the presence of American forces in South Vietnam, North Vietnamese infiltration, the Buddhist protests, the political/diplomatic machinations in Saigon, and many other issues. 

A little bit about Bui Diem: He founded the Saigon Post. He was close to many leading figures in the Saigon government. He was the nephew of one of South Vietnam's first prime ministers. He later became South Vietnam's ambassador to the U.S., serving in that capacity from 1966 until South Vietnam fell in 1975. After the war, he became a research professor at George Mason University. He was also a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and at the American Enterprise Institute. He was interviewed extensively by Stanley Karnow for the 1983 documentary Vietnam: A Television History (he was very unhappy with the documentary and with how Karnow used--or misused--his interview).

-- Dr. John Newman, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power (Grand Central Pub, 1992). Obviously, we all know this was a ground-breaking book in several respects. It is full of important information that should have come out years earlier. Three of its major shortcomings are (1) that Newman focused on sources relating to Vietnam policy and internal debates/machinations without placing those items in the broader context of the actual situation in South Vietnam, (2) that Newman incorrectly assumed that those who were giving JFK a negative picture of the war effort were the ones who were telling him the truth, and (3) that he failed to use any of the North Vietnamese sources that were then available, such as Truong Nhu Tang's A Viet Cong Memoir (1986)--although, to be fair, the majority of such sources did not become widely available until after Newman's book was published. Crucially, Newman forced scholars to seriously discuss the Kennedy withdrawal plan, whereas previously many scholars had regarded the plan as a myth or gross exaggeration peddled by Kennedy diehards after his death. 

Edited April 11, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Gerry Down]

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Gerry, sorry for the delayed response. Yes, the Vietnam War has been a research interest of mine for a long time. I became interested in the Vietnam War long before I began studying the JFK case. I've maintained a website on the Vietnam War for many years (LINK). I would guess I've read about 70 books on the war and at least 100 articles. I've also read scores of primary sources on the war, most of which are available on government websites (such as the DTIC website). 

Three of my top five books on "JFK and Vietnam" are broader in scope than the narrow issue of JFK's withdrawal plan and his post-1963 intentions. They mainly deal with what was happening with the war while Kennedy was in office. With this understood, my top five books are as follows:

-- Dr. Marc Selverstone, The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard University Press, November 2022). This is the most comprehensive study of JFK's withdrawal plan and his views about the war. The wide range of scholars who have praised the book speaks for itself.

-- Dr. Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2006). One of the important things that Moyar documents, partly with newly released/newly available North Vietnamese sources, is that the officials who were telling JFK that the war was hopeless, that the war was going terribly, that Diem had to be replaced, etc., were the ones who were misleading him. The officials who were telling JFK that the war was not hopeless, that progress was being made, and that Diem was doing a decent job under the circumstances--they were the ones who were telling him the truth. 

A little bit about Dr. Moyar: He earned his B.A. in history from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University. From 2018 to 2019, he served as the Director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Previously, he directed the Project on Military and Diplomatic History at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University. He also taught at the U.S. Marine Corps University, the Joint Special Operations University, and Texas A&M University. He joined Hillsdale College in 2021 as the William P. Harris Chair in Military History.

-- Dr. Geoffrey Shaw, The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem (Ignatius Press, 2015). Shaw, a Canadian historian, makes extensive use of newly released/newly available North Vietnamese sources. He examines in exhaustive detail the standard attacks on Diem. His 19-page chapter on the situation in Laos during JFK's presidency is one of the best analyses of the subject ever published, if not the best. Ditto for his chapter on the Buddhist protests. Shaw's book is also valuable because of the insight it provides about the political machinations that were going on among American officials in South Vietnam and the conflicting messages they were sending to the White House and the State Department. Another valuable aspect of the book is that Shaw makes use of British diplomatic and military sources who were in South Vietnam at the time. 

-- Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History (Houghton Mifflin, 1987, reprinted by Indiana University Press, 1999). As many scholars have observed, this is an indispensable book on the Vietnam War. Any Vietnam War 101 course would certainly include this book as required reading. The first 14 chapters cover the period from the Japanese occupation of Vietnam to the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963. Bui Diem had firsthand knowledge and insight about South Vietnam during JFK's presidency, specifically, about the Viet Cong, the situation on the ground in 1962 and 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem's rule, the presence of American forces in South Vietnam, North Vietnamese infiltration, the Buddhist protests, the political/diplomatic machinations in Saigon, and many other issues. 

A little bit about Bui Diem: He founded the Saigon Post. He was close to many leading figures in the Saigon government. He was the nephew of one of South Vietnam's first prime ministers. He later became South Vietnam's ambassador to the U.S., serving in that capacity from 1966 until South Vietnam fell in 1975. After the war, he became a research professor at George Mason University. He was also a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and at the American Enterprise Institute. He was interviewed extensively by Stanley Karnow for the 1983 documentary Vietnam: A Television History (he was very unhappy with the documentary and with how Karnow used--or misused--his interview).

-- Dr. John Newman, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power (Grand Central Pub, 1992). Obviously, we all know this was a ground-breaking book in several respects. It is full of important information that should have come out years earlier. Three of its major shortcomings are (1) that Newman focused on sources relating to Vietnam policy and internal debates/machinations without placing those items in the broader context of the actual situation in South Vietnam, (2) that Newman incorrectly assumed that those who were giving JFK a negative picture of the war effort were the ones who were telling him the truth, and (3) that he failed to use any of the North Vietnamese sources that were then available, such as Truong Nhu Tang's A Viet Cong Memoir (1986)--although, to be fair, the majority of such sources did not become widely available until after Newman's book was published. Crucially, Newman forced scholars to seriously discuss the Kennedy withdrawal plan, whereas previously many scholars had regarded the plan as a myth or gross exaggeration peddled by Kennedy diehards after his death. 

Thanks for this detailed book recommendation. Must consider these books. 

Do you rate Buzzancos book "Master of War" as being any good?

Edited April 11, 2023 by Gerry Down

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

Thanks for this detailed book recommendation. Must consider these books. 

Do you rate Buzzanco's book "Master of War" as being any good?

I haven't read Buzzanco's book Masters of War, but I have read his book Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life (Blackwell Publishers, 1999), which is genuinely awful. I've also read two of his post-1999 online articles. In his book, he whitewashes the Viet Cong and paints Ho Chi Minh as a mere nationalist. He repeats every major myth of the anti-war movement about the war, about U.S. troops, about North Vietnam, about the Viet Cong, etc. Not surprisingly, Noam Chomsky praised the book. 

Buzzanco ignores the reign of terror that the Communists imposed on South Vietnam after Saigon fell. To read his book and his post-1999 online articles, you'd never know it occurred.

In his 1999 book and in his post-1999 online articles, Buzzanco, like nearly all other liberal scholars, says nothing about the important information disclosed in the North Vietnamese sources that began to be available/released by the early 2000s. For that matter, in his 1999 book, he says nothing about the North Vietnamese sources that were available as of the mid-1980s, such as Truong Nhu Tang's important and revealing book A Viet Cong Memoir.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Gerry Down]

37 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I haven't read Buzzanco's book Masters of War, but I have read his book Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life (Blackwell Publishers, 1999), which is genuinely awful. I've also read two of his post-1999 online articles. In his book, he whitewashes the Viet Cong and paints Ho Chi Minh as a mere nationalist. He repeats every major myth of the anti-war movement about the war, about U.S. troops, about North Vietnam, about the Viet Cong, etc. Not surprisingly, Noam Chomsky praised the book. 

Buzzanco ignores the reign of terror that the Communists imposed on South Vietnam after Saigon fell. To read his book and his post-1999 online articles, you'd never know it occurred.

In his 1999 book and in his post-1999 online articles, Buzzanco, like nearly all other liberal scholars, says nothing about the important information disclosed in the North Vietnamese sources that began to be available/released by the early 2000s. For that matter, in his 1999 book, he says nothing about the North Vietnamese sources that were available as of the mid-1980s, such as Truong Nhu Tang's important and revealing book A Viet Cong Memoir.

That's good to know. Got to thread carefully with that book so. 

[Michael Griffith]

Below is an excerpt from military historian Marc Leepson's favorable review of Selverstone's The Kennedy Withdrawal. Leepson is a senior editor for the online magazine of the Vietnam Veterans of America. Leepson served in Vietnam in 1967. He holds a BA and an MA in history from George Washington University. After leaving the military, he served as a staff writer for the Congressional Quarterly. His articles have appeared in Smithsonian and Military History, and also in the Baltimore Sun and the Chicago Tribune. He has been interviewed on the BBC, CBC (Canada), MSNBC, Fox News, PBS, CBS, and CNN. Here's an excerpt from his review:

          Historians don’t like what-ifs. But historical what-ifs often are intriguing and can be instructive, and that is the case with at least four dealing with the long road that brought the United States into the Vietnam War.  . . .

          Then there’s this other 1963 what-if: What would President John F. Kennedy have done in Vietnam if he had not been assassinated in 1963, just weeks after Diem was overthrown? . . .

         The latest and most complete examination of the JFK what-if is Marc J. Selverstone’s The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard University Press, 336 pp. $35). In this worthy book, Selverstone, who heads the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, takes a deep dive into whether or not Kennedy would have greatly escalated the war as Johnson did within two years after assuming the presidency. 

          Selverstone makes it clear that he is more interested in showing what happened before Kennedy’s death than in providing an answer to the what-if. As he puts it: The book “seeks to trace [JFK’s Vietnam War policy’s] history, focusing more on its meaning at the time than on whether Kennedy would have carried it out.” In setting out that history Selverstone hones in on how Kennedy’s Vietnam War planning began, “why it ended, and what it meant.” In doing so, he thoroughly analyzes the historical evidence (including the JFK and LBJ White House tapes) and comes to no definitive conclusion, saying that the answer is “ultimately unknowable.”

          That said, Selverstone decidedly leans toward the theory that JFK (and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara), having terminated withdrawing troops before Kennedy’s death, likely would have done something akin to LBJ’s escalation. JFK, Selverstone reminds us, “never relinquished his interest in brushfire wars, nor did he dampen his rhetoric about their necessity.” (The VVA Veteran, a publication of Vietnam Veterans of America)

Edited April 12, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Michael Griffith]

On 4/7/2023 at 11:41 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Yes Ron, you could say that about the Douglass book, and its good in that regard.

When you see my review of Selverstone's pastiche, I used Jim for a couple of footnotes.

One of the best things in JIm's  book is his examination of the beginnings of the riot at Hue in August of 1963..

I thought that was  excellently done.  He clearly suggests that the explosive used in the first explosion was likely from the CIA.

If he is right about that, its an example of life imitating art. Its out of Graham Greene.  And it translates as the CIA wanting to get rid of Diem.   I mean remember the famous Richard Starnes column?

But in my listing above, I limited myself to only the books that were exclusively about Kennedy and Vietnam.  That is a genre that did not exist prior to Oliver Stone's film and the first edition of Newman's book. And that, in and of itself, tells you a lot about how bad the historians were on the subject.  It was inexcusable.  And that is one reason they did not like Stone's film.  Same with the journalists and newspapers.  Except for bits and pieces that were never collated, they also ignored the sea change that took place once Johnson  arrived back in Washington.  

According to Peter Scott, who is another valuable source on this, there was no big meeting set for VIetnam at that time.  It was only supposed to be JFK and Lodge with the latter getting fired. Johnson made it a big meeting, kept Lodge, and everyone understood from his martial tone that things were going to change in Indochina.  I have stuff in my review about this point.  Scott notes that the very lexicon which LBJ used was unheard of from Kennedy.

P.S.  Mike Swanson, who wrote a good book on Laos and Vietnam, Why the Vietnam War?  did not want to review Selverstone's book because it was so bad. Instead he will do a supplement to my review about where Selverstone came from.

This is really sad to see. You realize that Douglass is a 9/11 Truther, right? Right? Yet you're citing him on the Vietnam War???

And now you're citing Mike Swanson??? His book on the Vietnam War is pathetic. Leaving aside the problematic nature of his portrayal of the war, the limited number of sources he cites, and his apparent unawareness of the historic information revealed in released/translated North Vietnamese sources, he makes readers wonder about his level of education with the numerous grammatical and spelling errors in his book. 

You further discredit your competency to discuss the Vietnam War when you praise Fletcher Prouty's "insights" on the Vietnam War:

          His insights on Vietnam, which he wrote in the eighties, are simply remarkable. And if you have not read his articles from that period, you do not understand just how insightful he was.

Prouty's "insights" were not "remarkable"; they were idiotic and loony. The man was a fraud and a genuine nutjob. He spent years cozying up with Willis Carto and other Holocaust deniers at Liberty Lobby and the IHR. He even had one of his books republished by the IHR. He also appeared numerous times on Liberty Lobby's radio program and recommended that people read the lobby's anti-Semitic newspaper The Spotlight. When he was asked about Carto's denial of the Holocaust, he would only say, "I'm no authority in that area."

Among his many other nutty activities, such as defending Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard, Prouty peddled the Iron Mountain Report hoax. Liberty Lobby reprinted thousands of copies of the report. Prouty even claimed that he interviewed one of the members of the secret Iron Mountain Special Study Group, an amazing scoop, given that the group did not exist!

These are the kinds of fringe, unqualified authors you cite against Selverstone's book?

You place yourself on the very fringe regarding the Vietnam War when you insist on accepting the belated, convenient stories by certain JFK loyalists that he told them he was going to abandon South Vietnam after the election no matter what, especially in the face of the evidence that Dr. Selverstone presents in his book. Even Dr. Ed Moise, who is decidedly liberal, rejects these tales, as I documented in an earlier reply. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to repeat his rejection: 

          The contemporary records of the Kennedy administration give a pretty clear picture of planning for a withdrawal that was conditional on the war going well. By far the best evidence that Kennedy had made a decision to withdraw even if the war went badly--to abandon Vietnam-- as in the memories of a few of his associates, who said, years after 
his death, that they remembered his having told them that he had decided to abandon the war. This reviewer has never found these witnesses’ testimony convincing; it is too difficult to reconcile their memories of Kennedy’s thinking with the picture one gets from 
contemporary records. (H-Diplo Article Review No. 265c)

 

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Michael Griffith