Top 5 Books On JFK & Vietnam

[Tom Gram]

Mike is presenting the arguments of the revisionist school of Vietnam scholars as if they are established facts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Moyar in particular is regarded as perhaps the most extreme pro-war revisionist on the planet, even by other revisionists. His attempt to rehabilitate Diem in Triumph Forsaken is ridiculed by just about everyone, and many of his arguments are every bit as “fringe” as the positions Mike criticizes here on a daily basis, if not more so. Here’s a nice summary of Vietnam revisionism from a scholarly review of Moyar’s book from JSTOR: 

A majority of observers and scholars perhaps. But not all. A more exculpatory narrative of American intervention in Vietnam has fiercely challenged those who see the war as a mistake. Given popular expression by Ronald Reagan in a speech before the 1980 Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in Chicago when he called Vietnam a “noble cause,” self-styled “revisionists” - among them Vietnam generation military figures and diplomats, as well as some journalists, political scientists and historians - argued that Vietnam was a necessary war…

…As the failures of the ongoing Iraq war have once again unleashed the ghosts of Vietnam into national political debate, revisionist accounts of American policy in Vietnam have become increasingly visible and are often employed to underscore arguments that military solutions to the chaos engulfing Iraq can work. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40007304?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents

Here’s another informative article on revisionism that I recommend everyone read: 

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/c/revisionism-as-a-substitute-for-victory/

There are a lot of great quotes in this one. For example: 

“More recently, the vast majority of historians have reviewed revisionist texts by Moyar and Boot unfavorably, critiquing their books for questionable use of sources and politically inspired wishful thinking.”

“The real problem with revisionism, as the last 50 years have shown, is that it is driven not so much by an honest desire to fine-tune what we know about the war as by a desire to use the Vietnam War as a cudgel in political and policy-making battles. On the political side, it is no coincidence that revisionism has surged in moments of polarization when right-of-center leaders have found advantage in emphasizing nationalist themes and degrading liberals as out-of-touch elites incapable of using American power to maximum effect.”

In other words, a lot of Mike’s arguments on Vietnam are based on a politically motivated minority viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of experts in the field - the exact same scenario he uses to invalidate arguments made by Jim D by calling them “extreme far-left”, “fringe”, etc.

Everyone’s arguments should be judged on merit, but let’s not pretend like we’re getting an objective history lesson here. 

Edited July 10, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Calvin Ye]

5 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

Mike is presenting the arguments of revisionist school of Vietnam scholars as if they are established facts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Moyar in particular is regarded as perhaps the most extreme pro-war revisionist on the planet, even by other revisionists. His attempt to rehabilitate Diem in Triumph Forsaken is ridiculed by just about everyone, and many of his arguments are every bit as “fringe” as the positions Mike criticizes here on a daily basis, if not more so. Here’s a nice summary of Vietnam revisionism from a scholarly review of Moyar’s book from JSTOR: 

A majority of observers and scholars perhaps. But not all. A more exculpatory narrative of American intervention in Vietnam has fiercely challenged those who see the war as a mistake. Given popular expression by Ronald Reagan in a speech before the 1980 Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in Chicago when he called Vietnam a “noble cause,” self-styled “revisionists” - among them Vietnam generation military figures and diplomats, as well as some journalists, political scientists and historians - argued that Vietnam was a necessary war…

…As the failures of the ongoing Iraq war have once again unleashed the ghosts of Vietnam into national political debate, revisionist accounts of American policy in Vietnam have become increasingly visible and are often employed to underscore arguments that military solutions to the chaos engulfing Iraq can work. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40007304?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents

Here’s another informative article on revisionism that I recommend everyone read: 

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/c/revisionism-as-a-substitute-for-victory/

There are a lot of great quotes in this one. For example: 

“More recently, the vast majority of historians have reviewed revisionist texts by Moyar and Boot unfavorably, critiquing their books for questionable use of sources and politically inspired wishful thinking.”

“The real problem with revisionism, as the last 50 years have shown, is that it is driven not so much by an honest desire to fine-tune what we know about the war as by a desire to use the Vietnam War as a cudgel in political and policy-making battles. On the political side, it is no coincidence that revisionism has surged in moments of polarization when right-of-center leaders have found advantage in emphasizing nationalist themes and degrading liberals as out-of-touch elites incapable of using American power to maximum effect.”

In other words, a lot of Mike’s arguments on Vietnam are based on a politically motivated minority viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of experts in the field - the exact same scenario he uses to invalidate arguments made by Jim D by calling them “extreme far-left”, “fringe”, etc.

Everyone’s arguments should be judged on merit, but let’s not pretend like we’re getting an objective history lesson here. 

The problem is that Mike is too ignorant to read the other books

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks for that Tom, just what I thought.  

Ronald Reagan's 1980 declaration was simply a horrible thing to say.

And the Novick/Burns fake documentary started in part one on that note.  That somehow the people who got us into Vietnam were good Americans with a noble intent. 

yech!  John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Lansdale?

Even Ambrose once said of Nixon that he was really around the bend on Vietnam.

Edited July 11, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

18 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Mike is presenting the arguments of the revisionist school of Vietnam scholars as if they are established facts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Moyar in particular is regarded as perhaps the most extreme pro-war revisionist on the planet, even by other revisionists. His attempt to rehabilitate Diem in Triumph Forsaken is ridiculed by just about everyone, and many of his arguments are every bit as “fringe” as the positions Mike criticizes here on a daily basis, if not more so. Here’s a nice summary of Vietnam revisionism from a scholarly review of Moyar’s book from JSTOR: 

A majority of observers and scholars perhaps. But not all. A more exculpatory narrative of American intervention in Vietnam has fiercely challenged those who see the war as a mistake. Given popular expression by Ronald Reagan in a speech before the 1980 Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in Chicago when he called Vietnam a “noble cause,” self-styled “revisionists” - among them Vietnam generation military figures and diplomats, as well as some journalists, political scientists and historians - argued that Vietnam was a necessary war…

…As the failures of the ongoing Iraq war have once again unleashed the ghosts of Vietnam into national political debate, revisionist accounts of American policy in Vietnam have become increasingly visible and are often employed to underscore arguments that military solutions to the chaos engulfing Iraq can work. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40007304?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents

Here’s another informative article on revisionism that I recommend everyone read: 

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/c/revisionism-as-a-substitute-for-victory/

There are a lot of great quotes in this one. For example: 

“More recently, the vast majority of historians have reviewed revisionist texts by Moyar and Boot unfavorably, critiquing their books for questionable use of sources and politically inspired wishful thinking.”

“The real problem with revisionism, as the last 50 years have shown, is that it is driven not so much by an honest desire to fine-tune what we know about the war as by a desire to use the Vietnam War as a cudgel in political and policy-making battles. On the political side, it is no coincidence that revisionism has surged in moments of polarization when right-of-center leaders have found advantage in emphasizing nationalist themes and degrading liberals as out-of-touch elites incapable of using American power to maximum effect.”

In other words, a lot of Mike’s arguments on Vietnam are based on a politically motivated minority viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of experts in the field - the exact same scenario he uses to invalidate arguments made by Jim D by calling them “extreme far-left”, “fringe”, etc.

Everyone’s arguments should be judged on merit, but let’s not pretend like we’re getting an objective history lesson here. 

This is a distorted and misleading portrayal of Moyar's scholarship and of Vietnam War scholarship in general. So far in this thread you have done nothing but carefully cherry pick a handful of negative statements by liberal historians, while ignoring more moderate statements by other liberal historians who recognize the important contribution that Moyar has made, especially in his ground-breaking research on newly released/available North Vietnamese sources.

I would also note that you have once again ignored all the positive reviews that Moyar's books have received from historians and Vietnam War scholars, not to mention Moyar's detailed reply to the roundtable review. You keep acting like they do not exist. The scholars who have praised Moyar's research are just as qualified and knowledgeable as the ones who have attacked it.

It is utterly erroneous to claim that Moyar "is regarded as perhaps the most extreme pro-war revisionist on the planet, even by other revisionists." That is total nonsense and indicates you are new to Vietnam War research. You name me one revisionist scholar who has said that Moyar is "extreme." In fact, Moyar is known for his careful, methodical, and measured scholarship. So, yes, do name a single scholar who defends the Vietnam War who has called Moyar "extreme" or anything along that line. 

If you were familiar with Vietnam War scholarship, as I am, you would know that Moyar is anything but extreme. Many liberal historians label any scholar who disagrees with them about the war as "extreme." FYI, Moyar is not nearly as strident as, say, Dr. Lewis Sorley or Dr. Robert Turner, both of whom are fine scholars who have written highly regarded books on the Vietnam War. Go watch some of the panel discussions on the war that Moyar has chaired or taken part in. Here is one such panel discussion, chaired by Moyar, and it included Sorley, Daddis, Selverstone, Veith, Nu-Anh Tran, and Villard: LINK.

Go watch that video and come back and tell me with a straight face that Moyar is "the most extreme pro-war revisionist on the planet." (BTW, why do you suppose Moyar was the one chairing the discussion?)

How would you compare Moyar's Triumph Forsaken and Triumph Regained books with Dr. Michael Kort's The Vietnam War Revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2017), or with Dr. George Veith's Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-1975 (Encounter Books, 2012), or with Dr. Lewis Sorley's A Better War (Harcourt, 1999), or with Dr. Christopher Goscha's The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam (Princeton University Press, 2022)? I am guessing you have not read any of these books (I have read all of them), so you have some reading to do before you can answer my question.

Finally, I ask you again, why do you suppose that not one of the liberal reviews that you have quoted even tried to address the evidence that Moyar presents from North Vietnamese sources? I asked you this earlier, and you chose not to reply.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Tom Gram]

deleted (duplicate)

Edited July 11, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Tom Gram]

Mike, you are the one mischaracterizing Vietnam scholarship by pushing hardcore revisionism as though it somehow aligns with the prevailing scholarly interpretation of the war. In reality, revisionism is a minority viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of academic historians. Many of these scholars take the tenets of revisionism seriously and still conclude that they are lacking evidence, rely too much on counterfactuals, and are politically motivated to the point that many of the core arguments border on polemics. 

“Regarded as perhaps” is not the same thing as “literally call him extreme”. Even the supportive reviews I’ve read of Moyar’s book say that he goes farther to push the revisionist perspective than just about anyone, often at the expense of his analysis. I did find this in a quick google search though. I’m not sure if this lady is a revisionist in the traditional sense, but she is an academic historian, favorably reviews a revisionist book over an orthodox one, and still labels Moyar’s book as “extreme”. 

https://cindyanguyen.com/2017/07/16/orthodox-revisionism-vietnam-war/

Regarding the North Vietnamese sources Moyar uses, I’m still not sure if you’ve even read the reviews you posted. Moyar is slammed in I think the first review of that roundtable for not reading Vietnamese and using select translated sources to push his arguments. That is not an isolated interpretation either:

To be clear, my reference here is to the work of scholars conducting primary research on the Vietnamese side of the war and/or relevant aspects of modern Vietnamese political history. The scholarship to which I refer does not include Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken…which relies on select translated sources in order to substitute tendentious revisionist arguments about the Vietnamese dynamics of the war for tendentious orthodox ones. 

https://www.newmandala.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Zinoman-on-Bradley.pdf

I could go on, but the point is that you are pushing all these pro-war analyses as fact while completing ignoring that the the vast majority of experts strongly disagree with you, and immediately rejecting any alternate interpretation of the evidence by tossing around dismissive terms like “liberal historian”, “far left”, “fringe”, etc. Basically, you are accusing others of cherry picking and falling victim to confirmation bias while doing exactly that to promote your theories.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Calvin Ye]

35 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

Mike, you are the one mischaracterizing Vietnam scholarship by pushing hardcore revisionism as though it somehow aligns with the prevailing scholarly interpretation of the war. In reality, revisionism is a minority viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of academic historians. Many of these scholars take the tenets of revisionism seriously and still conclude that they are lacking evidence, rely too much on counterfactuals, and are politically motivated to the point that many of the core arguments border on polemics. 

“Regarded as perhaps” is not the same thing as “literally call him extreme”. Even the supportive reviews I’ve read of Moyar’s book say that he goes farther to push the revisionist perspective than just about anyone, often at the expense of his analysis. I did find this in a quick google search though. I’m not sure if this lady is a revisionist in the traditional sense, but she is an academic historian, favorably reviews a revisionist book over an orthodox one, and still labels Moyar’s book as “extreme”. 

https://cindyanguyen.com/2017/07/16/orthodox-revisionism-vietnam-war/

Regarding the North Vietnamese sources Moyar uses, I’m still not sure if you’ve even read the reviews you posted. Moyar is slammed in I think the first review of that roundtable for not reading Vietnamese and using select translated sources to push his arguments. That is not an isolated interpretation either:

To be clear, my reference here is to the work of scholars conducting primary research on the Vietnamese side of the war and/or relevant aspects of modern Vietnamese political history. The scholarship to which I refer does not include Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken…which relies on select translated sources in order to substitute tendentious revisionist arguments about the Vietnamese dynamics of the war for tendentious orthodox ones. 

https://www.newmandala.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Zinoman-on-Bradley.pdf

I could go on, but the point is that you are pushing all these pro-war analyses as fact while completing ignoring that the the vast majority of experts strongly disagree with you, and immediately rejecting any alternate interpretation of the evidence by tossing around dismissive terms like “liberal historian”, “far left”, “fringe”, etc. Basically, you are accusing others of cherry picking and falling victim to confirmation bias while doing exactly that to promote your theories.

I agree with your assessment about Mike. Mike fail to read my other answers on certain aspects of Vietnam. He instead chose to focus on cherry picking my answer on Kennedy's stance. He is clueless when it comes to the human creature's motivation and cautiousness

Edited July 11, 2023 by Calvin Ye

[Michael Griffith]

3 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

 

Mike, you are the one mischaracterizing Vietnam scholarship by pushing hardcore revisionism as though it somehow aligns with the prevailing scholarly interpretation of the war.

You know, or should know, that this is false. One, it is not "hardcore" revisionism. Two, I already said that in the academic community, the pro-Vietnam War view is the minority viewpoint.

May I ask about your background in Vietnam War research? I have been studying the Vietnam War for over 30 years. I have read at least 70 books on the subject, along with innumerable papers, studies, and articles, such as the dozens of war-era DoD reports available on the DTIC website and on other websites. I have maintained my own website on the war for going on 20 years. Your comments indicate that you are quite new to Vietnam War scholarship, and are far out of your depth here.

I might add that among Vietnam vets, the pro-war/revisionist view is by far the dominant view. Similarly, if you look at official Navy, Marine, Army, and Air Force histories of the war published within the first five or 10 years after the conflict, those histories defend the war effort. Even today, the majority of professors at the Army War College, Navy War College, Marine Corps University, etc., who deal with the subject, support, to varying degrees, the revisionist view.

In reality, revisionism is a minority viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of academic historians. Many of these scholars take the tenets of revisionism seriously and still conclude that they are lacking evidence, rely too much on counterfactuals, and are politically motivated to the point that many of the core arguments border on polemics.

The "vast majority"? Let me put it this way: The percentage of Asia/Vietnam War academic historians who support the pro-war/revisionist position is greater than the percentage of Kennedy-era academic historians who support the conspiracy view of the JFK assassination.  

And, again, when we move the arena from civilian academia to Vietnam vets and military institutions, the picture changes substantially. 

“Regarded as perhaps” is not the same thing as “literally call him extreme”. Even the supportive reviews I’ve read of Moyar’s book say that he goes farther to push the revisionist perspective than just about anyone, often at the expense of his analysis. 

Really? So you can read minds? They did not actually say that Moyar is extreme, but they regard him as such. Huh. Amazing. You have talked to them, right? Or you can read their minds? You really need to stop trying to bluff your way through on this subject. 

Anyway, I do not believe you. Cite just one favorable review that says Moyar pushes the revisionist position further than "just about anyone, often at the expense of his analysis." I am confident I have read every favorable review of Moyar’s books published so far. Not one of them said what you claim some of them have said. Prove me wrong. 

"Just about" is a convenient hedge. I can think of several pro-Vietnam War historians who are more emphatic and pointed in making their case, such as Sorley, Turner, Sharp, and Veith. They are all fine scholars and have written top-notch, highly regarded books on the war, but their tone and polemic is a bit sharper than Moyar's. 

I did find this in a quick google search though. I’m not sure if this lady is a revisionist in the traditional sense, but she is an academic historian, favorably reviews a revisionist book over an orthodox one, and still labels Moyar’s book as “extreme”.  

https://cindyanguyen.com/2017/07/16/orthodox-revisionism-vietnam-war/ 

You must be kidding. First off, if Cindy Nguyen were a Vietnam War historian, I would know about her. Second, a quick look at her CV shows she had written nothing about the war until the article that you cite, and her article is not about the war itself but about scholarship on the war. In 2021, she wrote a review of Olga Dror's sociological analysis of war and youth identities in North and South Vietnam. Her own description of the book makes it clear that it is not about the war itself but about a sociological aspect of Vietnamese society during the war.

Turning to the Cindy Nguyen article that you cite, I see some problems right off the bat. She puts Christopher Goscha and Lien-Hang Nguyen in her "Vietnam-centric" column but not in the “Revisionist” column. Do you know who Lien-Hang Nguyen is? She wrote the book Hanoi's War, one of the best exposes of North Vietnam's Stalinist state ever written and that challenges several key tenets of the anti-war/”orthodox” position. 

Do you know who Christopher Goscha is? He is arguably one of the most knowledgeable scholars in the world about Indochina. His latest book, published just last year, The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam, is one of the most devastating exposes ever written of the cruelty, deceit, and brutality of Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan, Vo Nguyen Giap, and the Viet Minh as a whole. 

If Goscha’s book had been published in, say, 1970, the anti-war movement would have called him a right-wing fascist who was peddling far-right propaganda about the Viet Minh. 

Cindy Nguyen labels Moyar “extreme” on two issues, not on all issues, and she says Moyar is “extremely well qualified”: 

          Revisionists fight an uphill battle for recognition, even when extremely well qualified like Mark Moyar. 

I will be charitable and assume that you honestly overlooked the fact that she only describes him as "extreme" on two issues on the war, and that she calls him "extemely well qualified." 

Regarding the North Vietnamese sources Moyar uses, I’m still not sure if you’ve even read the reviews you posted. 

Oh, I have read them. The problem is (1) you have not read enough to realize how badly you are blundering here, (2) you apparently did not notice that nothing the roundtable reviews said (or that you cited) actually addressed the information that Moyar presents from the North Vietnamese sources, and (3) you obviously still have not bothered to read Moyar's detailed reply to the roundtable reviews (otherwise, you would not have repeated the embarrassingly silly argument below). 

Moyar is slammed in I think the first review of that roundtable for not reading Vietnamese and using select translated sources to push his arguments. That is not an isolated interpretation either: 

This is a truly pathetic argument, not to mention a downright silly and petty one. In using the North Vietnamese sources, Moyar relied on one of the most renowned Vietnamese linguists in the Western world: Merle Pribbenow. You would know this if you had read Moyar's books and/or his reply to the roundtable reviews. 

Furthermore, the vast majority of the scholars who have written about the Vietnam War and who have cited North or South Vietnamese sources do not read or speak Vietnamese but rely on translated versions and on professional linguists for untranslated material, just as Moyar did. 

Also, I guess you did not notice that not one of the roundtable reviews claims that the translated passages from the North Vietnamese sources in Moyar's books are wrong. Did you not notice this? 

To be clear, my reference here is to the work of scholars conducting primary research on the Vietnamese side of the war and/or relevant aspects of modern Vietnamese political history. The scholarship to which I refer does not include Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken…which relies on select translated sources in order to substitute tendentious revisionist arguments about the Vietnamese dynamics of the war for tendentious orthodox ones.  

https://www.newmandala.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Zinoman-on-Bradley.pdf 

This is an inane argument. It comes from a footnote in Peter Zinoman's review of one of Mark Bradley's books. Of course the translated sources are "select." Every book ever written on the Vietnam War that uses any Vietnamese sources, North or South, uses "select translated sources"! This is a juvenile argument that does not address the information that Moyar presents from the North Vietnamese sources. 

Have you caught on yet that the various liberal historians who dismiss Moyar's research studiously avoid dealing with the evidence from the North Vietnamese sources? I will not bother to repeat all the crucial information that those sources reveal. I have provided summaries of some of that evidence in other threads and replies.  

I could go on, but the point is that you are pushing all these pro-war analyses as fact while completing ignoring that the vast majority of experts strongly disagree with you, and immediately rejecting any alternate interpretation of the evidence by tossing around dismissive terms like “liberal historian”, “far left”, “fringe”, etc. Basically, you are accusing others of cherry picking and falling victim to confirmation bias while doing exactly that to promote your theories. 

No, I have mainly been talking about historic information from newly released/available North Vietnamese sources, information that destroys the view that prevails in the civilian academic world. You, on the other hand, clearly have not read any scholarly book that discusses this information. Moyar is not the only historian who has presented it. Such scholars as Veith, Sorley, Kort, Hunt, and even Hastings, to name a few, have also examined it at length. You keep relying on scholars who have not even tried to explain this evidence. 

No, the "vast majority of experts" do not disagree with me. Most civilian historians do, but when we shift to a different arena, your view becomes the minority view. 

And, I would repeat the point that the "vast majority" of academic historians reject the case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination. If you're going to appeal to the authority of academic historians and ignore other arenas, then you need to be consistent in appealing to them. The vast majority of the historians you are citing also believe in the lone-gunman theory and regard WC critics as uneducated, paranoid, etc., etc.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[James DiEugenio]

Nice one Tom.

 

That really puts Mark Moyar in his place.  And says a lot about Mike.

[Tom Gram]

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Mike, you are the one mischaracterizing Vietnam scholarship by pushing hardcore revisionism as though it somehow aligns with the prevailing scholarly interpretation of the war.

You know, or should know, that this is false. One, it is not "hardcore" revisionism. Two, I already said that in the academic community, the pro-Vietnam War view is the minority viewpoint.

May I ask about your background in Vietnam War research? I have been studying the Vietnam War for over 30 years. I have read at least 70 books on the subject, along with innumerable papers, studies, and articles, such as the dozens of war-era DoD reports available on the DTIC website and on other websites. I have maintained my own website on the war for going on 20 years. Your comments indicate that you are quite new to Vietnam War scholarship, and are far out of your depth here.

I might add that among Vietnam vets, the pro-war/revisionist view is by far the dominant view. Similarly, if you look at official Navy, Marine, Army, and Air Force histories of the war published within the first five or 10 years after the conflict, those histories defend the war effort. Even today, the majority of professors at the Army War College, Navy War College, Marine Corps University, etc., who deal with the subject, support, to varying degrees, the revisionist view.

In reality, revisionism is a minority viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of academic historians. Many of these scholars take the tenets of revisionism seriously and still conclude that they are lacking evidence, rely too much on counterfactuals, and are politically motivated to the point that many of the core arguments border on polemics.

The "vast majority"? Let me put it this way: The percentage of Asia/Vietnam War academic historians who support the pro-war/revisionist position is greater than the percentage of Kennedy-era academic historians who support the conspiracy view of the JFK assassination.  

And, again, when we move the arena from civilian academia to Vietnam vets and military institutions, the picture changes substantially. 

“Regarded as perhaps” is not the same thing as “literally call him extreme”. Even the supportive reviews I’ve read of Moyar’s book say that he goes farther to push the revisionist perspective than just about anyone, often at the expense of his analysis. 

Really? So you can read minds? They did not actually say that Moyar is extreme, but they regard him as such. Huh. Amazing. You have talked to them, right? Or you can read their minds? You really need to stop trying to bluff your way through on this subject. 

Anyway, I do not believe you. Cite just one favorable review that says Moyar pushes the revisionist position further than "just about anyone, often at the expense of his analysis." I am confident I have read every favorable review of Moyar’s books published so far. Not one of them said what you claim some of them have said. Prove me wrong. 

"Just about" is a convenient hedge. I can think of several pro-Vietnam War historians who are more emphatic and pointed in making their case, such as Sorley, Turner, Sharp, and Veith. They are all fine scholars and have written top-notch, highly regarded books on the war, but their tone and polemic is a bit sharper than Moyar's. 

I did find this in a quick google search though. I’m not sure if this lady is a revisionist in the traditional sense, but she is an academic historian, favorably reviews a revisionist book over an orthodox one, and still labels Moyar’s book as “extreme”.  

https://cindyanguyen.com/2017/07/16/orthodox-revisionism-vietnam-war/ 

You must be kidding. First off, if Cindy Nguyen were a Vietnam War historian, I would know about her. Second, a quick look at her CV shows she had written nothing about the war until the article that you cite, and her article is not about the war itself but about scholarship on the war. In 2021, she wrote a review of Olga Dror's sociological analysis of war and youth identities in North and South Vietnam. Her own description of the book makes it clear that it is not about the war itself but about a sociological aspect of Vietnamese society during the war.

Turning to the Cindy Nguyen article that you cite, I see some problems right off the bat. She puts Christopher Goscha and Lien-Hang Nguyen in her "Vietnam-centric" column but not in the “Revisionist” column. Do you know who Lien-Hang Nguyen is? She wrote the book Hanoi's War, one of the best exposes of North Vietnam's Stalinist state ever written and that challenges several key tenets of the anti-war/”orthodox” position. 

Do you know who Christopher Goscha is? He is arguably one of the most knowledgeable scholars in the world about Indochina. His latest book, published just last year, The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam, is one of the most devastating exposes ever written of the cruelty, deceit, and brutality of Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan, Vo Nguyen Giap, and the Viet Minh as a whole. 

If Goscha’s book had been published in, say, 1970, the anti-war movement would have called him a right-wing fascist who was peddling far-right propaganda about the Viet Minh. 

Cindy Nguyen labels Moyar “extreme” on two issues, not on all issues, and she says Moyar is “extremely well qualified”: 

          Revisionists fight an uphill battle for recognition, even when extremely well qualified like Mark Moyar. 

I will be charitable and assume that you honestly overlooked the fact that she only describes him as "extreme" on two issues on the war, and that she calls him "extemely well qualified." 

Regarding the North Vietnamese sources Moyar uses, I’m still not sure if you’ve even read the reviews you posted. 

Oh, I have read them. The problem is (1) you have not read enough to realize how badly you are blundering here, (2) you apparently did not notice that nothing the roundtable reviews said (or that you cited) actually addressed the information that Moyar presents from the North Vietnamese sources, and (3) you obviously still have not bothered to read Moyar's detailed reply to the roundtable reviews (otherwise, you would not have repeated the embarrassingly silly argument below). 

Moyar is slammed in I think the first review of that roundtable for not reading Vietnamese and using select translated sources to push his arguments. That is not an isolated interpretation either: 

This is a truly pathetic argument, not to mention a downright silly and petty one. In using the North Vietnamese sources, Moyar relied on one of the most renowned Vietnamese linguists in the Western world: Merle Pribbenow. You would know this if you had read Moyar's books and/or his reply to the roundtable reviews. 

Furthermore, the vast majority of the scholars who have written about the Vietnam War and who have cited North or South Vietnamese sources do not read or speak Vietnamese but rely on translated versions and on professional linguists for untranslated material, just as Moyar did. 

Also, I guess you did not notice that not one of the roundtable reviews claims that the translated passages from the North Vietnamese sources in Moyar's books are wrong. Did you not notice this? 

To be clear, my reference here is to the work of scholars conducting primary research on the Vietnamese side of the war and/or relevant aspects of modern Vietnamese political history. The scholarship to which I refer does not include Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken…which relies on select translated sources in order to substitute tendentious revisionist arguments about the Vietnamese dynamics of the war for tendentious orthodox ones.  

https://www.newmandala.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Zinoman-on-Bradley.pdf 

This is an inane argument. It comes from a footnote in Peter Zinoman's review of one of Mark Bradley's books. Of course the translated sources are "select." Every book ever written on the Vietnam War that uses any Vietnamese sources, North or South, uses "select translated sources"! This is a juvenile argument that does not address the information that Moyar presents from the North Vietnamese sources. 

Have you caught on yet that the various liberal historians who dismiss Moyar's research studiously avoid dealing with the evidence from the North Vietnamese sources? I will not bother to repeat all the crucial information that those sources reveal. I have provided summaries of some of that evidence in other threads and replies.  

I could go on, but the point is that you are pushing all these pro-war analyses as fact while completing ignoring that the vast majority of experts strongly disagree with you, and immediately rejecting any alternate interpretation of the evidence by tossing around dismissive terms like “liberal historian”, “far left”, “fringe”, etc. Basically, you are accusing others of cherry picking and falling victim to confirmation bias while doing exactly that to promote your theories. 

No, I have mainly been talking about historic information from newly released/available North Vietnamese sources, information that destroys the view that prevails in the civilian academic world. You, on the other hand, clearly have not read any scholarly book that discusses this information. Moyar is not the only historian who has presented it. Such scholars as Veith, Sorley, Kort, Hunt, and even Hastings, to name a few, have also examined it at length. You keep relying on scholars who have not even tried to explain this evidence. 

No, the "vast majority of experts" do not disagree with me. Most civilian historians do, but when we shift to a different arena, your view becomes the minority view. 

And, I would repeat the point that the "vast majority" of academic historians reject the case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination. If you're going to appeal to the authority of academic historians and ignore other arenas, then you need to be consistent in appealing to them. The vast majority of the historians you are citing also believe in the lone-gunman theory and regard WC critics as uneducated, paranoid, etc., etc.

Mike, I think appeals to authority are bogus and arguments should be judged on merit. That’s kind of my whole point. Whenever anyone here, Jim D. in particular, challenges your view of any aspect the Vietnam war, you label their arguments as some variation of “fringe” or “far-left” and/or claim they are not qualified to even comment because you’ve read more books on Vietnam. Example A: me, just for posting articles and quotes from experts you disagree with, including the following article on the Vietnam revisionist movement from an award winning Vietnam historian and director of the LBJ library, which I think is worth posting again. 

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/c/revisionism-as-a-substitute-for-victory/

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/history/faculty/ut1markl

I’m sure this guy is just one of those kooky liberals though…

His article “Revisionism as a Substitute for Victory” is a gold mine of quotes, e.g. 

Revisionists might be gaining favor, as many of them contend, because they are finally setting the record straight by heroically challenging a left-leaning academic establishment congenitally hostile to the use of American military power. The problem with that view is that younger academics, relatively free from the antiwar sensibilities of the older generation and benefiting from unprecedented access to source material, are consistently reinforcing the old view in a remarkable body of new work about the war: No decision the United States could have made would have brought victory in Vietnam at a sensible cost. 

Is it really reasonable to think that not one Vietnam academic has come to a different conclusion regarding these so-called “historic” North Vietnamese sources than people like Moyar? If the evidence is really so lacking in ambiguity that it “destroys” the prevailing academic wisdom on the the war, would the head of the LBJ library still be making statements like the above and saying things like: The problem with surging revisionism is that just about every academic expert on the war disagrees.”?

Forgive me for being skeptical. If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t actually given an opinion on this whole debate. I just think it’s important to present both sides of an argument, and you’ve been vigorously promoting a position on Vietnam that is clearly ambiguous and highly disputed as if it is the pinnacle of enlightened historical thought.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Tom Gram

[James DiEugenio]

Those were two  good articles you posted Tom.

 I forgot about Westmoreland saying that it was Johnson's fault for not giving him even more troops after Tet.

If I recall, he was asking for well over 200,000 men.  Which would have brought the number up to almost 3/4 of a million combat troops in theater.

That request by the way was supposed to be secret.  In my reading, I have come to conclude that Bobby Kennedy is the one who leaked that request.  And because of that, it was stillborn. 

America was splitting apart over the war at that time.  To have called up that many troops would have made all the demonstrations and protests even worse. 

People forget that under Nixon, in 1969, 500,000 people demonstrated in Washington.  And it was even bigger than that nationwide, approaching 750 K. 

This was when Nixon began to use his "Silent Majority" ploy in reaction to these huge rallies. 

Edited July 11, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, the person who is most responsible for cementing the whole "Kennedy was getting out of Vietnam and  his policy was reversed after his murder" thesis, is not a liberal.

John Newman is a conservative. 

And I should add so was the late Howard Jones.

Edited July 11, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

I think it is time to share segments from Dr. Mark Moyar’s 14-page reply to the roundtable reviews of his book Triumph Forsaken. We have people in this thread who are stridently condemning Moyar’s book even though they have not read it, and even though their research on the Vietnam War has obviously been very limited and one sided. Rejecting a book and attacking its author before you have even read any of his books violates the most basic principles of critical thinking and credible scholarship.

Below are some portions from Moyar’s reply to the roundtable reviews. The quoted portions focus on Chapman’s review, since it is the most negative of the reviews. As you will see, there is reason to wonder if Chapman actually read Moyar’s book or if she merely skimmed through it. For those who want to read Moyar’s reply in its entirety, here is a link to it:

https://issforum.org/roundtables/PDF/TriumphForsaken-Moyar.pdf

From Moyar’s reply:

          I will address the reviews one at a time, starting with Jessica Chapman’s, which contains the greatest number of accusations. Near the beginning of the review, Chapman states that “the literature on the Vietnam Wars is vastly more complex and nuanced than [Moyar’s] liberal orthodox/conservative revisionist dichotomy implies.” I should begin by noting first, that this dichotomy is not something I created. David Anderson, Marc Jason Gilbert, Stephen Vlastos, and many other well-known scholars have accepted and analyzed this dichotomy. In Triumph Forsaken, moreover, I note that not every book fits into one category or the other. (xii) (All subsequent page references are from Triumph Forsaken) All of the major works that address the war’s biggest questions—such as the merits of U.S. intervention and the viability of alternative American strategies—clearly can be placed within either the orthodox or revisionist groupings. . . .

          According to Chapman, “Moyar contributes little of substance to what he has termed the revisionist perspective.” The review by James McAllister, which calls Triumph Forsaken “an original work of scholarship that can rightfully claim to be the most consequential revisionist book ever produced on the Vietnam War,” does much to undermine Chapman’s assertion by enumerating some of the major original points in the book. Later, Chapman states, “rather than bringing up new veins of argument, [Moyar] revived a number of old debates that most scholars were all too happy to replace years ago with more sophisticated lines of inquiry.” She appears to believe that old debates are off limits. Chapman does not mention the military history in the book, which, as McAllister notes, provides a significant portion of the book’s original conclusions. As I pointed out in a recent journal article (“The Current State of Military History,” The Historical Journal, vol. 50, no. 1, March 2007), military history can be far more complex than the uninitiated often believe. Some of the other sophisticated lines of inquiry that Chapman missed are the nature of conflict in Vietnamese history, Vietnamese political culture, the impact of the militant Buddhist movement, North Vietnamese strategy, American intelligence, and international opinion about Vietnam. . . .

          Chapman next states, “Despite his claim to have rooted his work in Vietnamese sources, he does not appear to read Vietnamese, and makes only limited use of Vietnamese materials in translation.” The suggestion that the book does not rely extensively on Vietnamese sources is untenable. In the endnotes can be found over two hundred citations of Vietnamese[1]language sources, many of which have never before been cited. I am not aware of any general history of the war that contains so many references to Vietnamese-language sources.

          Chapman also appears to fault me for not having spent time in archives in Vietnam. She is correct in noting that she, Edward Miller, Philip Catton, and Matthew Masur have done research in Vietnamese archives for extended periods of time. They have produced noteworthy works from this research, as I mention in Triumph Forsaken. What she fails to say is that most of the information presently available to foreign researchers in Vietnam is not relevant to the big questions of the Vietnam War, though this fact may be inferred from the absence of any statement from Chapman about specific information that would contradict my interpretations. As my endnotes attest, the works of Miller, Catton, and Masur (Chapman had not published any of her research by the time I finished Triumph Forsaken) contain only a handful of sources from the archives of Vietnam that illuminate the big picture in ways that other sources do not.

          Chapman, and another reviewer, criticize me for relying on a translator in using Vietnamese sources. I do not see how reading voluminous translations from a world-class translator, Merle Pribbenow, is less effective than reading Vietnamese sources when the Vietnamese of many scholars is inferior to that of Pribbenow. A substantial number of other scholars of the Vietnam War, including some who read Vietnamese, have employed Mr. Pribbenow’s translations because of their reliability, though I am not aware that any of them has been criticized for it as I have. No one has offered any evidence that the numerous translations Mr. Pribbenow provided me were inaccurate in any way.

          One might expect a historian with Chapman’s interests to welcome the introduction of so many new Vietnamese sources into the history of the Vietnam War, particularly since my Vietnamese sources offer many new insights into the thoughts and actions of the war’s Vietnamese participants, which in turn help us evaluate American policy and strategy much more effectively. Most previous historians who have covered policy and strategy during the war have not used any such sources—for example, David Anderson, Larry Berman, Robert Buzzanco, George Herring, Michael Hunt, Seth Jacobs, Howard Jones, David Kaiser, Jeffrey Kimball, Fredrik Logevall (Chapman’s dissertation advisor), Andrew Preston, and Robert Schulzinger. These historians have seldom been criticized for the absence of Vietnamese sources. They have received excellent book reviews and coveted prizes, and some have been rewarded with jobs at top universities. It is therefore very curious that Chapman tries to turn my use of Vietnamese sources into something negative.

          Chapman alleges that I am guilty of “fragmentary and often questionable use of evidence,” and charges that there is “a disturbing lack of critical analysis throughout the book.” Those are serious charges, not to be made lightly. Yet Chapman provides little evidence to support them. She provides only five specific supporting points, and all are incorrect.

          Chapman states the first of the five points as follows: “I would certainly welcome clarification from Moyar on why Vietnam was of such vital strategic importance to the United States in 1954.” In Triumph Forsaken I do not state that Vietnam was of vital strategic importance in 1954. I note that Eisenhower did not consider Vietnam to be strategically vital in 1954. (27-8) Eisenhower had changed his views on the subject by 1961 (125), and later in 1961 Kennedy concluded that Vietnam was strategically vital (137-42), a conclusion that had considerable merit in my estimation.

          Second, Chapman accuses me of inconsistency for accepting Ho Chi Minh’s supplications to the Chinese as evidence that he was pro-Chinese while not accepting his entreaties to the United States as evidence of pro-American sentiments. Contrary to how Chapman expressed it, I did not rely primarily on Ho Chi Minh’s overtures to China and the United States in analyzing his true sentiments. Rather, I studied Ho Chi Minh’s actions, beliefs, and circumstances in depth to assess how he viewed the two powers.

          On many occasions, Ho Chi Minh professed that he had been inspired by Lenin, and his ideological writings and his actions as a national leader all show the influence of Lenin’s ideology, including Lenin’s internationalism. (8-10, 14) Ho repeatedly advocated temporary alliances with non-Communists against other non-Communists followed by destruction of the surviving non-Communists. (10, 14, 104) He never advocated destruction of other Communists (save for Trotskyites), whether foreign or domestic, and on numerous occasions he urged his followers to remember that they were not just fighting for their own country but for their fellow Communists across the world. (11, 83, 359) Ho lived in China for many years, serving in both the Comintern and the Chinese Communist Army. (9-11, 14-15) He never lived in the United States and never served in the U.S. government or army. During the Franco-Viet Minh War, Ho let Chinese leaders dictate strategy and revolutionary policy (22- 3) and during that war and the war against the Americans, he invited Chinese troops onto Vietnamese soil. (27, 362-3) In the Sino-Soviet dispute, Ho usually stayed closer to the Chinese position while trying to get the two sides to patch up their differences in the spirit of international Communist solidarity. (60-61, 102, 138)

          Third, Chapman contends that I depict “total unity” between the Chinese and North Vietnamese prior to 1963, and in this context asserts that I overlooked the works of Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ilya Gaiduk, Qiang Zhai, and Chen Jian. Chapman does not state specifically what pre-1963 problems between the Chinese and North Vietnamese I missed. If she is referring to the end of the Franco-Viet Minh War in 1954, that subject is addressed below. As far as the period between 1954 and 1963, I do spend considerable time describing amicable relations between China and North Vietnam and offer supporting evidence from a variety of sources. But disagreements also receive mention. I note that the land reform debacle caused the Vietnamese Communists to lose their veneration for radical Chinese policies (62), that in 1958 the Chinese refused a Vietnamese request to begin the armed insurrection (79), that the Chinese told the Vietnamese to limit the scale of the insurgency in 1960 (101-2) and again in 1961 (146). Concerning the contention that I overlooked Judge, Gaiduk, Zhai, and Jian, a quick look at the endnotes will show that I refer repeatedly to all four of these historians, frequently with respect to relations among the Communist countries. . . .

          Fifth, Chapman contends that I did not produce compelling evidence that Diem was an effective leader. I find it hard to understand how she arrived at this conclusion, because the book is packed with information about Diem’s effectiveness. The early chapters show how Diem consolidated control over a badly fractured country and defeated the underground Communists. The middle chapters show how Diem, after initial problems in countering the insurgency, led a very effective counterinsurgency effort in 1962 and 1963. The latter chapters show how the removal of Diem crippled South Vietnam’s ability to fight the Communists. I provided an enormous amount of new information on the war in 1962 and 1963, much of it from Communist sources, showing how the South Vietnamese were winning the war. Chapman does nothing to show that any of this information is untrustworthy.

These paragraphs are only a small part of Moyar's reply. I encourage interested readers to read the entire reply. 

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Calvin Ye]

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

I think it is time to share segments from Dr. Mark Moyar’s 14-page reply to the roundtable reviews of his book Triumph Forsaken. We have people in this thread who are stridently condemning Moyar’s book even though they have not read it, and even though their research on the Vietnam War has obviously been very limited and one sided. Rejecting a book and attacking its author before you have even read any of his books violates the most basic principles of critical thinking and credible scholarship.

Below are some portions from Moyar’s reply to the roundtable reviews. The quoted portions focus on Chapman’s review, since it is the most negative of the reviews. As you will see, there is reason to wonder if Chapman actually read Moyar’s book or if she merely skimmed through it. For those who want to read Moyar’s reply in its entirety, here is a link to it:

https://issforum.org/roundtables/PDF/TriumphForsaken-Moyar.pdf

From Moyar’s reply:

          I will address the reviews one at a time, starting with Jessica Chapman’s, which contains the greatest number of accusations. Near the beginning of the review, Chapman states that “the literature on the Vietnam Wars is vastly more complex and nuanced than [Moyar’s] liberal orthodox/conservative revisionist dichotomy implies.” I should begin by noting first, that this dichotomy is not something I created. David Anderson, Marc Jason Gilbert, Stephen Vlastos, and many other well-known scholars have accepted and analyzed this dichotomy. In Triumph Forsaken, moreover, I note that not every book fits into one category or the other. (xii) (All subsequent page references are from Triumph Forsaken) All of the major works that address the war’s biggest questions—such as the merits of U.S. intervention and the viability of alternative American strategies—clearly can be placed within either the orthodox or revisionist groupings. . . .

          According to Chapman, “Moyar contributes little of substance to what he has termed the revisionist perspective.” The review by James McAllister, which calls Triumph Forsaken “an original work of scholarship that can rightfully claim to be the most consequential revisionist book ever produced on the Vietnam War,” does much to undermine Chapman’s assertion by enumerating some of the major original points in the book. Later, Chapman states, “rather than bringing up new veins of argument, [Moyar] revived a number of old debates that most scholars were all too happy to replace years ago with more sophisticated lines of inquiry.” She appears to believe that old debates are off limits. Chapman does not mention the military history in the book, which, as McAllister notes, provides a significant portion of the book’s original conclusions. As I pointed out in a recent journal article (“The Current State of Military History,” The Historical Journal, vol. 50, no. 1, March 2007), military history can be far more complex than the uninitiated often believe. Some of the other sophisticated lines of inquiry that Chapman missed are the nature of conflict in Vietnamese history, Vietnamese political culture, the impact of the militant Buddhist movement, North Vietnamese strategy, American intelligence, and international opinion about Vietnam. . . .

          Chapman next states, “Despite his claim to have rooted his work in Vietnamese sources, he does not appear to read Vietnamese, and makes only limited use of Vietnamese materials in translation.” The suggestion that the book does not rely extensively on Vietnamese sources is untenable. In the endnotes can be found over two hundred citations of Vietnamese[1]language sources, many of which have never before been cited. I am not aware of any general history of the war that contains so many references to Vietnamese-language sources.

          Chapman also appears to fault me for not having spent time in archives in Vietnam. She is correct in noting that she, Edward Miller, Philip Catton, and Matthew Masur have done research in Vietnamese archives for extended periods of time. They have produced noteworthy works from this research, as I mention in Triumph Forsaken. What she fails to say is that most of the information presently available to foreign researchers in Vietnam is not relevant to the big questions of the Vietnam War, though this fact may be inferred from the absence of any statement from Chapman about specific information that would contradict my interpretations. As my endnotes attest, the works of Miller, Catton, and Masur (Chapman had not published any of her research by the time I finished Triumph Forsaken) contain only a handful of sources from the archives of Vietnam that illuminate the big picture in ways that other sources do not.

          Chapman, and another reviewer, criticize me for relying on a translator in using Vietnamese sources. I do not see how reading voluminous translations from a world-class translator, Merle Pribbenow, is less effective than reading Vietnamese sources when the Vietnamese of many scholars is inferior to that of Pribbenow. A substantial number of other scholars of the Vietnam War, including some who read Vietnamese, have employed Mr. Pribbenow’s translations because of their reliability, though I am not aware that any of them has been criticized for it as I have. No one has offered any evidence that the numerous translations Mr. Pribbenow provided me were inaccurate in any way.

          One might expect a historian with Chapman’s interests to welcome the introduction of so many new Vietnamese sources into the history of the Vietnam War, particularly since my Vietnamese sources offer many new insights into the thoughts and actions of the war’s Vietnamese participants, which in turn help us evaluate American policy and strategy much more effectively. Most previous historians who have covered policy and strategy during the war have not used any such sources—for example, David Anderson, Larry Berman, Robert Buzzanco, George Herring, Michael Hunt, Seth Jacobs, Howard Jones, David Kaiser, Jeffrey Kimball, Fredrik Logevall (Chapman’s dissertation advisor), Andrew Preston, and Robert Schulzinger. These historians have seldom been criticized for the absence of Vietnamese sources. They have received excellent book reviews and coveted prizes, and some have been rewarded with jobs at top universities. It is therefore very curious that Chapman tries to turn my use of Vietnamese sources into something negative.

          Chapman alleges that I am guilty of “fragmentary and often questionable use of evidence,” and charges that there is “a disturbing lack of critical analysis throughout the book.” Those are serious charges, not to be made lightly. Yet Chapman provides little evidence to support them. She provides only five specific supporting points, and all are incorrect.

          Chapman states the first of the five points as follows: “I would certainly welcome clarification from Moyar on why Vietnam was of such vital strategic importance to the United States in 1954.” In Triumph Forsaken I do not state that Vietnam was of vital strategic importance in 1954. I note that Eisenhower did not consider Vietnam to be strategically vital in 1954. (27-8) Eisenhower had changed his views on the subject by 1961 (125), and later in 1961 Kennedy concluded that Vietnam was strategically vital (137-42), a conclusion that had considerable merit in my estimation.

          Second, Chapman accuses me of inconsistency for accepting Ho Chi Minh’s supplications to the Chinese as evidence that he was pro-Chinese while not accepting his entreaties to the United States as evidence of pro-American sentiments. Contrary to how Chapman expressed it, I did not rely primarily on Ho Chi Minh’s overtures to China and the United States in analyzing his true sentiments. Rather, I studied Ho Chi Minh’s actions, beliefs, and circumstances in depth to assess how he viewed the two powers.

          On many occasions, Ho Chi Minh professed that he had been inspired by Lenin, and his ideological writings and his actions as a national leader all show the influence of Lenin’s ideology, including Lenin’s internationalism. (8-10, 14) Ho repeatedly advocated temporary alliances with non-Communists against other non-Communists followed by destruction of the surviving non-Communists. (10, 14, 104) He never advocated destruction of other Communists (save for Trotskyites), whether foreign or domestic, and on numerous occasions he urged his followers to remember that they were not just fighting for their own country but for their fellow Communists across the world. (11, 83, 359) Ho lived in China for many years, serving in both the Comintern and the Chinese Communist Army. (9-11, 14-15) He never lived in the United States and never served in the U.S. government or army. During the Franco-Viet Minh War, Ho let Chinese leaders dictate strategy and revolutionary policy (22- 3) and during that war and the war against the Americans, he invited Chinese troops onto Vietnamese soil. (27, 362-3) In the Sino-Soviet dispute, Ho usually stayed closer to the Chinese position while trying to get the two sides to patch up their differences in the spirit of international Communist solidarity. (60-61, 102, 138)

          Third, Chapman contends that I depict “total unity” between the Chinese and North Vietnamese prior to 1963, and in this context asserts that I overlooked the works of Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ilya Gaiduk, Qiang Zhai, and Chen Jian. Chapman does not state specifically what pre-1963 problems between the Chinese and North Vietnamese I missed. If she is referring to the end of the Franco-Viet Minh War in 1954, that subject is addressed below. As far as the period between 1954 and 1963, I do spend considerable time describing amicable relations between China and North Vietnam and offer supporting evidence from a variety of sources. But disagreements also receive mention. I note that the land reform debacle caused the Vietnamese Communists to lose their veneration for radical Chinese policies (62), that in 1958 the Chinese refused a Vietnamese request to begin the armed insurrection (79), that the Chinese told the Vietnamese to limit the scale of the insurgency in 1960 (101-2) and again in 1961 (146). Concerning the contention that I overlooked Judge, Gaiduk, Zhai, and Jian, a quick look at the endnotes will show that I refer repeatedly to all four of these historians, frequently with respect to relations among the Communist countries. . . .

          Fifth, Chapman contends that I did not produce compelling evidence that Diem was an effective leader. I find it hard to understand how she arrived at this conclusion, because the book is packed with information about Diem’s effectiveness. The early chapters show how Diem consolidated control over a badly fractured country and defeated the underground Communists. The middle chapters show how Diem, after initial problems in countering the insurgency, led a very effective counterinsurgency effort in 1962 and 1963. The latter chapters show how the removal of Diem crippled South Vietnam’s ability to fight the Communists. I provided an enormous amount of new information on the war in 1962 and 1963, much of it from Communist sources, showing how the South Vietnamese were winning the war. Chapman does nothing to show that any of this information is untrustworthy.

These paragraphs are only a small part of Moyar's reply. I encourage interested readers to read the entire reply. 

 

I agree with Chapman about Moyar's version of events

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Calvin Ye said:

I agree with Chapman about Moyar's version of events.

Based on what? You might want to read Moyar's book and all the evidence he presents before you reach a conclusion, if you are interested in making an informed judgment. A basic tenet of critical thinking is to consider both sides of an argument before drawing a conclusion about it.

For starters, Moyar's version is based on the new information from North Vietnamese sources. Chapman did not even try to address a single item of this historic evidence. Let me summarize some of the things the North Vietnamese sources document:

-- The Communist war effort was going badly in 1962 and 1963 but began to improve a few months after Diem's death.

-- The Communist war effort went very badly throughout 1967, and this development was the reason the Hanoi regime decided to launch the Tet Offensive in January 1968.

-- The Viet Cong were tightly controlled by Hanoi and relied on Hanoi for most of their arms and supplies.

-- South Vietnam's army, aka ARVN (ar-vin), was a formidable fighting force in the majority of cases. ARVN usually defeated the Viet Cong during 1962 and 1963 and performed well during the Tet Offensive.

-- The Hanoi regime was unpleasantly surprised by the performance of ARVN during the Tet Offensive. Most of the Communists' attacks were aimed at ARVN units, since Hanoi believed they could be easily defeated. Hanoi's leaders were surprised when this failed to occur.

-- Hanoi's leaders were stunned by the refusal of the South Vietnamese to rise up against the Saigon government at the start of the Tet Offensive. The Hanoi Politburo firmly believed that once their forces attacked, most South Vietnamese would welcome them as liberators. 

-- After the Tet Offensive, the Communists lost control of most of the areas they had held in South Vietnam before the offensive. They had lost control of a number of areas in 1967, but they lost control over even more areas after the offensive.

-- From 1967 through early 1972, the Saigon government and MACV steadily increased their control of the countryside.

-- The Viet Cong's ranks were so decimated during the Tet Offensive, and recruiting became so difficult after the offensive, that from that point onward, most of the Viet Cong's soldiers were North Vietnamese.

-- The 1967-1968 bombing of North Vietnam did even more damage than MACV and the Pentagon estimated it did at the time, even when the bombing did not include targets near and around Hanoi.  

-- The Operation Linebacker I and II bombing campaigns and the mining of Haiphong Harbor in 1972 brought North Vietnam to the verge of collapse. 

-- Hanoi's leaders had no intention of honoring the Paris Peace Accords.

-- The Hanoi regime launched a propaganda campaign to blame South Vietnam for violating the Accords in an attempt to draw attention away from Hanoi's egregious violations of the Accords. 

-- Even with American aid slashed, ARVN often put up stiff, sometimes "ferocious," resistance in 1974 and 1975. 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Michael Griffith