Top 5 Books On JFK & Vietnam

[Michael Griffith]

Let us look at some of Laderman’s most-questionable criticisms of Moyar’s book Triumph Forsaken:

          Moyar suggested that Ho was, above all else, a willing tool of the Soviets and Chinese, “firmly adher[ing] to the Leninist principle that Communist nations should subordinate their interests to those of the international Communist movement.” Moyar therefore saw in Ho’s professions of global solidarity not Vietnam’s placement at the forefront of a vast wave of anti-colonialism and revolutionary nationalism but, rather, machinations in pursuit of collapsing dominoes. The Vietnamese revolutionaries’ gestures towards the Soviets and Chinese were thus viewed invariably in Triumph Forsaken as genuine and nefarious, while their gestures towards the United States were dismissed as duplicitous and insincere. (p. 92)

This is a variation of Zhai’s and Lawrence’s bogus arguments in Chapters 4 and 14, which Moyar answers in his first and third responses. It is also a sad but revealing repetition of the anti-war movement’s long-debunked falsehood that Ho Chi Minh and his fellow Communists were mainly nationalists who did not really care about Communist ideology or about aiding Comintern goals.

As I mentioned in a previous reply, Zhai's claim that Ho Chi Minh was not a fanatical, dedicated Stalinist-Leninist Communist is astounding and inexcusable. Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen's book Hanoi's War, Dr. William Duiker's Ho Chi Minh: A Life, and Dr. Christopher Goscha's recent book The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam prove that Moyar's description of Ho Chi Minh as a hardcore Communist who had no interest in an alliance with the West is indisputably correct. 

Le Duan, who was running North Vietnam years before Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, and who formally assumed the leadership of the country after Ho died, was even a more fanatical Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist than Ho had been, as Lien-Hang Nguyen documents in Hanoi’s War.

As I also mentioned in a previous reply, in The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam, Goscha shows that Ho and other Communist leaders pretended to be willing to rule with non-communist nationalists and concealed their Marxist agenda from the people as a war expediency to defeat the French. When Ho, Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, etc., felt it was safe to do so, they ruthlessly purged non-Communists from all levels of power, murdering thousands of people and jailing thousands of others in the process.

          It is apparently inconceivable to Moyar that Ho could simultaneously have been both a nationalist and a Communist, or that he or his comrades could have been shrewd individuals willing to make pragmatic accommodations in pursuit of larger national objectives. (p. 92)

Anyone who reads Moyar’s book will see that Laderman is severely misstating Moyar’s research and conclusions about Hanoi’s leaders. Laderman is also ignoring the mountain of evidence, acknowledged by untold numbers of scholars, that Ho and Le Duan et al were hardcore Communists who only made “pragmatic accommodations” that went against Communist doctrine and goals when they had no other choice.

          As for the widespread repression exercised by the Diem government, it is true, Moyar conceded, that Diem was authoritarian. But, whereas Ho’s heavy-handedness was a contemptible illustration of the Communist threat, for Diem it was an asset to be celebrated. (p. 93).

This is perhaps Laderman’s most stunning display of distortion, falsehood, and far-left bias. Laderman fails to mention that Moyar documents that Diem’s regime was far less oppressive than the Hanoi regime. To his great credit, center-left historian Sir Max Hastings, in his book Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, acknowledges that Diem’s government was not as bad as Hanoi’s government. For a detailed examination on this subject, I recommend South Vietnamese historian Tuong Vu’s compilation The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation Building (Cornell University Press, 2020).

Now let us look at Laderman’s specious, sophomoric attack on Moyar’s use of sources:

          James McAllister, for example, showed how the only documentary evidence cited by Moyar for his claim that some “high-ranking” U.S. officials were concluding in 1964 that “Tri Quang himself was a Communist” said nothing of the sort. (p. 94)

More distortion and omission. Moyar addresses McAllister’s arguments on Tri Quang in his third reply. I wonder if McAllister even read the sources that Moyar cites. By the way, in an article that McAllister wrote in 2008, two years before Triumph Revisited was published, he admitted that Ambassador Lodge and General Maxwell Taylor came to believe that Tri Quang was a Communist, although he complains that they had no grounds for doing so (LINK, p. 754). Moyar’s 2004 article on the militant Buddhist monks is worth reading for more information on this issue (LINK).

          Gareth Porter, commenting on Moyar’s explication of the domino theory’s validity, accused the author of “violat[ing] the basic norms of scholarship” by, among other things, alleging that the Malay Communist insurgency “never really stopped” when, according to Porter, the allegation is “contradicted flatly by the very source [Moyar] cites.” (p. 94)

Now this is just silly. It is not violating any “basic norm of scholarship” to reach a conclusion that differs from the conclusion of the book or books you are citing. Scholars often quote certain segments of works to support an argument even though those works do not agree with their argument. When I quote selected statements from the Warren Report to make the case for conspiracy, no credible critic would complain that I was violating a “basic norm of scholarship” because the Warren Report rejects the conspiracy position. Porter would never make such a sophomoric argument against a fellow orthodox scholar.

          Edwin Moïse, addressing the alleged attack during the Tonkin Gulf incident of August 4, 1964, expressed his annoyance with “the way Moyar carefuly [sic] selects from my own book only those facts that support” Triumph Forsaken’s argument that the available contemporaneous evidence “strongly supported the reality of the attack”—a point Moïse disputed and said was “very strongly contradicted” elsewhere in his same book. (p. 94)

More abject silliness. Scholars routinely “carefully select” facts from books to support their arguments even though those books reject their arguments. Have Moise and Porter ever taken a course in debate and critical thinking? Just because I quote facts presented by Gerald Posner or Vincent Bugliosi because those facts support the conspiracy view does not mean I am misusing their books or that I am bound to agree with Posner’s and Bugliosi’s view on conspiracy. Nobody but an amateur, or a scholar looking for any excuse to criticize, would argue otherwise.

          And William Stueck, commenting on Moyar’s claims regarding the battle at Dien Bien Phu and the 1954 Geneva Conference, wrote that while Moyar cited for “some specifics” what are arguably the leading sources on Vietnamese relations with China and the Soviet Union, he “ignore[d] other details” in these sources that weakened his position “as well as these authors’ conclusions.” (p. 94)

And still more “you can’t quote or cite a source unless the source agrees with you” silliness, not to mention that Laderman fails to tell the reader that Moyar presents new evidence to support his arguments regarding Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Conference.

          My own brief examination only further reinforced the concerns expressed above.

And we just saw that those concerns are unfounded, to put it gently.

          To cite one easily confirmable example, Moyar wrote that “[i]n Vietnamese Communist parlance, the label ‘reactionary’ was applied to anyone who was not a Communist. Many more ‘reactionaries’ would suffer death during the remainder of 1946, bringing the toll of civilians killed by the Communists during the period of Communist rule into the tens of thousands.” Moyar then provided an endnote in which he added that “[i]ntra-Vietnamese killings, which the Communists perpetrated in greater numbers than everyone else combined, came to a total of as high as 50,000 in this period, according to recent estimates.” In support Moyar cited Shawn McHale’s Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the Making of Modern Vietnam. Yet McHale did not write that “the Communists” killed “tens of thousands,” nor did he write that they perpetrated killings “in greater numbers than everyone else combined.” In fact, he did not mention “the Communists” at all; his discursion was, rather, about the Viet Minh (a “front organization... led by the communists”) and its opponents “assassinating each other.” (pp. 94-95)

I guess Laderman was assuming that most readers would not bother to check Moyar’s book and then McHale’s book for themselves. When we do, we see that Laderman’s claim is false, and that Laderman had to know it was false when he wrote it.

One, Moyar only cites McHale on the point that the death toll from intra-Vietnamese killings from 1945-1947 was “as high as 50,000,” and McHale does in fact cite this argument:

          Francois Guillemot has suggested that, from 1945 to 1947, from five thousand to fifty thousand Vietnamese were killed. The Viet Minh was not, it should be underlined, responsible for all of the deaths, as other nationalist and religious groups contributed to the carnage. I would argue that at least ten thousand were killed in intra-Vietnamese violence in these years and that the death toll is probably much higher. (Print and Power, p. 193)

Two, Moyar does not cite McHale regarding how many of those killings were done by the Viet Minh, and he does not claim that the Viet Minh committed all the killings (Triumph Forsaken, p. 425). He says the Viet Minh perpetrated more of them than the other groups combined, but he does not say the Communists committed all of them.

Three, on a side note, I can only chuckle at Laderman’s silly point that McHale did not mention the Communists but only the Viet Minh. This is as inane and petty as saying, “Oh, he did not mention organized crime; rather, he talked about the Mafia.” Or, “He did not mention the U.S. Government; rather, he talked about the U.S. Marine Corps.” Moreover, as Laderman surely knew, throughout his book Moyar uses the terms “Communists” and “Viet Minh” interchangeably, as have most other authors who have written on the subject.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Tom Gram]

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Let us look at some of Laderman’s most-questionable criticisms of Moyar’s book Triumph Forsaken:

          Moyar suggested that Ho was, above all else, a willing tool of the Soviets and Chinese, “firmly adher[ing] to the Leninist principle that Communist nations should subordinate their interests to those of the international Communist movement.” Moyar therefore saw in Ho’s professions of global solidarity not Vietnam’s placement at the forefront of a vast wave of anti-colonialism and revolutionary nationalism but, rather, machinations in pursuit of collapsing dominoes. The Vietnamese revolutionaries’ gestures towards the Soviets and Chinese were thus viewed invariably in Triumph Forsaken as genuine and nefarious, while their gestures towards the United States were dismissed as duplicitous and insincere. (p. 92)

This is a variation of Zhai’s and Lawrence’s bogus arguments in Chapters 4 and 14, which Moyar answers in his first and third responses. It is also a sad but revealing repetition of the anti-war movement’s long-debunked falsehood that Ho Chi Minh and his fellow Communists were mainly nationalists who did not really care about Communist ideology or about aiding Comintern goals.

As I mentioned in a previous reply, Zhai's claim that Ho Chi Minh was not a fanatical, dedicated Stalinist-Leninist Communist is astounding and inexcusable. Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen's book Hanoi's War, Dr. William Duiker's Ho Chi Minh: A Life, and Dr. Christopher Goscha's recent book The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam prove that Moyar's description of Ho Chi Minh as a hardcore Communist who had no interest in an alliance with the West is indisputably correct. 

Le Duan, who was running North Vietnam years before Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, and who formally assumed the leadership of the country after Ho died, was even a more fanatical Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist than Ho had been, as Lien-Hang Nguyen documents in Hanoi’s War.

As I also mentioned in a previous reply, in The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam, Goscha shows that Ho and other Communist leaders pretended to be willing to rule with non-communist nationalists and concealed their Marxist agenda from the people as a war expediency to defeat the French. When Ho, Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, etc., felt it was safe to do so, they ruthlessly purged non-Communists from all levels of power, murdering thousands of people and jailing thousands of others in the process.

          It is apparently inconceivable to Moyar that Ho could simultaneously have been both a nationalist and a Communist, or that he or his comrades could have been shrewd individuals willing to make pragmatic accommodations in pursuit of larger national objectives. (p. 92)

Anyone who reads Moyar’s book will see that Laderman is severely misstating Moyar’s research and conclusions about Hanoi’s leaders. Laderman is also ignoring the mountain of evidence, acknowledged by untold numbers of scholars, that Ho and Le Duan et al were hardcore Communists who only made “pragmatic accommodations” that went against Communist doctrine and goals when they had no other choice.

          As for the widespread repression exercised by the Diem government, it is true, Moyar conceded, that Diem was authoritarian. But, whereas Ho’s heavy-handedness was a contemptible illustration of the Communist threat, for Diem it was an asset to be celebrated. (p. 93).

This is perhaps Laderman’s most stunning display of distortion, falsehood, and far-left bias. Laderman fails to mention that Moyar documents that Diem’s regime was far less oppressive than the Hanoi regime. To his great credit, center-left historian Sir Max Hastings, in his book Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, acknowledges that Diem’s government was not as bad as Hanoi’s government. For a detailed examination on this subject, I recommend South Vietnamese historian Tuong Vu’s compilation The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation Building (Cornell University Press, 2020).

Now let us look at Laderman’s specious, sophomoric attack on Moyar’s use of sources:

          James McAllister, for example, showed how the only documentary evidence cited by Moyar for his claim that some “high-ranking” U.S. officials were concluding in 1964 that “Tri Quang himself was a Communist” said nothing of the sort. (p. 94)

More distortion and omission. Moyar addresses McAllister’s arguments on Tri Quang in his third reply. I wonder if McAllister even read the sources that Moyar cites. By the way, in an article that McAllister wrote in 2008, two years before Triumph Revisited was published, he admitted that Ambassador Lodge and General Maxwell Taylor came to believe that Tri Quang was a Communist, although he complains that they had no grounds for doing so (LINK, p. 754). Moyar’s 2004 article on the militant Buddhist monks is worth reading for more information on this issue (LINK).

          Gareth Porter, commenting on Moyar’s explication of the domino theory’s validity, accused the author of “violat[ing] the basic norms of scholarship” by, among other things, alleging that the Malay Communist insurgency “never really stopped” when, according to Porter, the allegation is “contradicted flatly by the very source [Moyar] cites.” (p. 94)

Now this is just silly. It is not violating any “basic norm of scholarship” to reach a conclusion that differs from the conclusion of the book or books you are citing. Scholars often quote certain segments of works to support an argument even though those works do not agree with their argument. When I quote selected statements from the Warren Report to make the case for conspiracy, no credible critic would complain that I was violating a “basic norm of scholarship” because the Warren Report rejects the conspiracy position. Porter would never make such a sophomoric argument against a fellow orthodox scholar.

          Edwin Moïse, addressing the alleged attack during the Tonkin Gulf incident of August 4, 1964, expressed his annoyance with “the way Moyar carefuly [sic] selects from my own book only those facts that support” Triumph Forsaken’s argument that the available contemporaneous evidence “strongly supported the reality of the attack”—a point Moïse disputed and said was “very strongly contradicted” elsewhere in his same book. (p. 94)

More abject silliness. Scholars routinely “carefully select” facts from books to support their arguments even though those books reject their arguments. Have Moise and Porter ever taken a course in debate and critical thinking? Just because I quote facts presented by Gerald Posner or Vincent Bugliosi because those facts support the conspiracy view does not mean I am misusing their books or that I am bound to agree with Posner’s and Bugliosi’s view on conspiracy. Nobody but an amateur, or a scholar looking for any excuse to criticize, would argue otherwise.

          And William Stueck, commenting on Moyar’s claims regarding the battle at Dien Bien Phu and the 1954 Geneva Conference, wrote that while Moyar cited for “some specifics” what are arguably the leading sources on Vietnamese relations with China and the Soviet Union, he “ignore[d] other details” in these sources that weakened his position “as well as these authors’ conclusions.” (p. 94)

And still more “you can’t quote or cite a source unless the source agrees with you” silliness, not to mention that Laderman fails to tell the reader that Moyar presents new evidence to support his arguments regarding Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Conference.

          My own brief examination only further reinforced the concerns expressed above.

And we just saw that those concerns are unfounded, to put it gently.

          To cite one easily confirmable example, Moyar wrote that “[i]n Vietnamese Communist parlance, the label ‘reactionary’ was applied to anyone who was not a Communist. Many more ‘reactionaries’ would suffer death during the remainder of 1946, bringing the toll of civilians killed by the Communists during the period of Communist rule into the tens of thousands.” Moyar then provided an endnote in which he added that “[i]ntra-Vietnamese killings, which the Communists perpetrated in greater numbers than everyone else combined, came to a total of as high as 50,000 in this period, according to recent estimates.” In support Moyar cited Shawn McHale’s Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the Making of Modern Vietnam. Yet McHale did not write that “the Communists” killed “tens of thousands,” nor did he write that they perpetrated killings “in greater numbers than everyone else combined.” In fact, he did not mention “the Communists” at all; his discursion was, rather, about the Viet Minh (a “front organization... led by the communists”) and its opponents “assassinating each other.” (pp. 94-95)

I guess Laderman was assuming that most readers would not bother to check Moyar’s book and then McHale’s book for themselves. When we do, we see that Laderman’s claim is false, and that Laderman had to know it was false when he wrote it.

One, Moyar only cites McHale on the point that the death toll from intra-Vietnamese killings from 1945-1947 was “as high as 50,000,” and McHale does in fact cite this argument:

          Francois Guillemot has suggested that, from 1945 to 1947, from five thousand to fifty thousand Vietnamese were killed. The Viet Minh was not, it should be underlined, responsible for all of the deaths, as other nationalist and religious groups contributed to the carnage. I would argue that at least ten thousand were killed in intra-Vietnamese violence in these years and that the death toll is probably much higher. (Print and Power, p. 193)

Two, Moyar does not cite McHale regarding how many of those killings were done by the Viet Minh, and he does not claim that the Viet Minh committed all the killings (Triumph Forsaken, p. 425). He says the Viet Minh perpetrated more of them than the other groups combined, but he does not say the Communists committed all of them.

Three, on a side note, I can only chuckle at Laderman’s silly point that McHale did not mention the Communists but only the Viet Minh. This is as inane and petty as saying, “Oh, he did not mention organized crime; rather, he talked about the Mafia.” Or, “He did not mention the U.S. Government; rather, he talked about the U.S. Marine Corps.” Moreover, as Laderman surely knew, throughout his book Moyar uses the terms “Communists” and “Viet Minh” interchangeably, as have most other authors who have written on the subject.

Thanks Mike. You left out some key passages from Laderman’s devastating review, but I think anyone who reads this has enough to see that Laderman‘s criticisms are valid and that Moyar cherry-picked and deliberately misrepresented his sources to push his arguments. 

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

Thanks Mike. You left out some key passages from Laderman’s devastating review, but I think anyone who reads this has enough to see that Laderman‘s criticisms are valid and that Moyar cherry-picked and deliberately misrepresented his sources to push his arguments. 

Uh-huh. You know this is false. Obviously, you have no explanation for the specious arguments that I identified in Laderman's review. I could have pointed out many other invalid arguments in his review, but that would have required many more pages. Every single one of Laderman's alleged examples of misrepresented sources is as erroneous as the ones I discussed in my previous reply. You would know this if you had read Moyar's book and his responses to the negative reviews. 

In the coming days, I will discuss more of Laderman's bogus examples of Moyar's alleged misuse of sources. 

A big problem here is that you really have no business making such accusations against Moyar's book, given that you have not read it, have not read his other books, have not read any scholarly books that support his position, and have read very few books of any kind on the war. One genuine "basic norm of scholarship" is that you do not comment on, much less stridently attack, a book you have not read.  Another "basic norm of scholarship" is that you should read an adequate number of studies on both sides of an issue before forming a conclusion about it. 

The fact that you still call Laderman's review "devastating" after the serious errors I pointed out in it shows that you are not interested in genuine analysis and discussion on the Vietnam War. I suspect this is because your version of the JFK assassination conspiracy requires acceptance of the liberal position on the war.

For the sake of other readers, I will conclude this reply by quoting from Dr. Robert F. Turner's review of Moyar's book in Triumph Revisited. For those who are new to Vietnam War scholarship, Robert Turner is a former professor of international law and national security at the University of Virginia, a former professor at the Naval War College, and the author of two best-selling books on the Vietnam War and the co-author of two other books on the war. Turner served as a news correspondent in South Vietnam in 1968. He then joined the U.S. Army and served in military intelligence in South Vietnam from 1968 to 1971. He later worked as Senator Robert Griffin's national security adviser and, as chance would have it, helped author the language of the measure that created the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, i.e., the Church Committee. He also served three terms as chairman of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security. Here are a few segments from Turner's review of Moyar's book:

          Anyone who cares seriously about the realities of the Vietnam War or wishes to learn its key lessons owes a great debt of gratitude to Mark Moyar, whose new volume is a landmark contribution to the subject. Indeed, it should be mandatory reading for any serious scholar seeking to understand that conflict, as well as any politician or senior aide who seeks lessons for the current conflict in Iraq or future armed conflicts. (p. 102). 

          Moyar has taken advantage of resources that were simply not available when I wrote Vietnamese Communism thirty-five years ago, and by skillfully applying his considerable research and writing talents has given us the first volume of what truly must be viewed as an extraordinary contribution to the history of the Vietnam War. He has wisely drawn from the labors of those who went before him, but a great deal of this volume results from his own original research. From my perspective as a scholar who has been working in this field for more than four decades and teaching seminars on the war at both the graduate and undergraduate level since the 1980s, he has most of it right. (p. 103)

          Another major myth is that the Vietnam War was "unwinnable." Writing in the January/February 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs, Yale Professor John Lewis Gaddis—regarded by many as the dean of American diplomatic historians—observed: “Historians now acknowledge that American counter-insurgency operations in Vietnam were succeeding during the final years of that conflict; the problem was that support for the war had long since crumbled at home.” Many of America’s most experienced observers made the point that the war had been effectively won by the spring of 1972 if not earlier, including the C.I.A.’s William E. Colby in his Lost Victory, my old embassy colleague Douglas Pike, and journalist Robert Elegant in his superb essay, “How to Lose a War,” in the August 1981 issue of Encounter. (pp. 104-105)

          Many of the most effective arguments against the war pertained to alleged “human rights” abuses. Like virtually every Third World country, South Vietnam had serious corruption problems and its human rights record was far from perfect. But when contrasted with what the communists were offering (and what they later imposed on South Vietnam), there was no comparison. (p. 107)

          Perhaps the greatest myth about Vietnam is that there was no reason to go to war in the first place. Moyar does a great job of puncturing part of this argument—namely, the allegation that Ho Chi Minh was in reality but a Vietnamese “nationalist” who accepted communist assistance when the United States refused to help him free his country from French occupation. Had we simply permitted him to unite Vietnam, it is often alleged, he would have been an “Asian Tito” and a barrier to further Chinese expansion into Southeast Asia. 

          This is an issue I addressed at some length in my 1975 book Vietnamese Communism, in which I observed that Ho spent thirty years outside Vietnam between 1911 and 1941, most of it in the paid service of the Communist International (Comintern). Indeed, numerous Hanoi publications note that when Ho Chi Minh was present at the founding of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930, he was there as the official Comintern representative. Ho’s Viet Minh radio repeatedly denounced Tito as an American spy during the late 1940s, and even when Khrushchev made peace with Tito, Hanoi media continued to denounce him. (pp. 108-109)

Edited July 20, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Tom Gram]

9 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Uh-huh. You know this is false. Obviously, you have no explanation for the specious arguments that I identified in Laderman's review. I could have pointed out many other invalid arguments in his review, but that would have required many more pages. Every single one of Laderman's alleged examples of misrepresented sources is as erroneous as the ones I discussed in my previous reply. You would know this if you had read Moyar's book and his responses to the negative reviews. 

In the coming days, I will discuss more of Laderman's bogus examples of Moyar's alleged misuse of sources. 

A big problem here is that you really have no business making such accusations against Moyar's book, given that you have not read it, have not read his other books, have not read any scholarly books that support his position, and have read very few books of any kind on the war. One genuine "basic norm of scholarship" is that you do not comment on, much less stridently attack, a book you have not read.  Another "basic norm of scholarship" is that you should read an adequate number of studies on both sides of an issue before forming a conclusion about it. 

The fact that you still call Laderman's review "devastating" after the serious errors I pointed out in it shows that you are not interested in genuine analysis and discussion on the Vietnam War. I suspect this is because your version of the JFK assassination conspiracy requires acceptance of the liberal position on the war.

For the sake of other readers, I will conclude this reply by quoting from Dr. Robert F. Turner's review of Moyar's book in Triumph Revisited. For those who are new to Vietnam War scholarship, Robert Turner is a former professor of international law and national security at the University of Virginia, a former professor at the Naval War College, and the author of two best-selling books on the Vietnam War and the co-author of two other books on the war. Turner served as a news correspondent in South Vietnam in 1968. He then joined the U.S. Army and served in military intelligence in South Vietnam from 1968 to 1971. He later worked as Senator Robert Griffin's national security adviser and, as chance would have it, helped author the language of the measure that created the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, i.e., the Church Committee. He also served three terms as chairman of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security. Here are a few segments from Turner's review of Moyar's book:

          Anyone who cares seriously about the realities of the Vietnam War or wishes to learn its key lessons owes a great debt of gratitude to Mark Moyar, whose new volume is a landmark contribution to the subject. Indeed, it should be mandatory reading for any serious scholar seeking to understand that conflict, as well as any politician or senior aide who seeks lessons for the current conflict in Iraq or future armed conflicts. (p. 102). 

          Moyar has taken advantage of resources that were simply not available when I wrote Vietnamese Communism thirty-five years ago, and by skillfully applying his considerable research and writing talents has given us the first volume of what truly must be viewed as an extraordinary contribution to the history of the Vietnam War. He has wisely drawn from the labors of those who went before him, but a great deal of this volume results from his own original research. From my perspective as a scholar who has been working in this field for more than four decades and teaching seminars on the war at both the graduate and undergraduate level since the 1980s, he has most of it right. (p. 103)

          Another major myth is that the Vietnam War was "unwinnable." Writing in the January/February 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs, Yale Professor John Lewis Gaddis—regarded by many as the dean of American diplomatic historians—observed: “Historians now acknowledge that American counter-insurgency operations in Vietnam were succeeding during the final years of that conflict; the problem was that support for the war had long since crumbled at home.” Many of America’s most experienced observers made the point that the war had been effectively won by the spring of 1972 if not earlier, including the C.I.A.’s William E. Colby in his Lost Victory, my old embassy colleague Douglas Pike, and journalist Robert Elegant in his superb essay, “How to Lose a War,” in the August 1981 issue of Encounter. (pp. 104-105)

          Many of the most effective arguments against the war pertained to alleged “human rights” abuses. Like virtually every Third World country, South Vietnam had serious corruption problems and its human rights record was far from perfect. But when contrasted with what the communists were offering (and what they later imposed on South Vietnam), there was no comparison. (p. 107)

          Perhaps the greatest myth about Vietnam is that there was no reason to go to war in the first place. Moyar does a great job of puncturing part of this argument—namely, the allegation that Ho Chi Minh was in reality but a Vietnamese “nationalist” who accepted communist assistance when the United States refused to help him free his country from French occupation. Had we simply permitted him to unite Vietnam, it is often alleged, he would have been an “Asian Tito” and a barrier to further Chinese expansion into Southeast Asia. 

          This is an issue I addressed at some length in my 1975 book Vietnamese Communism, in which I observed that Ho spent thirty years outside Vietnam between 1911 and 1941, most of it in the paid service of the Communist International (Comintern). Indeed, numerous Hanoi publications note that when Ho Chi Minh was present at the founding of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930, he was there as the official Comintern representative. Ho’s Viet Minh radio repeatedly denounced Tito as an American spy during the late 1940s, and even when Khrushchev made peace with Tito, Hanoi media continued to denounce him. (pp. 108-109)

Yea, I don’t think so. When you post blatant examples of Moyar cherry picking and misrepresenting multiple sources, and include quotes from the authors of books Moyar used slamming him for misusing their work, then respond with “that’s silly” and try to spin it like that’s somehow a normal and acceptable practice even though you’ve got something like five professional historians saying the exact opposite, that’s not an argument. It’s apologia and making excuses, just like Moyar’s review replies. Why waste my time trying to counter something that any reasonable person can figure out on their own? 

You did leave out some of the best stuff though. Again, I’ll transcribe some more quotes when I have the time, but I haven’t had a lot of time lately. 

[Michael Griffith]

5 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

 

Yea, I don’t think so. When you post blatant examples of Moyar cherry picking and misrepresenting multiple sources, and include quotes from the authors of books Moyar used slamming him for misusing their work, then respond with “that’s silly” and try to spin it like that’s somehow a normal and acceptable practice even though you’ve got something like five professional historians saying the exact opposite, that’s not an argument. It’s apologia and making excuses, just like Moyar’s review replies. Why waste my time trying to counter something that any reasonable person can figure out on their own? 

This polemic is further evidence that you are not to be taken seriously. It is most certainly silly, not to mention illogical and amateurish, to attack a writer for quoting statements from a book to support an argument that the book's author rejects. "Any reasonable person" can figure out that this is a comical, ridiculous criticism.

I repeat that scholars routinely quote from books to support arguments that the authors of those books reject. They do so because they believe that those authors have misinterpreted, minimized, or even overlooked the quoted evidence. I do not understand how any educated person can be unaware of this fact.

For example, many JFKA conspiracy theorists have justifiably cited the WC's exhibits on the Commission's rifle test to make the case that Oswald could not have performed the alleged shooting feat, even though the Warren Report concludes that Oswald did the shooting and that there was no conspiracy. Who in their right mind would argue that this constitutes "misrepresenting" or "misusing" the Warren Commission as a source because the Warren Report says Oswald shot JFK and rejects the conspiracy position? 

Another example: In making the case for a multiple-shooter scenario in the JFKA, many researchers have quoted the Warren Report's admission that it is unlikely that the alleged lone assassin would have missed the entire limousine with his first and closest shot. No serious person would argue that citing this admission "misuses" or "misrepresents" the Warren Report as a source, or that it constitutes "cherry picking," because the Warren Report rejects the conspiracy view. 

And what about Laderman's bogus claim that Moyar misuses McHale's book as a source regarding the 1945-1947 intra-Vietnamese killings? As I proved in my long reply on Laderman's review, when we actually look at what Moyar said, look at the point for which Moyar cited McHale as support, and then look at what McHale said, we see that Moyar did not misrepresent or misuse McHale as a source in the slightest degree. What we do see is that Laderman misrepresented both what Moyar said and what McHale said. I would note that you still have offered no explanation for Laderman's false claim.  

And what about Laderman's inexcusable support for Lawrence's and Zhai's bogus portrayal of Ho Chi Minh and other Communist leaders in Hanoi as mainly nationalists who actually cared little about Communist ideology and who only aligned with the Comintern because the U.S. spurned their approaches? Even Max Hastings and Lien-Hang Nguyen blow this myth to pieces, and the North Vietnamese sources likewise destroy it. Yet, Laderman and a minority of other ultra-liberal historians still peddle it.  

And what about Laderman's stunning claim (indeed assumption) that Diem's government was as oppressive as Ho's government? This claim would have been inexcusable in the 1980s. Read center-left British historian Max Hastings' Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy and then come back and tell me that Laderman's attack on Moyar on this point is valid. 

You did leave out some of the best stuff [from Laderman's review] though.

Oh, hogwash. As I said, I could have pointed out many more errors in Laderman's review. You think the parts that I did not address are "some of the best stuff" because you have not done enough reading to realize that Laderman's criticisms are invalid and are in many cases apparently dishonest. 

Again, I’ll transcribe some more quotes when I have the time, but I haven’t had a lot of time lately. 

How about if you post what you think are the three most "devastating" criticisms in Laderman's review that I did not address? To save you some time so you do not have to transcribe them, you can just tell me in a message the paragraphs that contain those criticisms and I will copy and paste them into a reply, since I have a digital copy of the book--and then I will address them.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Michael Griffith]

While I am waiting for Tom to post what he views as the three most “devastating” criticisms in Laderman’s review that I have not yet addressed, I will take the liberty of quoting, mainly for the sake of others, a few more segments from Dr. Robert F. Turner’s review:

          Triumph Forsaken is often described as a “revisionist” history of the war. Moyar himself asserts that he is carrying on “a relatively small, but strong, tradition of revisionist literature that dates back to the mid-1970s.” In an accompanying footnote, he identifies nine volumes as “the most significant of the early revisionist books,” of which my Vietnamese Communism (1975) is the oldest.

          I am not sure it matters, but I have always viewed my own scholarship on the war as “counter-revisionist,” on the theory that the original orthodoxy was the support for “containment” that led to America’s involvement in Vietnam. There were a number of books supporting this view, among the best being Frank N. Trager’s Why Vietnam (1966), Dennis Duncanson’s Government and Revolution in Vietnam (1968), and Wesley Fishel’s Vietnam: Anatomy of a Conflict (1969). But the modern verdict seems unanimous that the views of my late friend Bill Colby (Lost Victory, 1989) and Guenter Lewy (America in Vietnam, 1978) are “revisionist,” and in that spirit I am honored to be in their company. (pp. 102-103)

          Take, for example, the issue of Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam’s controversial president, who was assassinated on November 1, 1963. Moyar views American encouragement of the anti-Diem coup as the greatest blunder of the war, and I could not agree more. War critics were fond of noting that Diem had served in the early 1930s in the French colonial administration and had lived in New Jersey during the final years of the French–Viet Minh war. They failed to appreciate what Bernard Fall in The Two Viet-Nams called Diem’s “reputation for ‘all-or-nothing’ integrity.” Because of his unparalleled reputation for competence and integrity, Diem was admired even by his political rivals and sought as a figurehead leader by Bao Dai, the French, the Japanese, and even Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh. But he refused to be anyone’s lackey, and his unwillingness to take instructions from the arrogant American proconsul, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, helped seal his ultimate fate.

          Perhaps my most revealing experience on this issue resulted from a casual remark I made to Bui Cong Tuong, one of the most senior defectors in the war who had served as director of propaganda, education, culture, and training for what the Viet Cong called Ben Tre Province and we called Kien Hoa. He told me that when they heard on the radio that Diem had been killed, they thought it was some sort of American trick, because surely the Americans would not be so foolish as to allow anything to happen to Diem.

          Tuong explained that senior party officials viewed Diem as a great patriot—in the same league as Ho Chi Minh—but because Diem would not follow the party’s leadership they had to try to destroy his reputation with the people by branding him an American puppet and traitor. And surely if there is one clear message from the Pentagon Papers it is that Diem was far less willing to take instructions from the Americans than Ho was to follow instructions from Moscow and Beijing. I certainly share Moyar’s view—one also shared by Bill Colby and other leading experts— that promoting the coup that overthrew Diem was America’s greatest blunder in the war. (pp. 103-104)

          The campus debates about Vietnam in the 1960s were filled with mythology and misinformation. The United States did not violate its commitments under the 1954 Geneva Accords—as the Pentagon Papers document, we refused to sign or verbally agree to anything at Geneva. Along with the noncommunist “State of Vietnam,” we opposed partition and expressly declared that reunification elections should be supervised by the United Nations to ensure that they were conducted fairly. (In contrast, Molitov and Pham Van Dong objected to international supervision as interference in the internal affairs of Vietnam and insisted upon “locally supervised” elections—the kind that routinely gave Ho Chi Minh 99.9 percent of the votes in the more populous North Vietnam. (p. 105)

          One of the most common assertions in the more than one hundred debates, teach-ins, and other programs I took part in between 1965 and entering the Army three years later was that even President Eisenhower had admitted that Ho Chi Minh would have defeated Ngo Dinh Diem in a free election had the United States and South Vietnam not refused to permit the July 1956 elections required by the Geneva Agreements. Critics would routinely quote from page 449 of Eisenhower’s Mandate for Change, but from my experience they never even finished the sentence—much less the full contextual quotation. I have set in italics the language quoted time and again by anti-Vietnam critics:

          I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive on the part of Bao Dai was a factor in the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for.

          As is apparent from the full quotation, Eisenhower is not discussing a possible 1956 election between Ho and Diem, but rather an election “as of the time of the fighting,” which ended in 1954, between Ho and the hated French puppet Bao Dai, whom Diem easily defeated by a far greater margin. His message was not that Ho Chi Minh was the preference of most Vietnamese, but rather that “the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese” was that “they had nothing to fight for”—they did not want communism or French colonial rule.

          In the belief that he was being misquoted, around the end of 1967, I sent a letter to President Eisenhower attaching a copy of a two-page circular I had prepared titled: “Vietnam Cliché Series: Eisenhower Admitted that Had the 1956 Elections Been Held, Ho Chi Minh Would Have Won by 80% of the Vote.” The circular sought to rebut the assertion that the quotation addressed the likely outcome of a 1956 election between Ho and Diem. An individual named Samuel S. Vaughan, from Doubleday & Company (publisher of Mandate for Change), responded on behalf of President Eisenhower on February 16, 1968, that my reading of the passage was correct and President Eisenhower was addressing only the issue of a possible election between Ho and Bao Dai: “No further great conclusion should be drawn from the statement.” (pp. 106-107)

          On March 5, 1956, the New York Times featured an editorial supporting South Vietnam’s decision not to participate in unsupervised elections, declaring: “To attempt to settle the fate of the free Vietnamese without even consulting them is monstrous. To suggest a ‘free’ election in a Communist territory is to presume the possible existence of conditions and safeguards for which there is neither assurance nor precedent.” On April 11, the Times noted that the government of Great Britain had the previous day sent a diplomatic note to the Soviet Union—the other co-chair of the 1954 Geneva Conference—“recognized that South Vietnam was not legally bound by the armistice agreements since it had not signed them and had protested against them at the Geneva Conference.” (p. 107)

          There were hundreds of bookstalls around Saigon where I found writings of Ho Chi Minh, Vo Nguyen Giap, and even Chairman Mao himself. (That is not to say selling communist literature was legal, only that the booksellers did not live in apparent fear of government repression.) As Christian Science Monitor Bureau Chief Daniel Sutherland observed in a September 18, 1970, article:

          Under its new press law, South Vietnam now has one of the freest presses in Southeast Asia, and the daily paper with the biggest circulation here happens to be sharply critical of President Thieu.... [S]ince the new press law was promulgated nine months ago, the government has not been able to close down Tin Sang or any other newspaper among the more than 30 now being published in Saigon. . . .

          The so-called “tiger cages” were another propaganda victory for Hanoi, and at least some of the American anti-war activists who made frequent reference to them apparently knew the story was false. When I informed friends in the anti-war movement that I would be allowed to visit Con Son Prison during a May 1974 congressional staff delegation to South Vietnam, they immediately downplayed that option and suggested that instead I insist on visiting Chi Hoa Prison. (I actually measured the so-called “tiger cages,” which were 3 meters tall, 3 meters long, and 1.5 meters wide— roughly 10 × 10 × 5 feet in size. And the widely repeated assertion that they were too short for Vietnamese prisoners to stand erect in was preposterous—I’m 6′ 4″ and I could not come close to reaching the ceiling with my arm fully extended.) (pp. 107-108)

          I think the American media deserves a great deal of responsibility for misleading and often incompetent coverage of the war. (It is not by chance that public opinion polls show that Vietnam veterans support the war by more than twice the level of the American public—we saw what was going on without it being filtered through the news media.) I strongly concur in the analysis of prize-winning journalist Robert Elegant, whose article “How to Lose A War: The Press and Viet Nam,” was published in Encounter magazine in August 1981. It is available online at [LINK], and I highly recommend it to anyone who has not yet read it. (pp. 110-111)

[Tom Gram]

9 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Yea, I don’t think so. When you post blatant examples of Moyar cherry picking and misrepresenting multiple sources, and include quotes from the authors of books Moyar used slamming him for misusing their work, then respond with “that’s silly” and try to spin it like that’s somehow a normal and acceptable practice even though you’ve got something like five professional historians saying the exact opposite, that’s not an argument. It’s apologia and making excuses, just like Moyar’s review replies. Why waste my time trying to counter something that any reasonable person can figure out on their own? 

This polemic is further evidence that you are not to be taken seriously. It is most certainly silly, not to mention illogical and amateurish, to attack a writer for quoting statements from a book to support an argument that the book's author rejects. "Any reasonable person" can figure out that this is a comical, ridiculous criticism.

I repeat that scholars routinely quote from books to support arguments that the authors of those books reject. They do so because they believe that those authors have misinterpreted, minimized, or even overlooked the quoted evidence. I do not understand how any educated person can be unaware of this fact.

For example, many JFKA conspiracy theorists have justifiably cited the WC's exhibits on the Commission's rifle test to make the case that Oswald could not have performed the alleged shooting feat, even though the Warren Report concludes that Oswald did the shooting and that there was no conspiracy. Who in their right mind would argue that this constitutes "misrepresenting" or "misusing" the Warren Commission as a source because the Warren Report says Oswald shot JFK and rejects the conspiracy position? 

Another example: In making the case for a multiple-shooter scenario in the JFKA, many researchers have quoted the Warren Report's admission that it is unlikely that the alleged lone assassin would have missed the entire limousine with his first and closest shot. No serious person would argue that citing this admission "misuses" or "misrepresents" the Warren Report as a source, or that it constitutes "cherry picking," because the Warren Report rejects the conspiracy view. 

And what about Laderman's bogus claim that Moyar misuses McHale's book as a source regarding the 1945-1947 intra-Vietnamese killings? As I proved in my long reply on Laderman's review, when we actually look at what Moyar said, look at the point for which Moyar cited McHale as support, and then look at what McHale said, we see that Moyar did not misrepresent or misuse McHale as a source in the slightest degree. What we do see is that Laderman misrepresented both what Moyar said and what McHale said. I would note that you still have offered no explanation for Laderman's false claim.  

And what about Laderman's inexcusable support for Lawrence's and Zhai's bogus portrayal of Ho Chi Minh and other Communist leaders in Hanoi as mainly nationalists who actually cared little about Communist ideology and who only aligned with the Comintern because the U.S. spurned their approaches? Even Max Hastings and Lien-Hang Nguyen blow this myth to pieces, and the North Vietnamese sources likewise destroy it. Yet, Laderman and a minority of other ultra-liberal historians still peddle it.  

And what about Laderman's stunning claim (indeed assumption) that Diem's government was as oppressive as Ho's government? This claim would have been inexcusable in the 1980s. Read center-left British historian Max Hastings' Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy and then come back and tell me that Laderman's attack on Moyar on this point is valid. 

You did leave out some of the best stuff [from Laderman's review] though.

Oh, hogwash. As I said, I could have pointed out many more errors in Laderman's review. You think the parts that I did not address are "some of the best stuff" because you have not done enough reading to realize that Laderman's criticisms are invalid and are in many cases apparently dishonest. 

Again, I’ll transcribe some more quotes when I have the time, but I haven’t had a lot of time lately. 

How about if you post what you think are the three most "devastating" criticisms in Laderman's review that I did not address? To save you some time so you do not have to transcribe them, you can just tell me in a message the paragraphs that contain those criticisms and I will copy and paste them into a reply, since I have a digital copy of the book--and then I will address them.

Once again, you’re trying, and failing, to shoot the messenger. You’ve got several professional scholars saying that Moyar’s approach is deceptive and unethical, and providing concrete, indisputable examples of egregious misrepresentation of their own books. But you, the most biased person imaginable on this topic and champion of all things Moyar says it’s totally normal and that all these expert scholars are essentially childish morons. Yes Mike, any reasonable person can figure this out, but against my better judgment I’ll humor you for a moment. 

You already know this, and are attempting to spin it around so Moyar doesn’t look as bad, but the issue is not Moyar quoting from books he doesn’t agree with, the issue is Moyar cherry-picking, presenting quotes out of context, and deliberately omitting contradictory evidence to push his revisionist agenda. In other words, the accurate analogy here is not a JFK researcher quoting passages from the Warren Report, but the Warren Report itself. 

One of the reviewers (Miller?) said words to the effect that in a book that seeks to challenge every tenet of the orthodox view of the war, academic rigor is of the utmost importance, and he’s absolutely right. When you write a supposedly scholarly work and deliberately omit evidence that contradicts your thesis, especially evidence that appears within a citation you use to support it, you immediately lose credibility because anyone with a brain can see that your approach to source material is that of a polemicist, not a historian. Look what happened with books like Case Closed - even many lone assassin theorists denounced it once Posner’s tactics became clear. I don’t even need to comment on the Warren Report. 

What Moyar did is even worse than that, since he actually misrepresented the textual content of sources by inventing imaginary conversations out of non-verbatim memos, plus he attributed information to sources that don’t actually say what he claimed they say. Moyar’s use of block citations may be used by some other authors, but when you misuse various sources in various ways and deliberately make it more difficult for people to attribute specific claims to specific citations, it’s pretty obvious what your motives are, and objective scholarship isn’t one of them. 

Do you really believe that Moyar developed his thesis to explain the available evidence after he did all that research? Not a chance in hell, and the reviewers in Triumph Revisited acknowledge that. Hell I’m not even sure that Moyar denies it.

There’s a reason that so many historians and Vietnam experts think that Moyar’s books, and the revisionist perspective in general, are total nonsense. I think that article I posted a while back “Revisionism as a substitute for victory” by Mark Atwood Lawrence said it best: 

American efforts to come to terms with a basic question about the Vietnam War are thus beset by a fascinating paradox: the notion that the United States could have achieved its goals has gained popularity even though precious few of the scholars deeply immersed in the history of the war buy the idea. How can we explain this oddity? One possibility is that the revisionists are finding favor because they are essentially correct. 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.

Another possibility is that surging revisionism reflects not a breakthrough in understanding of the war but the changing uses that the war plays in the American political and policy-making spheres. Perhaps, in other words, we hear more of the lost-victory school of thought these days because it serves a purpose in a moment of political polarization and anxiety about declining American power to shape international affairs.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Tom Gram

[James DiEugenio]

Wow, this is pretty bad:

"What Moyar did is even worse than that, since he actually misrepresented the textual content of sources by inventing imaginary conversations out of non-verbatim memos, plus he attributed information to sources that don’t actually say what he claimed they say. "

[Tom Gram]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Wow, this is pretty bad:

"What Moyar did is even worse than that, since he actually misrepresented the textual content of sources by inventing imaginary conversations out of non-verbatim memos, plus he attributed information to sources that don’t actually say what he claimed they say. "

Yep. Several authors whose work he cited and reviewers who took the time to compare his claims with his sources caught multiple examples of Moyar doing this, while acknowledging that they didn’t have time to check every citation. I think it’d be an interesting study to go through Moyar’s book and compare each claim with each citation, but Moyar used block citations which make it very difficult to do that sort of thing. I wonder why? 

One of the scholarly reviewers in Triumph Revisited pointed this out, and Moyar’s defense was basically “this guy and that guy used block citations too.”

Moyar is effectively claiming definitive proof that the Vietnam War was winnable if Diem had lived. Think what would happen if someone wrote a book claiming definitive proof of a conspiracy to kill JFK, plus the identity of the actual culprits, but didn’t provide a rock-solid citation for every single claim, blatantly misrepresented source material, and transformed memos into imaginary conversations.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Tom Gram

[James DiEugenio]

What do you mean specifically when you write "block citations".

 

[James DiEugenio]

As far back as the mid fifties under Ike,  General Collins doubted the ability of Diem to lead the south against Hanoi and the Viet Minh. Collins spent months there in late 1954 into the summer of 1955.  He was strongly opposed to the idea that Diem could lead Saigon and construct a strong non communist regime there.

He thought the only way that this could occur was if Diem brought in someone like Phan Huy Quat to a high position in his government, like defense minister.  But Diem resisted this. Why?

"In reality the Ngo regime was unwilling to risk allowing a highly respected nationalist rival to assume charge of the vital reform of the armed forces." (Trapped by Success, David Anderson, p. 96)

In other words, Diem did not want anyone to be able to outshine him and be a threat to his primacy. When Collins heard this, he actually proposed abandoning DIem since he was that sure the man was the wrong choice.

After months of arguing and persuasion it looked like Collins was going to  prevail.  And the idea that Phan Huy Quat and  Tan Van Do would be brought into the government and would be the successors to Diem was a distinct probability. (ibid, p. 110). In fact, Foster Dulles actually sent cables to Paris advising them of this policy change.  But shortly after, Dulles sent blocking cables.  Why?

Anderson strongly indicates that Lansdale knew what was about to happen, and told Diem to start the battle against the  Binh Xuyen to save his regime.

It worked.

(Let me add, again the Anderson book is the best I have ever read on the Eisenhower administration and Diem. If you have not read it, you are in the dark.)

Edited July 21, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Tom Gram]

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

What do you mean specifically when you write "block citations".

 

Each endnote lists several different sources, so for example if Moyar has citation #14 at the end of a long paragraph, #14 in the endnotes could have a list of 10 unordered documents in it instead of just one document for each citation, which makes it a massive pain in the ass to match each claim in that paragraph to a specific source. 

Edited July 21, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Michael Griffith]

12 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Wow, this is pretty bad:

"What Moyar did is even worse than that, since he actually misrepresented the textual content of sources by inventing imaginary conversations out of non-verbatim memos, plus he attributed information to sources that don’t actually say what he claimed they say. "

Humm, I take it you did not bother to read my reply in which I addressed this phony charge and quoted Moyar's response to it? I realize that you will rubber-stamp anything Tom says, even though he has done even less reading on the Vietnam War than you have, but one would think you would at least bother to read my replies before endorsing Tom's amateurish attacks. Tom likewise has simply ignored Moyar's response to Miller's sleazy claim.

In a nutshell, Miller claims that Moyar markedly embellishes the record because he treats meeting notes as verbatim transcripts. Citing Miller, Tom goes even further and accuses Moyar of "inventing imaginary conversations out of non-verbatim memos." This is more of Tom's amateurish nonsense. As Moyar points out, using meeting notes as verbatim transcripts is a matter of style, not content, and other historians have done the same thing:

          Miller then asserts that I “misrepresented” the “textual content” of sources, which “dramatically embellishes the available record” and “raises worrisome questions about whether and how frequently he plays fast and loose with his sources.” Miller seems to be asserting that I seriously misrepresented the meaning of sources, but when he gets down to specifics, it turns out that he is discussing something of much less significance, which begs the question of why he used such ominous and inflammatory language. What he is discussing is merely the use of meeting notes as verbatim transcripts—a matter of style rather than content, upon which reasonable people sometimes disagree. Other historians have employed this same method without incurring invective. Richard Reeves, for example, used it extensively in his highly acclaimed President Kennedy, which won best non-fiction book of the year accolades from Time Magazine and P.E.N. (p. 222)

I can speak to this issue from my own professional experience as a technical editor who has worked at four government agencies. At the two agencies where my duties included taking meeting notes (aka meeting minutes), those meeting notes were treated as verbatim transcripts. When quoting statements from meeting minutes in other documents, we would use quotation marks as if they were a verbatim record of what the meeting participants said.

14 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

 

 

Once again, you’re trying, and failing, to shoot the messenger. You’ve got several professional scholars saying that Moyar’s approach is deceptive and unethical, and providing concrete, indisputable examples of egregious misrepresentation of their own books.

Wrong. On the contrary, I have already addressed several of these alleged examples and have proved they are bogus. I notice you are still declining to explain Laderman's false claim that Moyar misused McHale as a source on the 1945-1957 intra-Vietnamese killings, when I proved that Moyar did no such thing. 

What Moyar did is even worse than that, since he actually misrepresented the textual content of sources by inventing imaginary conversations out of non-verbatim memos, plus he attributed information to sources that don’t actually say what he claimed they say.

Still more amateurish nonsense.  You can repeat these false charges over and over but that will not make them come true. Are you ever going to quote what you believe are the three most "devastating" criticisms in Laderman's review that I have not addressed? 

One of your silly examples of alleged misrepresentation/misuse is the common practice of quoting statements from a source to support an argument that the source rejects. You obviously have little or no background in serious scholarly research or else you would know better than to repeat this sophomoric, juvenile attack. The fact that some of your darling liberal historians in Triumph Revisited repeat this silly attack should tell you something about their bias and reliability. 

As I have noted, WC apologists would have a field day making this same silly attack against conspiracy theorists. Does it not tell you something that very few WC apologists have stooped to using this bogus attack? 

Moyar’s use of block citations may be used by some other authors, but when you misuse various sources in various ways and deliberately make it more difficult for people to attribute specific claims to specific citations, it’s pretty obvious what your motives are, and objective scholarship isn’t one of them. 

Holy cow. This ridiculous rant leads me to question your level of education. FYI, many, many books use block citations, and every major style guide includes guidance on using block citations. Block citations are often used because they save space, by the way.  How can anyone take you seriously when you embarrass yourself by complaining about the standard use of block citations? 

There’s a reason that so many historians and Vietnam experts think that Moyar’s books, and the revisionist perspective in general, are total nonsense.

Just pure hogwash. You have no clue what you are talking about. Even most orthodox historians do not claim that Moyar's books and the revisionist view are "total nonsense." Indeed, even most of the negative reviews in Triumph Revisited do not make such an extreme claim. 

Such statements show that you have no business even talking about this subject in a public forum. Jim and a few other ultra-liberals will uncritically gobble up whatever you say, since they have not read Triumph Revisited and you have (at least parts of it, anyway), even though you have done even less reading on the war than Jim has (and that is saying quite a bit). 

Edited July 21, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Tom Gram]

48 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Humm, I take it you did not bother to read my reply in which I addressed this phony charge and quoted Moyar's response to it? I realize that you will rubber-stamp anything Tom says, even though he has done even less reading on the Vietnam War than you have, but one would think you would at least bother to read my replies before endorsing Tom's amateurish attacks. Tom likewise has simply ignored Moyar's response to Miller's sleazy claim.

In a nutshell, Miller claims that Moyar markedly embellishes the record because he treats meeting notes as verbatim transcripts. Citing Miller, Tom goes even further and accuses Moyar of "inventing imaginary conversations out of non-verbatim memos." This is more of Tom's amateurish nonsense. As Moyar points out, using meeting notes as verbatim transcripts is a matter of style, not content, and other historians have done the same thing:

          Miller then asserts that I “misrepresented” the “textual content” of sources, which “dramatically embellishes the available record” and “raises worrisome questions about whether and how frequently he plays fast and loose with his sources.” Miller seems to be asserting that I seriously misrepresented the meaning of sources, but when he gets down to specifics, it turns out that he is discussing something of much less significance, which begs the question of why he used such ominous and inflammatory language. What he is discussing is merely the use of meeting notes as verbatim transcripts—a matter of style rather than content, upon which reasonable people sometimes disagree. Other historians have employed this same method without incurring invective. Richard Reeves, for example, used it extensively in his highly acclaimed President Kennedy, which won best non-fiction book of the year accolades from Time Magazine and P.E.N. (p. 222)

I can speak to this issue from my own professional experience as a technical editor who has worked at four government agencies. At the two agencies where my duties included taking meeting notes (aka meeting minutes), those meeting notes were treated as verbatim transcripts. When quoting statements from meeting minutes in other documents, we would use quotation marks as if they were a verbatim record of what the meeting participants said.

 

Once again, you’re trying, and failing, to shoot the messenger. You’ve got several professional scholars saying that Moyar’s approach is deceptive and unethical, and providing concrete, indisputable examples of egregious misrepresentation of their own books.

Wrong. On the contrary, I have already addressed several of these alleged examples and have proved they are bogus. I notice you are still declining to explain Laderman's false claim that Moyar misused McHale as a source on the 1945-1957 intra-Vietnamese killings, when I proved that Moyar did no such thing. 

What Moyar did is even worse than that, since he actually misrepresented the textual content of sources by inventing imaginary conversations out of non-verbatim memos, plus he attributed information to sources that don’t actually say what he claimed they say.

Still more amateurish nonsense.  You can repeat these false charges over and over but that will not make them come true. Are you ever going to quote what you believe are the three most "devastating" criticisms in Laderman's review that I have not addressed? 

One of your silly examples of alleged misrepresentation/misuse is the common practice of quoting statements from a source to support an argument that the source rejects. You obviously have little or no background in serious scholarly research or else you would know better than to repeat this sophomoric, juvenile attack. The fact that some of your darling liberal historians in Triumph Revisited repeat this silly attack should tell you something about their bias and reliability. 

As I have noted, WC apologists would have a field day making this same silly attack against conspiracy theorists. Does it not tell you something that very few WC apologists have stooped to using this bogus attack? 

Moyar’s use of block citations may be used by some other authors, but when you misuse various sources in various ways and deliberately make it more difficult for people to attribute specific claims to specific citations, it’s pretty obvious what your motives are, and objective scholarship isn’t one of them. 

Holy cow. This ridiculous rant leads me to question your level of education. FYI, many, many books use block citations, and every major style guide includes guidance on using block citations. Block citations are often used because they save space, by the way.  How can anyone take you seriously when you embarrass yourself by complaining about the standard use of block citations? 

There’s a reason that so many historians and Vietnam experts think that Moyar’s books, and the revisionist perspective in general, are total nonsense.

Just pure hogwash. You have no clue what you are talking about. Even most orthodox historians do not claim that Moyar's books and the revisionist view are "total nonsense." Indeed, even most of the negative reviews in Triumph Revisited do not make such an extreme claim. 

Such statements show that you have no business even talking about this subject in a public forum. Jim and a few other ultra-liberals will uncritically gobble up whatever you say, since they have not read Triumph Revisited and you have (at least parts of it, anyway), even though you have done even less reading on the war than Jim has (and that is saying quite a bit). 

The point Mike, which is articulated by the reviewers in Triumph Revisited much better than I can, is that precise historical accuracy and verifiability of sources is critical in such a controversial book that explicitly defines its goal as debunking every core tenet of the orthodox view of the Vietnam War. 

Instead, Moyar invented a fake conversation out of a State Department memo for dramatic effect, which also happened to help support his argument, and did the same thing at least one other time; cherry-picked and misrepresented sources while deliberately omitting contradictory information, and chose a citation style that makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone to verify his claims. 

These are not my opinions. These are the opinions of top credentialed experts on the Vietnam war, so your repeated condescending comments towards me only reflect your rabid bias for Moyar and the revisionist view.

Lastly, would it be less offensive to say something like “the vast majority of experts vehemently disagree with every single core argument”? I think “think it is total nonsense” covers it just fine. 

Edited July 21, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

 

The point Mike, which is articulated by the reviewers in Triumph Revisited much better than I can, is that precise historical accuracy and verifiability of sources is critical in such a controversial book that explicitly defines its goal as debunking every core tenet of the orthodox view of the Vietnam War. 

You really should stop bluffing and posturing as though you know what you are talking about. You have read next to nothing about the Vietnam War. You uncritically embraced the negative reviews in Triumph Revisited (obviously before you read any of Moyar's responses therein); you have ignored Moyar's responses to those reviews; and you have ignored the numerous positive reviews of Moyar's book in other scholarly sources.

Instead, Moyar invented a fake conversation out of a State Department memo for dramatic effect, which also happened to help support his argument, and did the same thing at least one other time; 

I already addressed this vacuous attack. You just keep repeating claims from the negative reviews and ignoring my responses to them and ignoring Moyar's responses to them. Has it not occurred to you that attentive readers will wonder why you keep declining to answer the points made in responses to the claims you keep repeating? 

cherry-picked and misrepresented sources while deliberately omitting contradictory information, 

I already addressed these false claims as well, but you just keep repeating them and ignoring the facts I have cited that challenge these claims. I would note that you still have not explained Laderman's demonstrably false claim that Moyar misrepresented/misused McHale as a source. I have proved that Moyar did no such thing, and that Laderman had to know this when he wrote the accusation. I have asked you several times now to defend Laderman's attack in light of the evidence I have presented, but you still refuse to do so.

and chose a citation style [block citation] that makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone to verify his claims. 

LOL! You are even doubling down on this juvenile complaint??? Block citation is a standard, recognized style that is used in literally hundreds of thousands of books. And just exactly who finds it "exceedingly difficult" to verify a claim because the documentation for the claim is given in a block citation? A vision-impaired person? I mean, this is just comical. 

These are not my opinions. These are the opinions of top credentialed experts on the Vietnam war, so your repeated condescending comments towards me only reflect your rabid bias for Moyar and the revisionist view.

You keep trying to hide behind the authority of the negative reviewers in Triumph Revisited and in a handful of other sources, yet you still decline to address the many errors and distortions in their reviews that Moyar points out in his responses and that I have discussed in this thread. You also continue to simply ignore the fact that many other "top credentialed experts on the Vietnam War" have praised Moyar's books.

You are in the same predicament as a newcomer to the JFK case would be if he had read very little on the case and had only read pro-WC material. The JFK newcomer, if he were unaware of basic critical thinking principles, would get on this forum, would remind everyone that the vast majority of academic historians support the lone-gunman theory, and would then stridently reject the conspiracy view. When conspiracy theorists would start pointing out the plethora of errors in the writings of those academic historians, the JFK newcomer (if he were not inclined to reconsider and do more research) would use appeals to authority to dismiss or ignore the facts being pointed out to him by conspiracy theorists.

Lastly, would it be less offensive to say something like “the vast majority of experts vehemently disagree with every single core argument”? I think “think it is total nonsense” covers it just fine. 

You seem to have a very hard time admitting error. You said that the vast majority of Vietnam War experts regard Moyar's books and the revisionist view as "total nonsense." Now you are trying to weasel-word your way out of defending that ridiculous statement. 

Even your weasel-worded revised verbiage is inaccurate, as anyone can see just by reading the negative reviews in Triumph Revisited. Indeed, non-revisionist scholars have written books that present evidence that strongly supports a number of Moyar's core arguments, e.g., Max Hastings, Lien-Hang Nguyen, Nguyen Van Canh, Christopher Goscha, and Tuong Vu. 

Edited July 21, 2023 by Michael Griffith