I always thought the Communists were behind the Zippo monk movement. The idiot press lapped it up like cream.
Posted on 01/22/2007 6:51:58 AM PST by kellynla
With ever-increasing frequency, Americans are told that Iraq is another Vietnam, usually by those accusing the Bush administration of miring the United States in a hopeless war. For most who make this comparison, the Vietnam War was an act of hubris, fought for no good reason and in alliance with cowards. But new historical research shows this conventional interpretation of Vietnam to be deeply flawed. The analogy, therefore, must be rethought.
Three journalists handed down the standard version of the Vietnam War in three bestselling tomes. The first two, David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" (1972) and Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History," (1983) each sold more than 1 million copies, while the third, Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" (1988), received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
These books have profoundly influenced almost everything else that has been written about the Vietnam War. Because of the iconic status of these journalists and the political inclinations of the intelligentsia, the three books received few serious challenges – prior to the publication last summer of my "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965."
Historians such as Guenter Lewy, Lewis Sorley, and Michael Lind have also effectively contested some of the journalists' basic interpretations, and antiwar historians have produced more modest modifications, but the Halberstam-Sheehan-Karnow rendition of the war has remained dominant.
One reason for the durability of their version is that the endless repetition by other commentators produced the impression that it had to be right. Earlier, when writing a book on counterinsurgency in the latter years of the war entitled "Phoenix and the Birds of Prey," I, too, presumed that the first half of the war had been covered exhaustively.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
ping
As many others have said, we were winning when I was there.
A good book on Vietnam Veterans and the shabby way we were treated is "Stolen Valor".
I always thought the Communists were behind the Zippo monk movement. The idiot press lapped it up like cream.
Terrific article. It deserves the widest possible dissemenation.
It will be fought in America as well.
Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow would play crucial roles in events that fomented the coup that removed Diem on Nov. 1, 1963. Their anti-Diem information, much of it from ill-informed or agenda-driven sources, gave Diem's opponents in the US government the reasons they needed to remove what they considered to be an ineffective allied government. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge accepted their reports, spurring him to incite the coup.
They don't mention that their pet president, JFK, gave the OK on the Diem hit. Rumor has it that when Diem was already a prisoner in the back of a paddy wagon ( or some such) he called Lodge, trying to get off the hook. Lodge had already gotten the wink and the nod from Jack and Bobby and his reply to Diem was, "Sorry, Mr President, but I can't help you."
thought you'd be interested and able to ping others. God Bless.
hope this is edifying to you.
ping. With respect,sir.
bookmark
I believe that Diem and his brother were to be kidnapped. The execution was someone else's idea. In November of 1963, JFK was executed.
I forgot to thank you for posting this.
The truth is slowly coming out. It is becoming evident the facts are that Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow - and the entire American Left - were the real the instigators of A Bright Shining Lie!
Yes. Iraq has many parallels to Vietnam as far as the treasons of the Left is concerned!
Sigh.
Vietnam was the right war, fought the wrong way.
And Vietnam was not it vain, it showed the Soviets that they were not going to take over country by country without stiff resistance. Imagine if we just let them have Vietnam without a fight?
The "domino theory" was valid.
Even if the domino theory was marginal and only Viet Nam fell it was enough. The Soviets wanted a warm water port in the Pacific from which to launch intelligence vessels and warships. The nuclear and space races were hot and getting hotter and they wanted to be able to not only monitor any and all of our progress in Micronesia where we had bases but to get a foothold in the area. The same way they were in Cuba and other areas around the globe where they could choke off major sea lanes or monitor our progress.
A point almost everyone ignores.
In later years the purpose of Nicaragua was that it was the next logical place for another canal across Latin America. Another choke point and bases from which they could send recon and bomber fights up our west coast which was too far from Cuba.
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