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Triumph Forsaken The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 by Mark Moyar Cambridge, 542 pp., $32 In the late summer of 1963, President John Kennedy dispatched two observers to South Vietnam. Their mission was to provide the president an assessment of the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of the Republic of Vietnam. The first, Major General Victor Krulak, USMC, the special assistant for counterinsurgency for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited some ten locations in all four Corps areas of Vietnam. Based on extensive interviews with U.S. advisers to the South Vietnamese army, Krulak concluded that the war was going well....

n view of the public frustration with a decade of largely unsuccessful U.S. war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the impending cuts to the U.S. military budget, there is an active debate at present as to what military strategy and force structure should be fashioned for the future. Unfortunately, many taxpayers and most politicians are totally illiterate when it comes to the subject of warfare. (Judging from the dismal results in the last ten years, a similar conclusion might to drawn concerning the U.S. officer corps.) In an attempt to fill this critical knowledge void and perhaps raise the level...

Rewriting the Rules of WarBy Col. Tom Snodgrass A curious thing happened in American thinking about warfare in 1961 - the rules needed to be rewritten, or so thought "the best and brightest" civilian strategists that President Kennedy brought with him into the White House. In his book The Best and Brightest, David Halberstam covers how Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, William P. Bundy, Dean Rusk, George Ball, et.al, arrogantly ignored the historical lessons of warfare and set about to change the rules of war. This change has had far-reaching negative effects, even to today. What was at the root of...

The "Haiphong Effect" Warren Pollock Sunday, March 23, 2003 Overview Analysis Endnote BIO Reference on Haiphong Overview To draw a parallel to today it will be necessary to understand the strategy rather than the media definition of "Shock and Awe" and equate that policy to the history of Haiphong. From the late 1960's to May of 1972 Haiphong was allowed to function uncontested as a port of call for weapon shipments to North Vietnam. The issue at hand relates to limiting war and thereby limiting success. Today, war may be limited primarily by capability. Analysis Iraqi regulars and irregulars are...