America in Vietnam

by Guenter Lewy

Book Overview

Based on a variety of classified military records, Lewy provides the first systematic analysis of the course of the Vietnam War, the reasons for the failure of American strategy and tactics, and the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195027329
• Release Date: May 1980
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.6" x 1.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Still Standing

A testament to the quality of this highly readable book is the fact that it is still in print thirty years after its initial publication. That is all the more impressive considering that Guenter Lewy began writing this book only a few months after the fall of Saigon. History normally requires the detachment and distance that time offers. Lewy's central argument is that the United States failed in Vietnam because of the incompetence of its military. The person most responsible for this outcome was General William Westmoreland. Under Westmoreland, Americans sought out and engaged the North Vietnamese Army in big unit, fire-power intensive battles, ignoring pacification where Lewy and North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap believed the war was won and lost. The U.S. Army pursued this strategy out of ignorance, arrogance, and impatience. The Americans wanted to focus on what they did well--what are now called "kinetic operations," which is to say combat,--and ignored things at which take too long and required skills they did not possess--understanding the land, people, and history of Vietnam. Although Lewy's overall argument is persuasive, putting the onus on Westmoreland is a bit unfair. The General never had command of U.S. Marine Corps or U.S. Air Force assets. Also, as Lewy points out, the flawed operational approach continued under Westy's successor General Creighton Abrams. Lewy also shows that there were several systemic issues that worked against the military. The caliber of officers diminished as the war progressed, because draft deferments allowed the "best and brightest" to avoid duty in Vietnam. The enlisted ranks also began to deteriorate. The heavy drug usage among soldiers was a product of the fact the military was taking more and more individuals who social misfits before they joined the service. Lewy tackles a number of issue, many of which were and still are emotionally loaded. He dismisses arguments that the war was immoral. All wars are cruel and to focus on the suffering is beside the point. Atrocities happened, but they were never intentional on a large-scale basis. Then enemy had a dirtier record than the United States in this conflict. He also dismisses allegations that the military doctored intelligence reports. This issue became a bone of contention between Westmoreland and CBS News and led to his famous lawsuit in the early 1980s. These charges were floating around long before CBS reported them and Lewy calls them "unfounded," because the disputed figures did not reflect individuals that caught the United States off guard in the biggest surprise of the war, the Tet Offensive (p. 75.) Despite all these problems, the United States came much closer to winning than most people think. Would pacification have worked? Obviously that is as question that no one can answer, but Lewy makes it clear that the U.S. effort was deeply flawed, and other approaches certainly appear to have had a better ch

Still one the best general studies of the Vietnam War

Lewy's history of the war in Indochina is balanced and judicious. He is not an apologist for the war, but rather highly critical. He does, however, demolish the arguments of the Left that held the U.S. responsible for genocide, quasi-, de facto-genocide and war crimes as policy. He refutes these and other such claims in what are, in my opinion, perhaps the three most important chapters: "Military Tactics and the Law of War", "Terrorism, Counterinsurgency and Genocide", and "Atrocities: Fact and Fiction." Lewy takes apart the assertions of the pro-Communist Left on their own terms, carefully citing international war crimes treaties and conventions, to show how such "legal experts" as Prof. Richard Falk have misinterpreted and ignored crucial sections of such conventions. He studiously compiles statistics on many U.S. atrocities and in no way tries to downplay their severity. However, his study of NVA/VC show that terrorism was methodicol, highly organized and an integral part of Communist strategy. They "rallied" the "support" of the population through a major program of murder. 37,000 people (80% civilian - typically school teachers and other potential anti-Communist leaders at the village level) were killed. Individuals were tortured and disembowled in the town square as their family and friends were forced to watch. Such acts had the desired effect of terrorizing the peasants into passive support. While holding Hue for 26 days in 1968, the NVA murdered and kidnapped some 5,800 civilians (many of whom were buried alive). A favorite NVA tactic was to shell civilian areas of major cities and massive throngs of civilian refugees fleeing South. The important distinction Lewy makes is that while American atrocities were perpetrated at the small-unit level by a few individuals who then tried to cover-up their crimes, Communist atrocities were official strategy, committed on a wide-scale. Those who committed them did not cover their tracks because they were in no danger of being penalized. Lewy also carefully examines the existing data regarding the proportion of African-American casualties to the number of African-Americans of draft age; the level of drug use among US soldiers; the incidence of racial violence among US soldiers; and the social condition of Vietnam veterans. The results are very interesting. Some myths are demolished. I don't mean to imply that the whole book is about war crimes and so forth. This is a general history that broadly asseses the major aspects of the war from the political to the military to the social. This is one of the best general introductions to the war out there. Another excellent starting point, though less comprehensive and more polemical, is Podhoretz's "Why We Were In Vietnam."

Still worth reading

Though this book was published in 1978, only three years after Vietnam fell to the Communists, this book says some insightful things about the war in Vietnam and makes many valid points. Lewy demonstrates the superficiality of the more extreme opponents of the war--those who accused the US of violating international law but were blind to the horrors involved in the actions of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. This is a well-researched and balanced study of the issues which engaged the interest of the world while the war was going on, and is illuminating and full of important information.