Vietnam: A Long History Thus A Long Book | Vietnam: A History

Vietnam: A History | Vietnam: A History | Stanley Karnow

books:


	• Vietnam: A History Stanley Karnow Penguin (Non-Classics), 1997 - 784 pages average customer review:based on 60 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

The Best Research Book on Vietnam

This book was required reading for a class on the Vietnam War at the University of Nebraska. Excellent research vehicle to understand the backround of Vietnam and its trials and tribulations. Starts from the begining and takes you thru the American Vietnam War with an even keel look with a middle of the road written word.

I still use it as a reference while writing my book about the Vietnam War during 1968-69. This book should be read first, before any other Vietnam book, to lay the ground work for all the other Vietnam books that follow.

LB 68-69

for more information click here

Vietnam: A Long History Thus A Long Book

It was a long book - for good reason - so stick with me. I also took some time aside to view the items outlined above to give me a visual and cinematic sense of what happened in Vietnam and how the whole business is perceived - before, during, and after. Vietnam: A History, as previously mentioned, is an extensive and detailed account of the goings on in Vietnam. Karnow begins as early as 208 B.C. (Karnow 55 - 127) and culminates with the departure from Saigon in 1975 (Karnow 631). In a sense, because Karnow covered the Vietnam War, this could be considered a primary document - at least the last decade covering '64 to `75. Karnow provides what I see as an attempt to give a balanced perspective of the war - in an effort to give both the Vietnamese and the Americans a sense of what was going on.

Connected and intelligent, Karnow weaves his way between the common people and to the highest offices and we live vicariously through him. One could almost argue that these are musings of an intelligence officer as it provides stark cultural insight the likes of which have been followed up by someone like a John Dower when he writes a book like War without Mercy . I bring up Dower for a very specific reason, although this is not a new argument we, in the U.S. (and this is not unique to the U.S., mind you) seem to get caught in quagmires because we fail to see who and what we are up against with clear 20/20 vision. Many lessons learned about cultural, military, and our policy of intervention seem to be lost on the current administration - even the language is the same. I will focus on the issue of cultural misunderstanding.

One of the reasons we failed so badly in Vietnam, Karnow argues, is because we failed to know our enemy (Karnow 98 - 99). All throughout the book, Karnow was screaming for us to get an objective sense of what was going on in Vietnam. In short, we were looking at Vietnam as a civil war when in reality it was a product of centuries of struggle for self-rule. Karnow weaves a narrative of nationalistic consciousness from as early as their engagement with Chinese. China, Karnow pens invaded Vietnam (at least the northern section) as early as 208 B.C. (Karnow 99). In what was the nascent Vietnam, the Champa invasion from India also has a powerful impact on this nationalistic consciousness (Karnow 98, 103). Looking to free themselves from the clutches of the Chinese, the Annamese - as their Chinese invaders called then, the proud descendants of Le Loi and Le Than Tong sought solace in the dry Analects of Confucius (Karnow 105 - 106).
As early as the mid 1800s the French brought their conquering ways and mission civilsatrice (Karnow 60-65). With the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia from the middle to mid 1940s, France has lost its hold of Vietnam but sought, with the help of the U.S. to regain control of its territories of Laos, Cambodia, Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina - the latter three making up what we now know to be Vietnam (Karnow 111). From this wish to regain control will we see the rise of Ho Chi Minh - who, despite arguments to the contrary was a nationalist first and communist second (Karnow 135 - 136).

American strategists would be obsessed with pegging Ho Chi Minh as communist - one would argue to ensure consistency with the domino theory (Karnow 43, 169, 250, 252, 326, and 378). Karnow writes, "The American crusade, propelled as it was by the "domino theory," and the naïve assumption that the entire region would collapse to the Communists if they won in Vietnam, disregarded the complex nationalistic diversity in Southeast Asia. Two "dominoes" - Laos and Cambodia - have toppled since the war in Vietnam. Much of Laos, however, had been virtual Vietnamese provinces for years, and Cambodia suffered unimaginable horrors - more because of the insane cruelty of its own Communist regime than as a consequence of Vietnamese ambitions" (Karnow 43 - 44). In effect, our ignorance of these issues led to a shallow understanding of the deep seated nationalistic struggle and long term Vietnamese struggle for self-determination that Ho Chi Minh tapped into. From a military perspective, the same can apply in terms of not reading or misunderstanding the past.

For the French, the lessons of underestimating the Vietnamese came in Dienbienphu IN 1953 (Karnow 191) - when the Vietnamese surrounded the French and no one seemed ready (Karnow 189 - 191, 194 - 198). The legacy of Dienbienphu would rear its ugly head when the U.S. underestimating the drive and resourcefulness of the North Vietnamese were not able to plan an orderly escape from Saigon in 1974 and with Westmoreland's attempt to save Khesanh (Karnow 540 - 541). Again, not understanding the Vietnamese resolve, "General Westmoreland had conceived a long range-strategy even before Lyndon Johnson fulfilled his request for more American battalions" (Karnow 435). Westmoreland either ignored or failed to hear Ton That Tung declare "There was extraordinary fervor then. The Americans thought that the more bombs they dropped, the quicker we would fall to our knees and surrender. But the bombs heightened rather than dampened our spirit" (Karnow 435).

McNamara, in The Fog of War is keen to explain the cost/benefit ratios and models he used to analyze the bombing efficiencies to be gained and his recommendations used to alter the flight plans to fire bomb Tokyo. I wonder how he sleeps at night... but it seems like the same sort of reasoning was put into effect in Vietnam with disastrous results and great loss of human life and no movement forward towards peace. Folks like Ton That Tung argue that the opposite actually happened - it increased their resolve.

In A Bright Shining Lie, the argument foisted through the character of Lt. Col. John Paul Vann was that the way to win the `hearts and minds' was through rice. By wining the people, you don't give the enemy a place to hide - in the end, even Vann fell prey to the notion that we need to destroy them (Karnow 260 - 262).

While watching Heart of Darkness: The Vietnam War Chronicles 1945 - 1975, one is introduced to how extensive the Intelligence gathering had become during the Vietnam War. Still, this was not a conventional war. It was not fought in the front lines - it was fought everywhere. In effect, Vietnam: A History really gives us a sense of perspective and shows us our lack of objectivity vis-à-vis the Vietnam War. The current engagement in Iraq is starting to challenge the Vietnam War in terms of longevity. The resilience and tactics as well as cultural misunderstanding is starting to sound like an echo from the past. As the body count begins to climb in Iraq - as it was starting to do in Vietnam - the parallels are almost creepy.

Karnow, I would argue, writes because of a strong sense of the importance of history. He draws from an extensive archive and is archive himself. Karnow's method is almost ethnographic as he uses interviews extensively. Karnow brings up controversial topics but has the sources to prove them - this and his extensive book on the Philippines In Our Image should be required reading in any engagement of the U.S. in Southeast Asia.
If Karnow's history of Vietnam shows us our lack of objectivity and shows us how these misunderstandings shaped the way the actors dealt with the war - should we not be hearkening back to those days not in nostalgia but with a sense of caution? Sometimes moving into the future means taking a long heard look at our modern day `heart of darkness' instead of trying to winning over anyone's `hearts and minds' when in the end, it is us we are thinking about and not them.

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History.
Supporting media: Bright Shining Lie, Deer Hunter, Heart of Darkness: The Vietnam War Chronicles 1945 - 1975, Hearts and Minds, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, and The Fog of War

Miguel Llora

for more information click here

Vietnam: A History

The late Stanley Karnow, while writing for American audiences, provides an authoritative history of one of the most divided periods of our times. A must for any student or participant of the the period.

for more information click here

Good but lacking and lopsided

For a so-called "complete" history of Vietnam, this book was decidedly lopsided in some areas. For example, he spends hundreds of pages with useful and interesting pre-1965 historical background, but then skims over the post-1969 events, which were some of the most crucial. He does the same with the political leaders involved, describing Generals Ky and Khan, even though each of them only ruled for a short period of time, while devoting little time to exploring Thieu's biography, even though he played the dominant role for much of our involvement there. For the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, Karnow provides rich details of the internal debates, politics, and considerations. One gets the sense that the author's contacts ran out after Nixon won the election, so he doesn't really discuss this period in nearly as much depth.

Overall, I would preferred if the author had given us a bit more of a sense of South Vietnam, why it did not fight and was riddled with corruption, the personalities involved, etc. The best parts of the book are undoubtedly when he recalls interviews from vietnamese, North and South, who played key roles, providing fresh information.

This book was a useful overview of the Vietnam War and its roots, but doesn't really provide any new insights or in-depth understanding of Vietnam the country.

for more information click here