Vietnam Wars 1945-1990

This book focuses on the American experience in Vietnam. Young's period delimits the period directly before and directly after American involvement in Vietnam. Her archive is vast. She gives the reader useful information to frames American presence in Vietnam. In this book, we read about discussion on the highest levels among American and Vietnamese leaders. As readers, we are more in her bias. Young argues that the American and South Vietnamese military and governments were responsible for the destruction of Vietnam. Young's focus, and this has been argued by several Cambodia scholars (such as Ben Kiernan, Kenneth Quinn, David Chandler, and Michael Vickery) that the U.S. bombing of Cambodia contributed to the anger of the Khmer Rouge resulting in the tragedy of the Killing Fields (Young 283, 305, 306, 312, and 329). Young argues that the Vietnam War (from 1945-1975/1990) is not one homogenous war. Throughout the period, there are numerous "wars". The major markers are the French War, the period of advisors, the military build-up and the commitment of ground troops under Lyndon Johnson, the North Vietnamese victory. She argues that the war in Vietnam is a crucial part of the post-World War II reorganization of the world according to capitalist principles (Young, Vietnam Wars ix). Young contends that we need to re-examine the "Vietnam Syndrome" (Young, Vietnam Wars 314-315, and 328-329). According to Young, the term Syndrome should not be about the disinclination of the public to be involved in war. Young offers a counter we should stop insisting that resolution or making up for the loss in Vietnam is to engage in more war. Young adds to a growing body of work on the US War in Vietnam. She examines the motives, justifications, and reasons that the US entered the war from a clearly anti-war perspective. She injects the moral dilemma into the discussion (i.e. sailors sending letters of protest to Truman about certain orders, etc.). It is the first of its kind to engage in the Vietnam War giving equal importance to the Vietnamese and American perspective. Moreover, she attempts to dispel the myth that stakeholders have resolved the issue of the "Vietnam Syndrome" and, as previously stated, we continue to get militarily mixed up with other countries. Also, and it could be argued this is not new, that we suffered from a crucial misunderstanding in U.S. vis-à-vis our involvement in Vietnam - that for the Vietnamese this was a war of independence and sovereignty and not an internal conflict of a communist north versus a "free" and democratic south. Finally, she argues against the simplistic notion that U.S. foreign policy is well intentioned and that Communism is necessarily destructive. Entering into a conversation with Stanley Karnow (Vietnam, A History) and Michael Maclear (The Ten Thousand Day War), Young argues that the scale of the massacres -- particularly the one at Hue -- as argued by `anti-war' critics like Noam Chomsky, were exaggerated an

Young's book is the best single volume detailing the American interventions in Vietnam. Unlike many, Young actually knows something about Vietnam as a country, and unlike many, she meticulously supplies references for her facts almost all of which are to accessible and checkable sources. But my real point in writing this is the idea, put forward by so many outside the profession of history (I am a University prof in a big state school history department) that grasping the disaster of Vietnam for what it was is an example of "bias." Is Young against killing peasants? You bet. Does she think US operations were failures? Sure. They were. It is hard to think rosy thoughts about fighting communism and so forth if you grasp how things went down in Vietnam itself, which is what this book supplies. BTW Young is not pro-North Vietnam and in my opinion feels (rightly) that the US destroyed the NLF ("VC"), a southern-based mass movement, with brutal means, which was a disaster. That and the support for dictators and not elections created the country we see today: run from the north, beholden to the north, yet (of course) ready to tackle capitalism. Will we repeat our inane dry-up-the-sea policies in Iraq?

Young details the war well, so that a reader who does not know anything about Vietnam will finish the book having a good idea of the issues that drove the war and the questions that are still asked about it today. History buffs should find this book informative and journalists will enjoy Young's inclusion of the press in her story. I particularly enjoyed Young's examination of events in Cambodia and the perfidy of President Richard Nixon. However, while I agree with Young's inclusion of material that serves to call into question America's actions during the war, I think that her bias as an author against the war was a little too obvious. As an academic, I guess she is entitled to argue against the war rather than simply presenting the facts on both sides, but at points the book reads more like an editoriral rather than an article you would find in the news section of your local newspaper. Nevertheless, the book is chock full of facts, good observations and is clearly written. It certainly gets my reccomendation.

It is rare that I will read a book twice, but Marilyn B. Young's history of American involvement in Vietnam is so packed with information and so clearly written, that I recently felt compelled to read it once again. It plots, very logically, how America went down the slippery slope that was Veitnam. Our foreign policy towards Vietnam was based on a culture never understood, and assumptions never questioned. I've read a dozen books on Vietnam in the past ten years, and this is by far the best.

Every Vietnam veteran should read this book. As a 19 year old kid serving in Vietnam, I actually believed I was helping to defend the freedom of the South Vietnamese people to choose the kind of government they wanted. What a shock to find that we were there to prevent that from happening. Thank you Ms Young.