[Copernicus]

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while the book does a very good job of outining what the americans did wrong, and how the NLF operated, and why it was successful, she seems to have some strange sympathy for the communists, which unforchanately makes it so that i do not know what she is reporting honestly and what she has fabricated or manipulated. this is the problem with all of these books. a historian should not have an opinion on the matter. they should just report facts.

She writes about how the vietnamese communist party seized land and killed 50,000 people. One paragraph later she says "but it really was amazing and great the way ho chi min admited they were wrong to do that"

About the massacare in Hue during Tet Offensive she says "its not understood if this happened by accident because the NFL had no previous history of wiping out civilians."

she also hasnt yet mentioned the effect that a communist revolution would have on the cities of vietnam.

it is an interesting read nonetheless, and you can take what you want from it.

something else i dont get about Vietnam war, why didnt the Americans try to make friends with the North Vietnamese? The picture she has painted of the NLF and Ho Chi Min is that they are for the people, fighting the oppression of France and then the Diem regimine, and that they only want freedom and liberation. Well, if this is the case, why didnt the Americans just go in and make friends with Ho Chi Min? This is where I feel like I have been misled.

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If the book didnt discuss the background to US involvement in the light of the Cold War and the communist threat, then it was either attempting to be non-political and presenting facts only, or it is biased.

As the first socialist state in Southeast Asia, Vietnam was seen as a huge test of the US resolve to not allow the dominoes to fall easily into Russian and Red Chinese hands. Negotiation with Ho Chih Minh and the DRVN was impossible with the amount of aid and influence the communists already had, and pretty much free reign they gave the totalitarian regime.

Google "domino theory indochina" if the book doesnt do justice to the topic. It has its obvious parallels with our policy in the ME.