Notes and Comments
I am writing in response to John Carland's review, in the April 2007 issue, of my book Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965. In his lengthy review, Carland acknowledges that the book is correct on certain points, makes many general denunciations along with one specific criticism, and omits mention of many of the book's central interpretations. Because I want to address Carland's review at length, I will not enumerate all of the book's points that do not appear in the review; I would recommend that readers consult the book's preface for an overview of those points.
Carland makes an argument that many others have made, namely, that those who challenge the historical orthodoxy on Vietnam are arguing based on emotion and ideology rather than rationality and objectivity. Carland contends that my "finger-pointing approach to the past is not that of the historian and objective researcher but of the ideologue and true believer." Like most of those before him, Carland does not provide evidence that I or other revisionists are ideologues and nonhistorians. He does not show that ideology caused me to make claims that run contrary to facts, or that I did not adjust my views when new evidence surfaced. Carland either ignored or did not read the preface to Triumph Forsaken, in which I explained how in my first book Phoenix and the Birds of Prey I asserted that Vietnam was not a vital U.S. interest, and how subsequent knowledge led me to reach a different conclusion in Triumph Forsaken. Furthermore, anyone who reads Triumph Forsaken will find ample recognition of facts that do not cast the South Vietnamese government or the U.S. war effort in a favorable light, such as the shortcomings of Ngo Dinh Diem's land reform in the late 1950s, the superiority of the Viet Cong's leadership at the beginning of the insurgency, the torture of prisoners by the South Vietnamese government, and the U.S. government's mistakes in dealing with the press.
Carland's use of the label ideologue is particularly problematic when one looks at other writings of his. In an article in the December 2002 [End Page 903] issue of Vietnam, Carland stated that when he interviewed General Tran Van Tra, a former North Vietnamese commander, the general "came across as a pragmatic military man and not an ideologue." In the very same article, Carland recounted that Tra cited a series of battles in late 1965 as Communist victories, when in fact those battles were Communist defeats. For instance, the general claimed that two North Vietnamese regiments destroyed an American force from the U.S. 1st Infantry Division in the Battle of Bau Bang in November 1965. In his own book Combat Operations: Stemming the Tide, May 1965 to October 1966, Carland observes that in this battle the Americans found 146 enemy bodies after this battle and estimated that another 50 had been carried away by the enemy, whereas the total American dead numbered 20. By claiming that someone like Tran Van Tra is not an ideologue, and that I am an ideologue, Carland gives reason to believe that his own ideological views have colored his thinking.
Carland's criticism of my supposed "finger-pointing approach" is also puzzling. I am not familiar with any work on the larger issues of the Vietnam War that does not attribute certain events to the mistakes of particular individuals or groups. That includes Carland's own book Combat Operations. Whereas Triumph Forsaken provides much evidence that Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu made the strategic hamlet program a success, Carland argues in accusatory tones that the strategic hamlet program "rapidly turned counterproductive by degenerating into a means for Diem and his increasingly influential brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, to bolster their own personal power... pacification never reached the root of South Vietnam's weakness—the corruption and incompetence of Saigon's political leaders...
