Triumph Impossible

November/December 2007 · Historically Speaking 35 Triumph Impossible Jim Dingeman Who has ownership of the meaning of the Vietnam War? This is an especially compelling question in view of our involvement in a new series of difficult conflicts around the world as a result of 9/11—virtually a global counterinsurgency campaign. The U.S. armed forces have had to relearn the sobering lessons of fighting a counterinsurgency war after decades of deliberately turning away from this kind of warfare after Vietnam. A fierce debate rages about the mindset of our senior policy makers concerning what lessons they did or did not take from the Vietnam War as they crafted our intervention into Iraq. Comparisons between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam dominate the U.S. political landscape, and many Americans feel that Iraq is a new Vietnam . Into this imbroglio a new comprehensive interpretation of the Vietnam War has arrived that renders the war as just, necessary, and winnable, a sharp contrast to the view of the majority of Americans who feel, in poll after poll, that the Vietnam War was unjust, unnecessary , and unwinnable. The ideas of Mark Moyar are part of the complicated , diverse body of thought on the issue of why the U.S. lost the Vietnam War. His Triumph Forsaken is the latest book in the long line diat seeks to create a positive image of America's defeat. Moyar cites new scholarship and data that only became accessible after the Cold War ended, as well as Vietnamese sources. Triumph Forsaken is clearly the best expression of conservative scholarship on the Vietnam War in years. For some this work is an act of sartori , for others a case of angina. But whatever the reaction, his opinions cannot be swept under the rug since they reflect the latest neoconservative intellectual reaction to the defeat in Vietnam. Moyar's arguments are actually old wine packaged in new bottles with whip cream and cherries sprinkled on top. His opinions about the nature of Vietnamese communism, his portrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem's regime, and his account of Johnson's war escalation in 1965 will generate much contention. In my opinion, Moyar overestimates the ability of military force to alter a complicated political environment . Moyar's examination of the American attempt to save the beleaguered French garrison at Dien Bien Phu during their occupation of Indochina is such a case. He writes that the use of U.S. airpower during the batde of Dien Bien Phu against the Vietminh "almost certainly would have thwarted their attack . General Maxwell Taylor, special military advisor for President Kennedy, meets with South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon on October 23, 1961 , © Bettmann/CORBIS. . . . and left them with sharply reduced capacity for large-unit warfare throughout Indochina." There is no doubt that such a bombing campaign would have disrupted and possibly lifted the Vietminh siege of the French forces at Dien Bien Phu. But then what? One of the greatest opponents of bombing at Dien Bien Phu was U.S. Army Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgway. In his memoir, Soldier, Ridgway looks back on his opposition with pride: "[TJhe thing that I would be most humbly proud of was having fought against, and perhaps contributing to preventing the carrying out of some harebrained tactical schemes which would have cost the lives of thousands of men. To mat list of tragic incidents that fortunately never happened I would add the Indochina intervention ." I disagree emphatically with Moyar's positive view of Diem, a centerpiece of his argument. As Moyar points out, it is clear that Diem, an anticommunist nationalist, was a highly complicated figure. Like some American allies in the Cold War, his power stemmed largely from U.S. support. Moyar decouples Diem from the long history of Vietnamese anticolonialism by reducing Vietnamese communism to merely a tool of international communism . He then valorizes what other historians for decades have seen as Diem's weakness: his narrow basis of legitimacy. Moyar arduously reconstructs the progress of the war on the ground. He argues that the war had been turned around by 1962 and that Diem's ill-timed demise accelerated the subsequent turn...