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Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Moyar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $32.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 55006
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 542
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.7
ISBN: 0521869110
Dewey Decimal Number: 959.7043
EAN: 9780521869119
ASIN: 0521869110
Publication Date: August 28, 2006
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Product Description
Drawing on a wealth of new evidence from all sides, Triumph Forsaken overturns most of the historical orthodoxy on the Vietnam War. Through the analysis of international perceptions and power, it shows that South Vietnam was a vital interest of the United States. The book provides many new insights into the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and demonstrates that the coup negated the South Vietnamese government's tremendous, and hitherto unappreciated, military and political gains between 1954 and 1963. After Diem's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson had at his disposal several aggressive policy options that could have enabled South Vietnam to continue the war without a massive US troop infusion, but he ruled out these options because of faulty assumptions and inadequate intelligence, making such an infusion the only means of saving the country.
Book Description
Triumph Forsaken overturns most of the historical orthodoxy on the Vietnam War revealing that the South Vietnamese government was winning the war until the coup of November 1963. It also shows that President Johnson ruled out several other aggressive policy options because of faulty assumptions and inadequate intelligence.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 35 more reviews...
 A very important study September 28, 2008
This book gives a very good account of the first ten years of the Vietnam war, ending just as LBJ was beggining the large American troop increases that would transform the war. Instead of being one of those books that wants to examine the 'origins' of the war with a view towards assigning blame for America's failure and tyring to figure out how America could have disentangled itself earlier, this book instead asks 'how could America have won' and 'who was responsible for our failure and our perception of early hopelessness?'
There is a need for such a book to fill the gap in scholarship on the early years of the war (rather than examinations of the late years, Nixon's Vietnam War (Modern War Studies)), when America truly was involved in advising the operation rather than directing it and literally sinking the country under the weight of 800,000 boots of its soldiers.
This book is 'revisionist' insofar as it does not accept the maxim that 'the war was a failure from the start and could never be won'. For those that understand other successful counter-insurgencies, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, it is clear that Vietnam could have gone very differently. The author may have overextended himself in complaining that authors and journalists such as halberstam are at all to blame for the failure, they are to blame for the perception of the inevitable failure. But it was the U.S armed forces and her allies, such as Diem, who receives a great deal of praise here, that were certainly responsible alongside the Communists.
A very neccesary and important book that will interests scholars of Vietnam as well as those with a generral interest in the war and war making in general.
Seth J. Frantzman
Great Perspective June 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read this book during the three weeks I was visiting Vietnam with my family, 39 years after my first "vacation" there. I really enjoyed the historic background information on Vietnam and the formation of the country and it's relations with neighboring countries. While I was there in 1968 I always wondered what the plan was an although this book ends in 1965 it seems like the US strategy wasn't designed for an all out victory or whether that was even possible. Overall, I really liked the book. Having read some of the other critical reviews there are questions that should be answered. Mr Moyar promised to write another book covering the period from 1965 to 1975. I can't wait, I'll be a buyer.
 Please Read William J. Duiker's Ho Chi Minh Biography June 3, 2008
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
Ho Chi Minh was an independence-minded nationalist first and foremost, who used a Communist apparatus as the means to an end: the expulsion of foreign imperialists from his homeland.
This is the comprehensive portrait painted by William J. Duiker, the Western world's foremost authority on the life of Ho Chi Minh, and expert on Vietnamese and Southeast Asian affairs (You can find Duiker's biography of Ho here on Amazon).
This is a critical point, and the crux failure of Moyar's revisionism. The sole reason Ho assumed the mantle of the French Socialists (later Communists) in the first place was because of Lenin's provisions for the liberation of occupied peoples. He continued to believe, throughout his 30-year exile from Vietnam, that the Communist apparatus was the system best suited to channel nationalist fervor into a successful revolution and expulsion of FRANCE from Vietnam. This is why he intensively studied Communist revolutionary doctrine and action in Russia and China. He intended to return home well-equipped with a practical methodology for resistance.
Ho aggressively worked all sides after World War II. He vigorously sought recognition and aid from the United States. His letters to Truman were ignored. In his quest for Vietnamese sovereignty he took aid of all sorts...organizational, financial, material....from the USSR and China, but essentially by default. The West chose to support the re-colonization of the French in Vietnam. The strong majority of native Vietnamese sympathized with the Viet Minh effort against the (U.S.-financed) French occupation, especially in light of gross abuses against the civilian population by French occupying forces. In later years, when the French foreign presence was superseded by an American foreign presence, the strong majority of the native Vietnamese understood it simply as a continuum of unjust foreign occupation.
It is crucial to understand that the will of the majority Vietnamese population was sympathetic to the Viet Minh against the French, and saw the Viet Cong/NLF/NVA as essentially a continuum of the Viet Minh fight for independence.
The notion of triumph forsaken...our triumph...is ill-conceived. The Vietnamese spent the last thousand years expelling foreign invaders, most often the Chinese. Those who would insist upon the existence of a meticulously planned Red conspiracy to dominate Southeast Asia in brotherly Marxist solidarity must take pause and consider, then, why the Chinese invaded Vietnam after America withdrew (the Vietnamese expelled them that time, too).
Ho was not Mao. He was not a remorseless butcher. The key to understanding the history of the Vietnam war is understanding the life of Ho Chi Minh as an anti-French revolutionary, and the galvanization of the majority of the Vietnamese population for what was, essentially, a war of liberation followed by a short-lived declaration of independence. We....Americans....as the heirs to the French occupation of Vietnam, have to understand that we reneged on a pledge for a reunification vote, simply because we knew that, at that time, real democracy was inconvenient, and "our side" would badly lose the vote. We were complicit in the strategic hamlet program that herded peasants from their ancestral land, further galvanizing them in favor of the Viet Cong. We were complicit in the assassination of Diem.
The United States attempted to impose its preferred flavor of democracy from without, while there was a motivated grassroots effort for a different kind of liberation happening from within. If you follow the chain of causality to its logical end, the only available "triumph" for America would have been by way of complete decimation of Vietnam, engagement with mainland China, and, ultimately, a thermonuclear exchange of some sort.
A revisionist stand that is needed April 20, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The study of history is based on the historians perspectives. The popular negativity surrounding Vietnam has been validated by the thousands of books on the subject. Moyar's arguments are in contrast to the popular views held on Vietnam especially his argument that that Ho Chi Minh was a communist above a nationalist. While I dont necessarily agree with him on all of his views I do agree in his analysis of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations' ineptitude in dealing with Vietnam. It is a prime example of those in power not listening to those who are in the best position to make decisions. The administrations relied on McNamera more than they listened to the CIA and the military advisors in Vietnam.
He makes a major anti-factual statement that Vietnam could have been won with an invasion of North Vietnam in 1964. He gives good reasons why this is so, but one cannot say that the war could have been won with such an action. He would have been better to conclude that if the administrations wanted to defeat communism in Southeast Asia they should have launched a full scale invasion of the North as opposed to fighting a half war in the South. Whether an invasion would have worked or not is pure speculation; however, Moyar points out what Eisenhower told Johnson and that is he needs to go after the head of the snake not the tail.
Whether you inevitably agree with Moyar's views or not it is a good read that if nothing else will get you to reexamine your views on Vietnam.
Outstanding and Objective April 7, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is the best analysis of history, of any kind, in the last 50 years. It is criminal that we are void of outstanding teaching of historical events in recent time.
Your book is a terrific study of Vietnam and the Vietnam War from 1955 to 1965. I was also surprised at your remarkable writing skill. You build a path of logic that leads the user through a sequence of events that let's the user make there own determination of the facts. The facts become so compelling that the best fiction writers couldn't make these things up. I couldn't put this book down.
This work is also an outstanding reflection of our current time. We begin to see similar trends with politicians, the media, and Hollywood's interpretation of current event, all of which threaten the general publics ability to understand the facts and protect our countries common interests at home and around the world.
I am also struck by the lack of great historians and your comments about our current history of the day. One is the modern day historian's inability to study facts, and second, most current historians prefer to editorialize their personal views rather than take the time to study an issue objectively. It's easier today for historians to take to the media airwaves and thrust opinion and stupidity that are emotionally stirring and presented as fact. Our modern day historians lack the intellect to surround these issues accurately. They prefer to take the lazy approach by following current tends, and attaching themselves to current ideologies that they blindly accept as fact. We are also seeing this happing with writers and editors across the media spectrum. I call it the Hemingway complex. These are inferior writers who wish to rationalize their lack of hard work and intellect, by seeing themselves in the context of Hemingway. That somehow, by following Hemingway's path, their day will come. All they have to do is follow their great god. When they finally see that they still aren't making progress they throw themselves into the arena of public opinion. They prey upon the general public, forcing their idiotic ideas down our throat, through the brute force of the media.
What you have done is a great piece of work. You have set yourself apart from the rest and are going to be a great historian. Keep up the outstanding work.
Chris Cortilet
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