Background on Vietnam: The Politics of Disaster

Like many other people, I have been reading the recent literature on the history and politics of Vietnam. It is a depressing experience, which bears out once more de Tocqueville’s remark that “a true but complicated idea has always less chance of succeeding than one which is false but simple.”

For political mythologists, Vietnam presents an unambiguous picture. The spokesmen for Washington, fixated upon their anti-Communist crusade, and the apologists for Hanoi, fixat...