Customer Reviews

No More Vietnams

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President Nixon's political problems notwithstanding, his was a serious intellect which was capable of getting to the heart of a subject. Starting with an enumeration of 22 conceptions about the war in Viet Nam, all of which,in print, seemed,not only plausible but were accepted by all too many people as true. As you read them you find yourself saying "no that's not right...sounds familiar but it's not right." Your vindication is at hand when the trap is sprung and the author declares all of the above is false. The book is a review of how events in the war played out politically and strategically, and how it was reported to the American people. Instead of being a self-serving recount of why I did the things I did, it is a well developed cronicle of events which elicits for those who lived through the period, tried to understand the period and most poignantly participated in the period, a feeling that... hey that's the way I remember it happening. It is a debunking of the self-serving myths propagated by the media. Contrary to the popular opinion forced upon us by the media, we had the war won in 1973, and with peace at hand Congress withdrew virtually all support, most importantly the threat of resumed air support for the Vietnamese ground troups should North Viet Nam not honor the peace treaty they signed. Regardless of your feelings about US participation in the Viet Nam War, Mr. Nixon's elucidation of the events will give many food for thought and revisit the question of where the responsibility for the tragedy belongs. Coincidentally, very shortly before writing this I watched an interview of General Schwartzkoff wherein he propounded the same view of our "loss" in Viet Nam as I remembered and as is described in NO MORE VIETNAMS. This should be on the mandatory reading list at our colleges.

During the height of the Vietnam war, I was a junior high/senior high school student and never really understood what was the purpose of the war. I have read many books since and have a fairly good understanding of the how's and why's of the war. However, reading Nixon's book was a real eye opener. He lucidates very well how the US got involved in Vietnam; the major mistakes the Kennedy and Johnson administrations made in running the war; the smear campaigns by the media against the Presidents and their policies; why Nixon bombed Vietnam in 1972 and mined Haiphong harbor; how the peace protestors played into Uncle Ho's hands. I was stunned to learn this information. Nixon was, by far, an exceptional and gifted statesman and writer. He even stated that the next threat to world peace and to the US will come from terrorism (this was written in 1985!). Nixon states that the "civilized world must develop a unified policy for dealing with terrorism" and that terrorists "may be deterred once they realize that by using terror they will spark the wrath of all nations that do not want to exist in a world riven by a tiny minority who have resorted to violence...." If you want to understand the current problems in Afghanistan with Al-Qaeda and O. bin Laden, Nixon's book has fascinating parallels from the Vietnam War to learn from. A book certainly worth reading!

President Nixon reminds us that the United States was trying to save the South Vietnamese from a military attack by Communist North Vietnam, which was supplied by China and the Soviet Union. After the peace treaty negotiated by Kissinger was signed, Congress cut U.S. support to the bone. As a result, North Vietnam saw the opportunity to break the peace, invade South Vietnam again, and win. The Communists proceeded to torture and slaughter. It is estimated that 500,000 Vietnamese and 1,000,000 Cambodians were killed by the Communists after Congress cut off support. The cause was just, but the press, the public and Congress did not support it

The book confirms Churchill's dictum that Americans can be coun ted on to do the right thing after they have exhausted all other alternatives. It reveals that virtually all conventional wisdom about America's major episode in the last 50 years is wrong. Having been involved there off and on through the war, I can corroborate Nixon's veracity. Yes we did win in Vietnam hands down by 1973. After a lot of preliminary mistakes we did win Hearts & Minds and we did bring Hanoi to sign on our terms. The media rubbed America's face in the dirt on Vietnam, but we should all be very proud of what Americans did in Southeast Asia despite media treachery.

EARLKULP

Conventional wisdom dictates that the Vietnam war was a mistake,
a colossal blunder from day one. It was not only a war America
lost, but a war that was "unwinnable." America was brutally
opposing a peaceful peasant revolution that wanted nothing more
than freedom and independence after years of foreign rule. This
message has been constantly re-enforced by the mass media,
through award-winning motion pictures, songs, plays, novels, and
poems. The Vietnam war, or more specifically the war's
underlying "injustice," has become an American cultural icon of
epic proportions. And yet, as Richard Nixon so eloquently points
out in this book, almost every single piece of "conventional
wisdom" on the war is in fact blatantly wrong.


It's often argued by members of the left that conservative
politicians are sheltered, ignorant, uneducated men, who could
not five minutes in an intellectual foreign policy debate with
some highbrow university professor. What really impressed me
about this book was the degree to which Nixon knew all the
allegations that had been launched against him, and against the
war. Nixon goes through the lists of myths about the war one-by-
one, categorically dismissing the lies that have been spread by
all the left-wing revisionists over the years.


He dismisses the myth of Ho Chi Minh as a benevolent "Vietnamese
George Washington," and exposes him as the Stalinist thug he
really was. Similarly, he defends President Diem of South
Vietnam, acknowledging his faults, but at the same time giving
him credit for being a true leader of an independent Vietnam,
instead of trying to mold the country into a foreign
totalitarian model, like Ho. He explains how the Vietnam war was
never a mere "civil war" led by South Vietnamese uprisings
against Diem, but instead a carefully calculated campaign of
brutal terrorism, led by Ho Chi Minh's proxy agents stationed in
the south.


Most importantly of all, Nixon also puts to rest the long-held
leftist myth that the US and South Vietnam refused to hold
scheduled elections to unite the country, as mandated by the
Geneva convention. He explains that not only were these
"scheduled elections" never even agreed upon by either of the
Vietnams in the first place, it was the North, and not the South
that actually provided the biggest resistance for this
impractical pipe-dream to ever be implemented.


Nixon was a politician as partisan as they come, yet for the
most part in this book he puts his political beliefs aside to
defend a war that was tackled by presidents of both parties.
Nixon defends Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, and
their actions, dismissing the critics claims that these men were
"war criminals" or worse. He is a bit harsh on Kennedy at times,
and regards the Kennedy-backed coup against Diem as a colossal
blunder. But even then he is quick to paint Kennedy and other
Democrats as gullible victims of the loud and intimidating anti-
war movement.


The final chapter of the book is excellent, as Nixon carefully
explains the strategic and moral importance of preserving the
freedom and independence of "third world" nations. Though at the
time he was talking about Communist subversion, his lessons can
just as easily be applied to the current war on terror. Just as
the United States fought for years to prevent the third world
from falling under Soviet influence, so now must the United
States fight to prevent the Arab world from being exploited by
terror networks in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The Vietnam war failed, Nixon argues, because the various
presidents failed to accurately make the case for war. That is
an important lesson to be learned, and hopefully the current
president will be careful to never let the American people lose
sight of the reason for the war in Iraq.

Nixon was one of America's most brilliant presidents. It is a
shame his personal failings brought down an administration with
such truly noble goals for the world.

In the book, Nixon looses sight of something much bigger.
Vietnam is not about the Nixon defination of morality and moral
obligation. Many revolutions in African far outweigh the human
rights violations that were occurring in Vietnam during this
era. Yet the United States never intervened in an African crisis
until the 1990's. Ask the soldiers who fought in Vietnam what
the battle was about. Ask the mentally unhealthy and permanently
disabled veterans if their sacrifice was worth it. As a fan of
Nixon, I expected a more humble explanation of Vietnam, yet I
should have known better. Communism is such a flawed system that
it fell apart without a war. It is not the wave of the future,
the wave is "good-bye". Based on this present day knowledge, it
is easy to realize that the Vietnam war was a mistake. However,
the insights provided by Nixon in this book still make it an
interesting read.

I'm a student and this book was a required reading. Easily the best required reading I've ever had to do. I had never fully understood Vietnam. Why we were there, what we did while there and why we left. This book was an excellent asset in understanding Vietnam and I recommend it especially to students since it can be easily read in 2 to 3 days. :)

The previous review stated "Nixon refused to acknowledge African-Americans were over-represented in Vietnam. Today, this fact is a given." For many years I thought so too, until I saw the official statistics:

88.4% of the men who actually served in Vietnam were Caucasian: 10.6% (275,000) were African-American; 1% belonged to other races

86.3% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasian (includes Hispanics); 12.5% (7,241) were African-American; 1.2% belonged to other races

170,000 Hispanics served in Vietnam: 3,070 (5.2% of total) died there

70% of enlisted men killed were of Northwest European descent

86.8% of the men who were killed as a result of hostile action were Caucasian; 12.1% (5,711) were African-American; 1.1% belonged to other races

14.6% (1,530) of non-combat deaths were among African-Americans

34% of African-Americans who enlisted volunteered for the combat arms

Overall, African-Americans suffered 12.5% of the deaths in Vietnam at a time when the percentage of African-Americans of military age was 13.5% of the total population

Sources: Department of Defense casualty records
Labor Department
Department of Veterans' Affairs
National Personnel Records.

Nixon's main thesis in "No More Vietnams": We failed in our attempts to free the people of Vietnam from the yoke of Communist tyranny. "No more Vietnams" could mean we shouldn't try again [elsewhere], but it should mean we shouldn't fail again.

Nixon was a very good writer, which makes it hard to separate his spin/perception from reality unless you're very familiar with the time and events. His beliefs and approach - as written - are so reasonable, it's hard to understand how divisive that war was without having been politically aware at the time. The only thing I knew was either fabrication or fancy was when he wrote of his belief that the attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin (which popped the cork on US escalation in Vietnam) actually happened as reported at the time. That incident has been so thoroughly discredited by so many different people of all political persuasions, it's amazing Nixon stuck with the story as late as '85 when the book was published.

All-in-all an interesting read.

Conventional wisdom dictates that the Vietnam war was a mistake, a clossal blunder from day one. It was not only a war America lost, but a war that was "unwinable." America was brutally opposing a peaceful peasant revolution that wanted nothing more than freedom and independence after years of foreign rule. This message has been constantly re-enforced by the mass media, through award-winning motion pictures, songs, plays, novels, and poems. The Vietnam war, or more specifically the war's underlying "injustice," has become an American cultural icon of epic proportions. And yet, as Richard Nixon so eloquently points out in this book, almost every single piece of "conventional wisdom" on the war is in fact blatantly wrong.

It's often argued by members of the left that conservative politicans are sheltered, ignorant, uneducated men, who could not five minutes in an intelectual foreign policy debate with some highbrow university professor. What really impressed me about this book was the degree to which Nixon knew all the allegations that had been launched against him, and against the war. Nixon goes through the lists of myths about the war one-by-one, catagorically dismissing the lies that have been spread by all the left-wing revisionists over the years.

He dismisses the myth of Ho Chi Minh as a benevolent "Vietnamese George Washington," and exposes him as the Stalinist thug he really was. Similarly, he defends President Diem of South Vietnam, acknowledging his faults, but at the same time giving him credit for being a true leader of an independent Vietnam, instead of trying to mold the country into a foreign totalitarian model, like Ho. He explains how the Vietnam war was never a mere "civil war" led by South Vietnamese uprisings against Diem, but instead a carefully calculated campaign of brutal terrorism, led by Ho Chi Minh's proxy agents stationed in the south.

Most importantly of all, Nixon also puts to rest the long-held leftist myth that the US and South Vietnam refused to hold scheduled elections to unite the country, as mandated by the Geneva convention. He explains that not only were these "scheduled elections" never even agreed upon by either of the Vietnams in the first place, it was the North, and not the South that actually provided the biggest resistance for this impractical pipe-dream to ever be implemented.

Nixon was a politician as partisan as they come, yet for the most part in this book he puts his political beliefs aside to defend a war that was tackled by presidents of both parties. Nixon defends Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, and their actions, dismissing the critics claims that these men were "war criminals" or worse. He is a bit harsh on Kennedy at times, and regards the Kennedy-backed coup against Diem as a colassal blunder. But even then he is quick to paint Kennedy and other Democrats as gullible victims of the loud and intimidating anti-war movement.

The final chapter of the book is excellent, as Nixon carefully explains the strategic and moral importance of preserving the freedom and independence of "third world" nations. Though at the time he was talking about Communist subversion, his lessons can just as easily be applied to the current war on terror. Just as the United States fought for years to prevent the third world from falling under Soviet influence, so now must the United States fight to prevent the arab world from being exploited by terror networks in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The Vietnam war failed, Nixon argues, because the various presidents failed to accurately make the case for war. That is an important lesson to be learned, and hopefully the current president will be careful to never let the American people lose sight of the reason for the war in Iraq.

Nixon was one of America's most brilliant presidents. It is a shame his personal failings brought down an administration with such truly noble goals for the world.

Do not be fooled! This book WAS NOT written by former President Richard Nixon. It is a collection of outdated essays compiled by someone named Richard Milhouse Pfiffer. I was exceedingly disappointed...