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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Best Books on Counterinsurgency I've Ever Read,
By
This review is from: Silence Was a Weapon: The Vietnam War in the Villages (Hardcover)
I read this in a counterinsurgency course in college--the book was so good that, despite the fact that it was out of print, the professor photocopied it for all of us (no, I don't recommend that you all violate copyrights :).
The unique thing about this book--what makes it indispensable in studying Vietnam and counterinsurgency more generally--is that Stuart Herrington, before being stationed in Vietnam as an intelligence officer, learned Vietnamese fluently. Thus, he was able to talk with all of the Vietnamese (including the peasants), and not merely the educated, English-speaking ones, and he was often privy to what the Vietnamese said to one another, thinking no Americans would understand them. Herrington served in Vietnam in the early 1970's, and documented the changes in tactics that took place as Creighton Abrams replaced William Westmoreland as the U.S. commander, and as U.S forces were drawn down. Abrams was far more effective than his predecessor, replacing the blunt instrument of search-and-destroy missions with intelligence-gathering and small, targeted raids, while paying attention to maintaining good relations with the civilian population in the villages. The effectiveness of Abrams' new tactics is often forgotten, since they came after the war had been lost politically at home. Herrington's most insightful observation--and one that needs to be drilled into the head of anyone contemplating the subject of counterinsurgency--is that the Vietnamese, for the most part, did their best not to take part in the conflict, but ended up drawn into it anyway. He estimated that about 10% of the population supported the Communists, another 5% the government of South Vietnam, and the rest--about 85%--were what Herrington called the "U" group, willing to support either side when it appeared necessary or advantageous to do so. Herrington thus makes the point that Vietnam was not so much a conflict against "the Vietnamese", but a contest for their loyalty--or at least, the conditional loyalty of enough of them to deprive the other side of support and defeat the remaining minority loyal to it. In such a conflict, merely "destroying the enemy" will not win the war--not if "the enemy" is potentially 95% of the population.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An insightful personal account of the Vietnam War,
This review is from: Silence Was a Weapon: The Vietnam War in the Villages (Hardcover)
Author Stuart Herrington got unique insights on the underlying causes of the Vietnam War by debriefing several Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers who were captured or surrendered. He also learned effective ways of fighting the enemy, and how the South Vietnamese government (and the U.S.) inevitably lost the war by failing to change. This book should be of great interest Vietnam veterans and others who wonder why we "lost" the Vietnam War despite the vast amounts of money, time and lives we devoted to the fight.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Human Aspect Of Insurgency,
By
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