Customer Reviews

The Year of the Hare: America in Vietnam January 25, 1963-February 15, 1964

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Fr. Winters is a former professor of mine and a large part of his course was devoted to this book (which I read in its entireity later on). So maybe it's just a bit of burnout from hearing the same message over and over again, but I found Year of the Hare to be tedious at times but well worth reading. I wasn't terribly impressed with the writing style, which can get a little overblown, or the opening part of the book that goes through the timeline of events leading up to Diem's overthow. But it definitely picks up steam in the second part where each of the major characters is analyzed and Winters essentially assigns blame to the various actors. This part, I thought, was fascinating both in its conclusions and the information that it presents about how each person/group viewed the situation in the framework of their world views. Unfortunately, Fr. Winters is prone to moralizing and the same kind of viewpoint rigidity that he criticizes in the book, so it lapses back into repetition in the conclusion, which is pretty preachy. But on the whole, it was an enjoyable and quick read, and I think its main point, that Vietnam was Kennedy's unfortunate and avoidable reaction to the horrors of nuclear war in Europe, is convincing and novel enough to be given a look. Any of the more negative parts of the book are well-balanced by its short length and the really interesting middle section.

Francis X. Winters has written what the Vietnamese both in Viet Nam and the overseas have been saying for decades. The only differences between the Vietnamese version versus Winters' is that he had unearth rare documents and conducted fascinating interviews to support his claim. There are many books about Viet Nam; however, "The Year of the Hare" stands alone from 1963-1964.

This book did not set off any light bulb in my mind. Those readers who have read other accounts of the 1963 coup in Vietnam (e.g., by Bernard Fall, or the Pentagon Papers) will not gain any new insight from this one. About the cleverest part of the book is its title. Unfortunately, even that effort failed: The author did not realize that, for a year that the Chinese consider the year of the hare, the Vietnamese call it the year of the cat.

In a "letter to the Editor" published in National Review Magazine of 3/24/89, I've already pointed out the blattant errors made by Mr. Winters in his article "They Shoot Allies, Don't They?" published by the same magazine in its 11/25/88. Factual errors that he had to recognize like: Ho Chi Minh was born in Hue, Thich Tri Quang was a successful lawer, The HCM Trail was started in 1962, ... This book is a development of that article and consequently the errors are even bigger. Let's look at the book's most important question: Why did President Kennedy wanted to replace President Diem, an ally of 9 years? To answer this question correctly and completly, we have to look beyond Kennedy's political ambition, beyond the election of 1964. To fully answer to this question, Mr. Winters must also think of other questions: Why did the U.S. support then stop the support to the Shah of Iran, Somoza, Noriega, Marcos, ...? Beside other factors, the most important one is "THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE" of Iran, of Nicaragua, of the Phillippines, of Vietnam. This factor is totally absent from Mr. Winters' book. The only shadow of the author's interest in the "people" is in the title of his book. And I agree with the previous comentator that even "the year of the hare" is, unknown to Mr. Winters, unapplicable to the Vietnamese. * A Vietnamese in Sacramento, California.