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Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 1st Edition

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 139 ratings

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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.
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A full-blooded member of what he calls the "revisionist school" of Vietnam War historians, Moyar firmly believes that America's longest and most controversial overseas war was "a worthy but improperly executed enterprise." His fiercely argued book, which covers the early years of American involvement in the war, is an unabated salvo against what he calls the "orthodox school" that sees American involvement in the war as "wrongheaded and unjust." The main villains are former Vietnam War correspondents David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan; former U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge; and just about anyone else who had bad things to say about South Vietnamese premier Ngo Dinh Diem and good things to say about Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Though Moyar marshals many primary sources to buttress his political point of view, he undermines his argument by disparaging those he disagrees with (calling Sheehan and Halberstam, for example, "indignant," "vengeful," and "self-righteous"). He also showers praise on those who backed Diem, the autocratic leader who stifled the press and his political opponents. Revisionists will embrace the book; the orthodox will see it as more evidence of a vast, right-wing conspiracy. (Oct. 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

This thoroughly researched and richly informative history of the Vietnam War examines first the war's central characters and countries in the years leading up to 1954. Moyar contends that South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who has been incessantly depicted as an obtuse, tyrannical reactionary by some historians, was in reality a very wise and effective leader. Moyar states that supporting the November 1963 coup was the worst American mistake of the war, that President Kennedy had no plans to abandon his South Vietnamese allies after the 1964 election, and that President Johnson's lack of forcefulness in Vietnam in late 1964 and early 1965 squandered America's deterrent power and led to a decision in Hanoi to invade South Vietnam with large North Vietnamese army units. Moyar notes that historians have argued that an American ground-troop presence in Laos would not have stopped most of the infiltration, but much new evidence contradicts this contention. Where the U.S. committed major errors, he writes, was in formulating strategies for defending South Vietnam. A valuable appraisal. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; 1st edition (August 28, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0521869110
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521869119
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.05 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 139 ratings

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Mark Moyar
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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
139 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2024
great book to read
Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2014
I feel that I must write about my thoughts before I read this book in order to try to explain how great this book is. I was in Vietnam in 1968. Graduated from high school in 1965. Like 99% of Americans I never knew much about Vietnam or the war. I always assumed that the government was privileged to information I did not have and they were able to make the call for war based on that Information. I have always felt that the war could have been won, but was lost in congress and because of the protesters. In the years since I would blame Robert Strange McNamara for fabricating an engagement in the Tonkin Gulf between an American war ship and a Chinese junk to justify starting a war. Democrat friends would tell me that Eisenhower started the war. We were told that we had to fight the war to stop the domino effect of communism, which really carried no weight. I have always hated John Kerry and Jane Fonda and feel that they should be shot as traitors,even today. I have on my shelf the books Vietnam a History and A Bright and Sinning Lie and I had planned on getting The Best and the Brightest. After reading this book I will never read those tomes nor will I allow anyone else to read my copies. I do not think it is a stretch to blame David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, and Henry Cabot Lodge for 58,000+ lives lost in Vietnam. I have a different opinion about JFK and Bobby Kennedy. I had heard stories in the past that we were sucked into Vietnam because we supported Ngo Dinh Diem the corrupt leader of South Vietnam. After reading this book I feel like he was the Vietnam version of Lincoln. After reading this book I have to believe that most if not all the blood shed could have been avoided if Eisenhower or Kennedy had remained president, if Kennedy had not sent Henry Cabot Lodge to Vietnam. If the New York Times reporter Halberstam done his job. The war definitely could have been shortened if LBJ would have listened to the advice of others and used the power he had at his disposal, instead of trying to play games of a limited war. I observed that while I was in Vietnam, when LBJ would halt the bombing up North the activity down South would increase. As the book points out LBJ was a coward from childhood. I wish to thank Mark for the second most important book in my 1200 book library, second only to the Bible. To quote the last sentence of the book " The war in Vietnam that America's young men were about to fight, therefore, was not to be a foolish war fought under wise constraints, but a wise war fought under foolish constraints."
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Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2023
I held off reading a comprhensive history of the Vietnam war for fifty years because I knew the prevailing narrative to be false. The only negative is book's small type. It is going to take a long time to finish as my eighty year old Vietnam veteren eyes can only take so much at a time.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2013
I'm a newcomer to the study of the Vietnam War, and this book is one of the first I've read so far. As author Mark Moyar explains, his book is the first of two volumes covering the war. The dividing line between this and a proposed second volume comes at July 28, 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson announced a huge build up in Vietnam (page xi). Moyar also explains that his approach is an example of what has come to be known as the "revisionist" position.

An aside: I don't particularly like the term "revisionist," because all history somehow revises what has been said before. Not to mention that "revisionist" is often used in a pejorative sense. However, "revisionist" historians of the Vietnam War, a distinct minority, appear to have embraced the label as they stand opposed to the "orthodox" majority. So, if the label is good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

Moyar notes that orthodox historians tend to look down on and dismiss their revisionist colleagues. But they shouldn't. Why? Because, as Moyar attempts to show, the war was not "wrongheaded and unjust." Instead, it was "a noble but improperly executed enterprise" (xi). Having said that, Moyar sets out to prove his basic point by reviewing the major characters, battles, procedures, and policy decisions.

Much of what Moyar presents is impressive, leading the reader to accept the basic thesis. However, there's a downside that undercuts Moyar's effort. Often, the characters in the story that Moyar tells are either great saints or terrible sinners. For example, Ngo Din Diem could hardly do anything wrong. On the other hand, Lyndon Baines Johnson was a pathetic ninny. Such characterizations are especially strong whenever a major player is first introduced. Thus, one of the first things we learn about John Paul Vann, one of Moyar's villains, is that his mother was a prostitute. This over-the-top kind of presentation leads the reader to suspect that the real person Moyar is describing was much more likable and honest than Moyar is willing to admit. For that reason, I think that his book would be even more successful in achieving its goals if it came across as more balanced, not so strongly tendentious.

I should add that Mark Moyar has done his homework. The amount of detail in the description, and the painstaking research revealed by the endnotes, is truly impressive. The reader gets the idea that Moyar could defend his "revisionist" position on the war about as well as anyone. And that's what makes this such a fine book: it forcefully advances a contested interpretation of the war. The reader never doubts that Moyar believes what he's saying and that he thinks the differences between the two positions are significant.
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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars an excellent unbiased scientific exposition
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 9, 2021
This monograph presents the research of the author in the most unbiased and scientific manner that I have encountered in recent years. Usually, books written after the 1970's express the opinions and prejudice of their authors who overwhelmingly attempt to either skew or blur reality and indoctrinate towards a single ideological pathway. The current monograph is a welcome exception to the attempts of certain extremely influential groups to falsify their research and to obscure reality.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Turns your view on Vietnam on its head.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2018
Brilliant and contrary view of the Vietnam war in it's early years. An essential companion to the Ken Burns series, and shows how glibly the Burns account and other mainstream histories treat the Diem regime and his eventual murder.
Xander
4.0 out of 5 stars Provides an interesting, original and convincing new unorthodox historical interpretation of why the Vietnam War was lost.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 20, 2013
Before delving into historical literature surrounding the Vietnam War, I must confess my understanding of the conflict was largely shaped by the innumerable films Hollywood has churned out on the subject. However prior to reading Triumph Forsaken, I read The Tunnels of Cu Chi which did much to dispel many different myths surrounding the war and gave me a rudimentary understanding of the overall conflict in South Vietnam between the Viet Cong and Diem's forces. The impression I got from this book was that the South Vietnamese forces were both unwilling and incapable of dealing with the tunneling system, and by extension with the Vietcong. The view that Diem's government and armed forces were doomed to fail was constantly reinforced.

That's what made subsequently reading Moyar's work so fascinating. It challenges orthodox historical interpretations of the Vietnam War and uses a good range of American, South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese sources to back up its claims. I particularly admired the manner in which Moyar demonstrates how much of a negative impact the Western media had for the South Vietnamese war effort. The point that the war was lost at home in the States is one that has already been well made elsewhere. But the point that much of the media was misrepresentative of the war and based on a false Orientalist view of Vietnam seemed strikingly original and convincing.

The only relatively serious critique I can think of, is that I do not believe enough of the book is dedicated to explaining why some in the South Vietnamese population did decide to join the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong's ability to recruit a not insignificant minority of the population seems contradictory to the argument that the South Vietnamese people were indeed pro Diem, and his lack of support was largely a false media perception. Not to say it is ignored competely, but rather glossed over. Perhaps this is due to the desire of the author to support his key argument by failing to examine its potential weaknesses thoroughly? Or perhaps I am attaching too much importance to this point, but it is one I think is worth mentioning.

Despite that penultimate paragraph I'd like to make it clear this is in my opinion an excellent book, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an unorthodox, but convincing interpretation of why the Vietnam War was lost. I am eagerly anticipating the next volume.
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