Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 by Mark Moyar, Ph.D. 542 pages (August 28, 2006) Cambridge University Press. This is a profound book that not only provides deep insight into the origins of the Vietnam War but also serves as an important case history of American government decision making. Heroes and villains abound as political, military, geo-strategic, and personal motives of the many players from the United States, North and South Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, and other countries interact. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson struggled to balance the need to contain aggressive international Communism against domestic political concerns and public apathy. Many in the press, particularly Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam of the New York Times, were idealists angered by government and military secrecy and alarmed by what they saw as oppressive, undemocratic actions of the regime of S. Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. They distorted reality as they emphasized the negative in their dispatches (and later books) and fed the appetites of the ambitious and opportunistic opponents of Diem and the U.S. policy. Many Asians, unfamiliar with the U.S. free press, interpreted what they read in influential American publications as reflections of U.S. policy, thereby undermining the real policy. Opposing camps within the White House, State Department, CIA and DoD railed against one another and even acted in open defiance of their orders, particularly Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.

Meanwhile, on the ground, Diem's army was actually doing well by 1962-1963 in resisting Communist military action and had organized the strategic hamlet program to give the rural populations some security. Diem remained a reasonably popular leader and progress was being made on many fronts. But Ambassador Lodge was not satisfied with Diem and opposed President Kennedy politically. As Moyar amply documents, Lodge's unauthorized machinations led directly to the November 1963 coup against Diem, the murder of Diem and his brother, and all the sequels that forced the U.S. into a massive commitment of ground troops in 1965.

Using primary sources, including Communist government papers and many Vietnamese sources, Moyar reveals the tangled strands of this fabric. He illuminates with fresh insight how good intentions, strategic calculus, and important policy imperatives became mixed with incompetence, ambition, faulty intelligence, intentional bad press, bureaucratic infighting, political backstabbing and in some cases hopeless naivete, determining the actions and failures to act that shaped the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Defeat was twice snatched from the jaws of victory in Vietnam: once in 1963 when the relatively successful Diem was deposed and later, after Tet in 1968, when success on the ground was squandered by political retreat on the homefront.

There are many lessons in this book, for understanding at a deeper level what happened in Vietnam and also as a guide to the present day's dilemma of Iraq. There is a parallel between Iraq and Vietnam, but its not the oft-repeated Q-word (quagmire). Rather, the lesson is that resolute action can be decisive but requires strong leadership and a shared sense of purpose that unites all the forces and players behind victory. Fractious half-measures almost guarantee failure.

Mark Moyar is classed as a revisionist historian since he does not follow the orthodox story line of Vietnam as a disastrous American mistake. At this point, it is up to the orthodox historians who disagree with Moyar to prove him wrong. Meanwhile, to the extent that the problem is, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it (Santayana)" this book is the antidote.

Note: For further understanding of this book and the issues raised, click on the title link to read many important reviews posted on Amazon.com including some words from Dr. Moyar.