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The Making of a Quagmire
s/t: America & Vietnam During the Kennedy Era
Pulitzer-prize winning author David Halberstam's eyewitness account of the most critical political period of U.S. involvement in Vietnamthe Kennedy/Diem era remains as fresh and stimulating today as when it was first published in 1965. In the introduction to this edition, historian Daniel J. Singal provides crucial background information that was unavailable when the book was written.
Pulitzer-prize winning author David Halberstam's eyewitness account of the most critical political period of U.S. involvement in Vietnamthe Kennedy/Diem era remains as fresh and stimulating today as when it was first published in 1965. In the introduction to this edition, historian Daniel J. Singal provides crucial background information that was unavailable when the book was written.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
44 people are currently reading
668 people want to read
About the author
David Halberstam
97 books876 followersDavid Halberstam was an American journalist and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and later, sports journalism. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964.
Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, he covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement.
In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for The New York Times. While there, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. In 1963, he received a George Polk Award for his reporting at the New York Times. At the age of 30, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.
Halberstam's most well known work is The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam focused on the paradox that those who shaped the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America—"the best and the brightest"—and yet those same individuals were responsible for the failure of the United States Vientnam policy.
After publication of The Best and the Brightest in 1972, Halberstam plunged right into another book and in 1979 published The Powers That Be. The book provided profiles of men like William Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time magazine, Phil Graham of The Washington Post—and many others.
Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of sports, publishing The Breaks of the Game, an inside look at the Bill Walton and the 1978 Portland Trailblazers basketball team; an ambitious book on Michael Jordan in 1999 called Playing for Keeps; and on the pennant race battle between the Yankees and Red Sox called Summer of '49.
Halberstam published two books in the 1960s, three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980s, and six books in the 1990s. He published four books in the 2000s and was on a pace to publish six or more books in that decade before his death.
David Halberstam was killed in a car crash on April 23, 2007 in Menlo Park, California.
Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, he covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement.
In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for The New York Times. While there, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. In 1963, he received a George Polk Award for his reporting at the New York Times. At the age of 30, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.
Halberstam's most well known work is The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam focused on the paradox that those who shaped the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America—"the best and the brightest"—and yet those same individuals were responsible for the failure of the United States Vientnam policy.
After publication of The Best and the Brightest in 1972, Halberstam plunged right into another book and in 1979 published The Powers That Be. The book provided profiles of men like William Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time magazine, Phil Graham of The Washington Post—and many others.
Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of sports, publishing The Breaks of the Game, an inside look at the Bill Walton and the 1978 Portland Trailblazers basketball team; an ambitious book on Michael Jordan in 1999 called Playing for Keeps; and on the pennant race battle between the Yankees and Red Sox called Summer of '49.
Halberstam published two books in the 1960s, three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980s, and six books in the 1990s. He published four books in the 2000s and was on a pace to publish six or more books in that decade before his death.
David Halberstam was killed in a car crash on April 23, 2007 in Menlo Park, California.
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April 10, 2022
Note: I changed my mind and finished this book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson warned against reading bad books, for they are a waste of time and a distraction from the eminent works of humanity's wisdom. Arthur Schopenhauer urged his readers to strive to think independently instead of hampering their thinking with pernicious thoughts from books that stifle, like weeds, the good crops of independent thought.
To winnow valuable works from bad ones, I first inquire into the author, so before I started THE MAKING OF A QUAGMIRE, I had already researched David Halberstam. His irresponsible, biased, and sensationalist reporting on Vietnam (for which he earned a Pulitzer Prize) convinced me I should not trust a word of his. However, the lack of negative reviews of his book piqued my interest. I decided to see for myself what was so amazing about it. Unfortunately, my initial apprehensions were confirmed, for THE MAKING OF A QUAGMIRE turned out to be one of those harmful books Emerson and Schopenhauer warned us about, which, knowing the truth about "his [Halberstam's] skillful coverage of Vietnam from mid-1962 to late 1963," is not surprising.
At the age of twenty-eight, David Halberstam arrived in Saigon in the fall of 1962 as a New York Times correspondent to succeed Homer Bigart, whom Diem had expelled that summer. Bigart and his Newsweek colleague, François Sully, who were not getting enough information from American officials in Saigon, had been quenching their thirst by writing numerous negative articles on South Vietnam's government, undermining Diem's authority. What most American reporters did not understand was that the Vietnamese were no Americans. The American tradition of complete freedom of speech was foreign to them. When asked about the expulsions by another American journalist, Diem said, "You belong to a rich and powerful country. You may find that South Vietnam is not quite America. It is your right. But why try to humiliate and defame us while we are fighting a terrible war for our survival and for the defense of a vital border of the free world?" He was right. Security and regimentation were far more important to the Saigon government fighting a tough war against increasing numbers of Communist guerrillas than American-style liberalization.
Nevertheless, I am sure the Prime Minister had eventually bitterly regretted expelling Bigart, for he got David Halberstam as a replacement, and no other journalist did more harm to the interests of the United States and Diem in Vietnam than Halberstam.
Bursting with youthful confidence and enthusiasm, he believed he was entitled to receive all the information he wanted. When government officials did not follow his script or the American military excluded the press from military operations (Why should they trust journalists who felt no obligation to support the government's policies with sensitive information?), he became indignant and vengeful, shocking both South Vietnam's government and some of the more experienced reporters. Nick Turner, a Reuters correspondent in Saigon, observed, "I could understand Dave being angry and wanting to use his position to change many of the things that were wrong. But it often carried over into personal vendettas and often he saw things in clear-cut ideas that were not always clear-cut." Even Neil Sheehan, Halberstam's colleague and friend who also played a vital role in turning influential Americans and Vietnamese against Diem, admitted that Halberstam “was a man who saw the world in light and dark colors with little shading in between.”
While Halberstam did not mean to damage South Vietnam's war effort, he tended to choose the wrong heroes. Sheehan and he became enamored with Colonel John Paul Vann, the ARVN 7th Division's senior adviser, who was more dishonest in his dealing with the press than Sheehan admitted in his book A Bright Shining Lie. The two young journalists considered the Colonel a brave man because he convinced them he was sacrificing promotion by telling the press about the South Vietnamese army’s shortcomings and contradicting the optimistic official line. In fact, he could never be promoted due to a statutory rape accusation.
Vann took special efforts to endear himself to Halberstam, understanding the usefulness of having a New York Times reporter on his side. He fed Sheehan and him grossly misleading information about battles and the South Vietnamese, exaggerating their ineptitude. The journalists based their reports on his accounts, further damaging Diem's regime's reputation and war effort.
David Halberstam was not only delusional, though. During the Buddhist crisis of 1963, he demonstrated he was also deliberately deceptive.
After Sheehan, Malcolm Browne, Peter Kalischer, Peter Arnett, and he arrived at the scene of the July 7, 1963 Buddhist protest, which they had been tipped off about by protesters, they were caught into a scuffle between the Buddhists and the police. They began snapping pictures and objected vehemently to the policemen's efforts to stop the demonstration. According to the reporters' subsequent fiery complaint to President John F. Kennedy, a policeman had knocked Arnett to the ground, kicking him repeatedly. Furthermore, they claimed that they had been covering a peaceful Buddhist ceremony and that Diem had mounted a campaign of open intimidation and violence, turning South Vietnam into a police state. However, Ambassador Frederick Nolting's deputy, William Trueheart, reported a totally different version of events to Washington. He complained about the American journalists' hatred of and aggression towards the Diem regime and asserted that according to witness accounts one of the reporters had hit the policeman first Malcolm Browne, who was close enough to Arnett to defend him if the policeman were as aggressive as the reporters claimed, had been calmly snapping pictures.
Halberstam also claimed that Diem's allegedly cruel treatment of the Buddhists would provoke his overthrow as soon as American officials indicated their approval and that in fact the Americans wanted a new government in Saigon. That was an outright lie. The top three Americans in Vietnam – Ambassador Nolting, General Harkins, and CIA Saigon station chief John H. Richardson – preferred the existing government, as did many other civilians and military officers. In his book, Halberstam complains that "[t]hey [Nolting, Harkins, and Richardson] felt we were inaccurate and biased; . . . and they longed for control over us." I wonder why! Halberstam and his colleagues' lies harmed South Vietnam. South Vietnamese elites, aware that Diem could not survive without American support and his own military leaders, took such articles as evidence that Diem might soon be overthrown and switched sides, further undermining the current government's standing. Although he praised Halberstam's writing and research as "brilliant" and "exhaustive," CIA Saigon Chief William Colby wrote that if successful, the reporter's efforts to precipitate the overthrow of a functioning government in a time of war guaranteed that whatever would come afterwards would be worse.
The portrait of David Halberstam that emerges from all of the aforementioned is unflattering. Now lets look at the book itself.
Halberstam presents the Buddhist crisis as a conflict between an oppressive minority government and an oppressed majority population. He claims that about 70 percent of the Vietnamese people considered themselves Buddhist and that the conflict had religious overtones because Diem and most of his close associates were Roman Catholic.
First, Diem's administration was religiously diverse because the American government pressured Diem to hire more Buddhists so that he would not seem too partial to the Roman Catholic minority. Second, the important question is not how many Buddhists there were in South Vietnam, but how many of them the protest leaders actually represented. After the self-immolation of Buddhist monks, one monk told correspondent Marguerite Higgins (Our Vietnam Nightmare), “No true Buddhist would commit suicide. It is written in the verses of Buddha that suicide is wrong. Buddha says that a man’s responsibility is to mend his own life, not to meddle in politics. So those men who are, according to your newspaper article, marching in the streets [of Hue and Saigon] are not Buddhists. They betray Buddhism.” Higgins replied that those people were believed by her compatriots to represent Buddhism. Then the monk said, “White men have brought many things to Vietnam. But white men have not brought much understanding to Vietnam.”
Halberstam continues his attack on Diem by mocking his allegedly quixotic attitude, inability to carry out the hamlet program, and "reputation for appointing police-state hacks to key positions." In fact, however, it was the American government, with Harriman and Hilsman from the State Department at the lead, who dictated to Diem whom to appoint. According to Colby, Diem was a practical, able leader, who knew what was best for Vietnam because he saw it from the Vietnamese perspective. The more the State Department meddled into his administration, the less effective it became. Not to mention that Halberstam should be more worried about who was appointed to key positions after Diem was assassinated in the coup he had so avidly promoted: Diem's overthrow was followed by the replacement of all his supporters, the able and knowledgeable governing elite, with chaotic military juntas.
Another topic that demonstrates how dishonest Halberstam is in his book is Madame Nhu. He assigns to her so much power and influence that it seems as if Diem and Nhu were a couple of naive, detached intellectuals completely under her control. That was, of course, not the case. While Madame Nhu did involve herself in state affairs as deeply as her brother-in-law and husband permitted her, working with dedication on behalf of feminist causes and offering political advice, the Ngo brothers saw her mainly as a family member who had to be tolerated, only sometimes listening to her because she was smart. A palace insider observed that Nhu, a proud and highly intelligent man, would have hardly hearkened much to his young wife, who "was just a co-ed from a French school who had not even passed her baccalaureate examination."
The trouble with Madame was that she had an aptitude for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment. For instance, when the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself, she described the self-immolation as "barbecue," offending American feelings. But that's how American journalists were calling the suicide in private, and she had picked up such an un-Vietnamese description from them. Halberstam and his colleagues neglected to mention that detail when using her words to incite Americans against Diem.
In general, there is too much inaccuracy in Halberstam's account. Although he makes some interesting observations about the ARVN, at which he had the opportunity to take a close look by following some of its divisions into the villages, I am not inclined to believe him. The lack of bibliography and the excessive quantity of snide remarks strengthen his air of untrustworthiness by making his study look unscholarly. The fact that he was in Vietnam does not automatically mean he is telling the truth and does not have to support his claims with evidence. I do not recommend THE MAKING OF A QUAGMIRE, for it presents a distorted version of events that can harm the reader's understanding of the Vietnam War.
Ralph Waldo Emerson warned against reading bad books, for they are a waste of time and a distraction from the eminent works of humanity's wisdom. Arthur Schopenhauer urged his readers to strive to think independently instead of hampering their thinking with pernicious thoughts from books that stifle, like weeds, the good crops of independent thought.
To winnow valuable works from bad ones, I first inquire into the author, so before I started THE MAKING OF A QUAGMIRE, I had already researched David Halberstam. His irresponsible, biased, and sensationalist reporting on Vietnam (for which he earned a Pulitzer Prize) convinced me I should not trust a word of his. However, the lack of negative reviews of his book piqued my interest. I decided to see for myself what was so amazing about it. Unfortunately, my initial apprehensions were confirmed, for THE MAKING OF A QUAGMIRE turned out to be one of those harmful books Emerson and Schopenhauer warned us about, which, knowing the truth about "his [Halberstam's] skillful coverage of Vietnam from mid-1962 to late 1963," is not surprising.
At the age of twenty-eight, David Halberstam arrived in Saigon in the fall of 1962 as a New York Times correspondent to succeed Homer Bigart, whom Diem had expelled that summer. Bigart and his Newsweek colleague, François Sully, who were not getting enough information from American officials in Saigon, had been quenching their thirst by writing numerous negative articles on South Vietnam's government, undermining Diem's authority. What most American reporters did not understand was that the Vietnamese were no Americans. The American tradition of complete freedom of speech was foreign to them. When asked about the expulsions by another American journalist, Diem said, "You belong to a rich and powerful country. You may find that South Vietnam is not quite America. It is your right. But why try to humiliate and defame us while we are fighting a terrible war for our survival and for the defense of a vital border of the free world?" He was right. Security and regimentation were far more important to the Saigon government fighting a tough war against increasing numbers of Communist guerrillas than American-style liberalization.
Nevertheless, I am sure the Prime Minister had eventually bitterly regretted expelling Bigart, for he got David Halberstam as a replacement, and no other journalist did more harm to the interests of the United States and Diem in Vietnam than Halberstam.
Bursting with youthful confidence and enthusiasm, he believed he was entitled to receive all the information he wanted. When government officials did not follow his script or the American military excluded the press from military operations (Why should they trust journalists who felt no obligation to support the government's policies with sensitive information?), he became indignant and vengeful, shocking both South Vietnam's government and some of the more experienced reporters. Nick Turner, a Reuters correspondent in Saigon, observed, "I could understand Dave being angry and wanting to use his position to change many of the things that were wrong. But it often carried over into personal vendettas and often he saw things in clear-cut ideas that were not always clear-cut." Even Neil Sheehan, Halberstam's colleague and friend who also played a vital role in turning influential Americans and Vietnamese against Diem, admitted that Halberstam “was a man who saw the world in light and dark colors with little shading in between.”
While Halberstam did not mean to damage South Vietnam's war effort, he tended to choose the wrong heroes. Sheehan and he became enamored with Colonel John Paul Vann, the ARVN 7th Division's senior adviser, who was more dishonest in his dealing with the press than Sheehan admitted in his book A Bright Shining Lie. The two young journalists considered the Colonel a brave man because he convinced them he was sacrificing promotion by telling the press about the South Vietnamese army’s shortcomings and contradicting the optimistic official line. In fact, he could never be promoted due to a statutory rape accusation.
Vann took special efforts to endear himself to Halberstam, understanding the usefulness of having a New York Times reporter on his side. He fed Sheehan and him grossly misleading information about battles and the South Vietnamese, exaggerating their ineptitude. The journalists based their reports on his accounts, further damaging Diem's regime's reputation and war effort.
David Halberstam was not only delusional, though. During the Buddhist crisis of 1963, he demonstrated he was also deliberately deceptive.
After Sheehan, Malcolm Browne, Peter Kalischer, Peter Arnett, and he arrived at the scene of the July 7, 1963 Buddhist protest, which they had been tipped off about by protesters, they were caught into a scuffle between the Buddhists and the police. They began snapping pictures and objected vehemently to the policemen's efforts to stop the demonstration. According to the reporters' subsequent fiery complaint to President John F. Kennedy, a policeman had knocked Arnett to the ground, kicking him repeatedly. Furthermore, they claimed that they had been covering a peaceful Buddhist ceremony and that Diem had mounted a campaign of open intimidation and violence, turning South Vietnam into a police state. However, Ambassador Frederick Nolting's deputy, William Trueheart, reported a totally different version of events to Washington. He complained about the American journalists' hatred of and aggression towards the Diem regime and asserted that according to witness accounts one of the reporters had hit the policeman first Malcolm Browne, who was close enough to Arnett to defend him if the policeman were as aggressive as the reporters claimed, had been calmly snapping pictures.
Halberstam also claimed that Diem's allegedly cruel treatment of the Buddhists would provoke his overthrow as soon as American officials indicated their approval and that in fact the Americans wanted a new government in Saigon. That was an outright lie. The top three Americans in Vietnam – Ambassador Nolting, General Harkins, and CIA Saigon station chief John H. Richardson – preferred the existing government, as did many other civilians and military officers. In his book, Halberstam complains that "[t]hey [Nolting, Harkins, and Richardson] felt we were inaccurate and biased; . . . and they longed for control over us." I wonder why! Halberstam and his colleagues' lies harmed South Vietnam. South Vietnamese elites, aware that Diem could not survive without American support and his own military leaders, took such articles as evidence that Diem might soon be overthrown and switched sides, further undermining the current government's standing. Although he praised Halberstam's writing and research as "brilliant" and "exhaustive," CIA Saigon Chief William Colby wrote that if successful, the reporter's efforts to precipitate the overthrow of a functioning government in a time of war guaranteed that whatever would come afterwards would be worse.
The portrait of David Halberstam that emerges from all of the aforementioned is unflattering. Now lets look at the book itself.
Halberstam presents the Buddhist crisis as a conflict between an oppressive minority government and an oppressed majority population. He claims that about 70 percent of the Vietnamese people considered themselves Buddhist and that the conflict had religious overtones because Diem and most of his close associates were Roman Catholic.
First, Diem's administration was religiously diverse because the American government pressured Diem to hire more Buddhists so that he would not seem too partial to the Roman Catholic minority. Second, the important question is not how many Buddhists there were in South Vietnam, but how many of them the protest leaders actually represented. After the self-immolation of Buddhist monks, one monk told correspondent Marguerite Higgins (Our Vietnam Nightmare), “No true Buddhist would commit suicide. It is written in the verses of Buddha that suicide is wrong. Buddha says that a man’s responsibility is to mend his own life, not to meddle in politics. So those men who are, according to your newspaper article, marching in the streets [of Hue and Saigon] are not Buddhists. They betray Buddhism.” Higgins replied that those people were believed by her compatriots to represent Buddhism. Then the monk said, “White men have brought many things to Vietnam. But white men have not brought much understanding to Vietnam.”
Halberstam continues his attack on Diem by mocking his allegedly quixotic attitude, inability to carry out the hamlet program, and "reputation for appointing police-state hacks to key positions." In fact, however, it was the American government, with Harriman and Hilsman from the State Department at the lead, who dictated to Diem whom to appoint. According to Colby, Diem was a practical, able leader, who knew what was best for Vietnam because he saw it from the Vietnamese perspective. The more the State Department meddled into his administration, the less effective it became. Not to mention that Halberstam should be more worried about who was appointed to key positions after Diem was assassinated in the coup he had so avidly promoted: Diem's overthrow was followed by the replacement of all his supporters, the able and knowledgeable governing elite, with chaotic military juntas.
Another topic that demonstrates how dishonest Halberstam is in his book is Madame Nhu. He assigns to her so much power and influence that it seems as if Diem and Nhu were a couple of naive, detached intellectuals completely under her control. That was, of course, not the case. While Madame Nhu did involve herself in state affairs as deeply as her brother-in-law and husband permitted her, working with dedication on behalf of feminist causes and offering political advice, the Ngo brothers saw her mainly as a family member who had to be tolerated, only sometimes listening to her because she was smart. A palace insider observed that Nhu, a proud and highly intelligent man, would have hardly hearkened much to his young wife, who "was just a co-ed from a French school who had not even passed her baccalaureate examination."
The trouble with Madame was that she had an aptitude for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment. For instance, when the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself, she described the self-immolation as "barbecue," offending American feelings. But that's how American journalists were calling the suicide in private, and she had picked up such an un-Vietnamese description from them. Halberstam and his colleagues neglected to mention that detail when using her words to incite Americans against Diem.
In general, there is too much inaccuracy in Halberstam's account. Although he makes some interesting observations about the ARVN, at which he had the opportunity to take a close look by following some of its divisions into the villages, I am not inclined to believe him. The lack of bibliography and the excessive quantity of snide remarks strengthen his air of untrustworthiness by making his study look unscholarly. The fact that he was in Vietnam does not automatically mean he is telling the truth and does not have to support his claims with evidence. I do not recommend THE MAKING OF A QUAGMIRE, for it presents a distorted version of events that can harm the reader's understanding of the Vietnam War.
May 7, 2019
As a former child who grew up in A Viet Nam vet's home and all the strange people associated with him and that war this book really cuts deep.
I myself was in high school in the 80's, the war was not that far back in the social consciousness certainly not in my home.
What we knew then was that the ensuing war was a waste of time, it was a disaster waiting to happen and 58, 220 lives were spent on that fantasy.
Against all recommendations I too went into the military and saw first hand that lives like mine were nothing but numbers...we have intelligent people like Halberstam telling us good advice and we fail to listen. We have intelligent people telling us to stay out of the Middle East and we fail to listen...eighteen years and no end in sight.
We need to stop being sheep and start thinking for ourselves.
Books like this need to be read and discussed in school but we have a school system where you never read A BOOK, let alone stacks. Same goes for college, you go through four years and never read A BOOK.
Keep the people stupid so they don't question the next war...and there will always be a next war.
I myself was in high school in the 80's, the war was not that far back in the social consciousness certainly not in my home.
What we knew then was that the ensuing war was a waste of time, it was a disaster waiting to happen and 58, 220 lives were spent on that fantasy.
Against all recommendations I too went into the military and saw first hand that lives like mine were nothing but numbers...we have intelligent people like Halberstam telling us good advice and we fail to listen. We have intelligent people telling us to stay out of the Middle East and we fail to listen...eighteen years and no end in sight.
We need to stop being sheep and start thinking for ourselves.
Books like this need to be read and discussed in school but we have a school system where you never read A BOOK, let alone stacks. Same goes for college, you go through four years and never read A BOOK.
Keep the people stupid so they don't question the next war...and there will always be a next war.
February 13, 2018
The Making of a Quagmire is an absolutely heartbreaking look, a clear-eyed examination of the failures of the Vietnam War that came out just a little too late to make a difference. Halberstam drew on his experience as a reporter to chart in detail three related problems.
The first was the government of Ngo Dinh Diem: isolated, corrupt, paranoid, Diem and his brother and sister-in-law the Nhus were the rotting head of South Vietnamese politics. Everything was cast through the lens of personal loyalty and palace intrigue. At one point, there were 13 separate and warring secret police factions. Competent men who told the truth were punished, corrupt toadies rewarded. Even as American aid and advice flowed in, it was absorbed by the infinite avarice of the South Vietnamese ruling class, rather than the peasants who were the center of gravity of the war.
The second side was the War in the Delta, and the related propaganda war on the American home front. ARVN units lacked the leadership to pursue and destroy Viet Cong forces, as commanders who lost troops were sacked. The Strategic Hamlet program was a twisted joke of forced relocation against a profoundly place-based culture. Meanwhile, General Harkins at MACV and various figures in the State department were feeding back the same optimistic and fundamentally false stats. Halberstam and the other reporters were ordered to get on the team, or get out.
The final bit is the Buddhist Crisis and the coup that depose Diem and the Nhus in 1963. Through an escalating series of missteps, the Diem government forced a showdown with the last vestige of independent civil society, the Buddhist masses. As protests rocked the streets, the CIA orchestrated a coup that brought down Diem, and replaced him with a rotating set of empty suits.
As Halberstam demonstrates again and again, American diplomacy was simply incapable of meaningfully changing the political culture of South Vietnam. New technological weapons like helicopters and APCs could provide a temporary advantage, but couldn't alter the fundamental dynamics of peasant political war. This book, written post '63 and published in 1965, predicted exactly what actually happened with the escalation. It seems like no one in power read it, and they certainly failed to understand its lessons.
The first was the government of Ngo Dinh Diem: isolated, corrupt, paranoid, Diem and his brother and sister-in-law the Nhus were the rotting head of South Vietnamese politics. Everything was cast through the lens of personal loyalty and palace intrigue. At one point, there were 13 separate and warring secret police factions. Competent men who told the truth were punished, corrupt toadies rewarded. Even as American aid and advice flowed in, it was absorbed by the infinite avarice of the South Vietnamese ruling class, rather than the peasants who were the center of gravity of the war.
The second side was the War in the Delta, and the related propaganda war on the American home front. ARVN units lacked the leadership to pursue and destroy Viet Cong forces, as commanders who lost troops were sacked. The Strategic Hamlet program was a twisted joke of forced relocation against a profoundly place-based culture. Meanwhile, General Harkins at MACV and various figures in the State department were feeding back the same optimistic and fundamentally false stats. Halberstam and the other reporters were ordered to get on the team, or get out.
The final bit is the Buddhist Crisis and the coup that depose Diem and the Nhus in 1963. Through an escalating series of missteps, the Diem government forced a showdown with the last vestige of independent civil society, the Buddhist masses. As protests rocked the streets, the CIA orchestrated a coup that brought down Diem, and replaced him with a rotating set of empty suits.
As Halberstam demonstrates again and again, American diplomacy was simply incapable of meaningfully changing the political culture of South Vietnam. New technological weapons like helicopters and APCs could provide a temporary advantage, but couldn't alter the fundamental dynamics of peasant political war. This book, written post '63 and published in 1965, predicted exactly what actually happened with the escalation. It seems like no one in power read it, and they certainly failed to understand its lessons.
May 23, 2012
This book was really amazing and really insightful of the war in Vietnam. It was well written and very descriptive and very accurate in telling what exactly happened.
May 8, 2007
Lays out in rigorous detail early American involvement in Vietnam and the fear that Soviet communism played in U.S. policy decisions.
January 30, 2022
This book is very special in that it offers a very clear and ground view of that was happening in Vietnam before the war really picked up from the American side. This contemporary account is still quite pertinent, even though it was published right before LBJ's escalation of the conflict, when hundreds of thousands of American troops were committed and the whole of Indochina was mercilessly bombed. It really is quite amazing to see how the wealthiest and most powerful nation in history at that time was foiled and humiliated by what amounted to armed peasants defending their land from foreign influence.
Already in this book Halberstam posits that a military solution is unrealizable and a political one would be tenuous at best, considering how corrupt and incompetent the South Vietnamese government was. This parasitic relationship between a client state with corrupt and manipulative leadership and its American benefactor is a recurrent theme in the Cold War, and it was successful in cases such as South Korea and Taiwan. It was an embarrassing failure in Vietnam, however. The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations thus face the dilemma of withdrawing, losing face, and emboldening their communist adversaries, or escalating the conflict when it became clear that the South Vietnamese government could not stand on its own. Each administration made mistakes in their dealings with the Nho-Nhu family and their rosy appraisals of the situation on the ground. However, it is entirely clear that the JFK government shares some of the blame, even if it did not intensify the conflict as his successor did.
As an addendum to this review, it is interesting to note the uncanny similarities that exist between this conflict and more modern wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but mainly the latter. I'm sure the future will provide us with analyses of why the US failed in the Middle East despite the harsh lesson it was supposed to learn in Vietnam. However, I will summarize they key parallels that make me write this paragraph:
-Lack of purpose in prosecuting the conflict, without a clear political solution in sight
-Dichotomy between losing face (the 9/11 attacks) and doubling down on initial key decisions
-Attempting to build nations with a Western model and imposing it on the population
-Shortage (or rather, cover up) of truthful intelligence and information
-Engaging in a parasitic relationship with a corrupt and ineffective government
Already in this book Halberstam posits that a military solution is unrealizable and a political one would be tenuous at best, considering how corrupt and incompetent the South Vietnamese government was. This parasitic relationship between a client state with corrupt and manipulative leadership and its American benefactor is a recurrent theme in the Cold War, and it was successful in cases such as South Korea and Taiwan. It was an embarrassing failure in Vietnam, however. The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations thus face the dilemma of withdrawing, losing face, and emboldening their communist adversaries, or escalating the conflict when it became clear that the South Vietnamese government could not stand on its own. Each administration made mistakes in their dealings with the Nho-Nhu family and their rosy appraisals of the situation on the ground. However, it is entirely clear that the JFK government shares some of the blame, even if it did not intensify the conflict as his successor did.
As an addendum to this review, it is interesting to note the uncanny similarities that exist between this conflict and more modern wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but mainly the latter. I'm sure the future will provide us with analyses of why the US failed in the Middle East despite the harsh lesson it was supposed to learn in Vietnam. However, I will summarize they key parallels that make me write this paragraph:
-Lack of purpose in prosecuting the conflict, without a clear political solution in sight
-Dichotomy between losing face (the 9/11 attacks) and doubling down on initial key decisions
-Attempting to build nations with a Western model and imposing it on the population
-Shortage (or rather, cover up) of truthful intelligence and information
-Engaging in a parasitic relationship with a corrupt and ineffective government
January 26, 2026
I’ve read Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie which was originally published in 1988. Halberstram, a colleague of Sheehan, wrote & had this book published in the mid 1960s. With the benefit of hindsight from A Bright Shining Lie, it makes Halberstram’s writings on the war in the early years kind of prophetic.
Halberstram & Sheehan were there to see this mess unfold in real time in the early days. Being good journalists, they wrote what they say and wrote their truths. Their truths were ugly & people don’t like an ugly truth yet they need to be said. I can see why this book wasn’t a commercial success when released, but it’s also likely public interest in the war stateside had not come to a head yet as US involvement was only really starting to ramp up.
Anyway, I liked this one. Though I kind of wish I had an original or pre-revised edition where Halberstram goes more into his own background. However, the revised edition does include a good epilogue of when he returned to Vietnam in 1967 & it was like nothing had really changed saved for more US involvement. His idea of how he felt this conflict would conclude wasn’t far off the mark.
Halberstram & Sheehan were there to see this mess unfold in real time in the early days. Being good journalists, they wrote what they say and wrote their truths. Their truths were ugly & people don’t like an ugly truth yet they need to be said. I can see why this book wasn’t a commercial success when released, but it’s also likely public interest in the war stateside had not come to a head yet as US involvement was only really starting to ramp up.
Anyway, I liked this one. Though I kind of wish I had an original or pre-revised edition where Halberstram goes more into his own background. However, the revised edition does include a good epilogue of when he returned to Vietnam in 1967 & it was like nothing had really changed saved for more US involvement. His idea of how he felt this conflict would conclude wasn’t far off the mark.
February 20, 2023
A story of David Halberstam's time in Vietnam around 1962-1963. Interesting to read a story on Vietnam from someone who was there, but over a decade before the U.S. backed out of the war. Even the afterword is only from 1967. Halberstam tells stories of being on foot in the Delta River, as well as the Ngo family and President Diem and the assassination of him during a coup. Also told in this book is Halberstam being on the scene for protest with the Buddhists and the burning of Thich Quang Duc that became one of the most powerful photos of all time. It's a pretty depressing book, because Halberstam talks about how himself and Neil Sheehan were some of the first to report that the war was not going well. Both reporters would get the Pulitzer for their reporting on the Vietnam War. It's not Halberstam's best, but that's saying a lot as I consider him to be possibly the best reporter/writer of all time.
September 13, 2022
Having read Halberstram’s better known The Best and the Brightest, I found it interesting to read his account written immediately after his fifteen months spent as a correspondent for the NYTimes in Vietnam Nam (9/62-11/64) prior to sending in tens of thousands of ground troops. It is a time when other issues dominated American politics and the decision to go all in had not yet been made. It describes a failing war effort sanitized by the Diem government with the help of the heads of US leaders in Saigon while US military advisors in the field saw a starkly different reality. I found it interesting that the author embraced US cold war concerns but cannot reconcile them with the reality he sees in the paddies of the Mekongdelta.
January 9, 2019
A very prescient warning about how this would end
Halberstam hit the nail on the head way before we committed combat troops, and was called not so nice names by the 'powers that be'. He had the bittersweet 'satisfaction' of seeing his worst fears come true in the years that followed his departure from Vietnam.
The typical outcome of trying to 'speak truth to power'. I wish I had been aware of this book 'back in the day'.
Halberstam hit the nail on the head way before we committed combat troops, and was called not so nice names by the 'powers that be'. He had the bittersweet 'satisfaction' of seeing his worst fears come true in the years that followed his departure from Vietnam.
The typical outcome of trying to 'speak truth to power'. I wish I had been aware of this book 'back in the day'.
December 17, 2023
Halberstam is my favorite history author. This was an interesting book because it was written during the first half of the Vietnam war and was his personal experience there as a reporter. Not his best book but its was his first so he gets some grace.
March 6, 2019
Quintessential book on how the US got involved in Vietnam.
May 16, 2021
Excellent. Detailed account of the beginnings of our involvement in Vietnam. More about the Vietnamese government than the Kennedy administration.
September 10, 2022
Gripping read
Sad historical account of the Vietnam war. Took a lot of time to get through but exposed new insights from historical parallels.
Sad historical account of the Vietnam war. Took a lot of time to get through but exposed new insights from historical parallels.
November 3, 2022
4.5, another Halberstam classic. The harsh reality of the early years in the Vietnam War.
July 17, 2023
Very out of date, because it's a book written just before the American involvement in Vietnam spiraled into the mess it became.
March 10, 2014
Från Halberstams berättelse fom Vietnamkriget kan man dra många paralleller till Michael Herrs "rapporter". De var båda korrespondenter som kunde röra sig med större frihet än de flesta och kunde få olika människors syn på kriget. Likaså blir de återberättade erfarenheterna mer diversifierade.
Till skillnad från Herr så är Halberstam i Vietnam 1962-1964, innan USA sätter in egna förband och hans berättelser kommer mer från tjänstemän, diplomater och högre officerare än enskilda soldater. Boken kan sägas vara Halberstams förklaring till varför det gick (går, boken utgavs 1965) dåligt i Vietnam.
Han skildrar gapen mellan de misslyckade fältoperationerna och de högre officerarnas rapporter till Saigon och Washington om att kriget håller på att vinnas. Gapet mellan Diem och hans familjs lyxliv i Saigons palats och böndernas magra förhållanden. Gapet mellan de amerikanska rådgivarna som säger att läget bara blir värre och värre medan CIA, de högre officerarna och diplomatkåren försäkrar Diem och Washington om motsatsen.
Även om jag själv tycker att redogörandet för de inofficiella förhållandena inom den amerikanska diplomatkåren kan bli långdragna så visar Halberstam med klarhet de problem som blev en nedåtgående spiral och varför inget gjordes för att stoppa det. Hur alla grupperingar agerade rationellt utifrån sina begränsade perspektiv.
FNL utgör inte det främsta hindret i Halberstams bok. Att bekämpa Vietcong effektivt innebär paradoxalt nog att man riskerar avsked eller åthutning för överordnade. Att erkänna att det inte blir bättre finns blir att erkänna att man hittills har handlat fel. Låga förlustsiffror hos förbanden blir för regimen i Saigon ett tecken på att man vinner kriget, medan man i själva verket undviker FNL och låter dem ta makten över landsbygden obehindrat för att uppnå den statistiken.
Boken blir en resa genom otaliga paradoxer och rena galenskaper som förklarar Vietnamkriget tidiga skede. Och till skillnad från andra böcker på ämnet så är faktiskt Sydvietnamesiska militärer, statsmän och civilister representerade.
Skildringarna av det diplomatiska spelet, det tidiga Vietnamkriget och det Sydvietnamesiska perspektivet gör boken mycket läsvärd för den intresserade.
Till skillnad från Herr så är Halberstam i Vietnam 1962-1964, innan USA sätter in egna förband och hans berättelser kommer mer från tjänstemän, diplomater och högre officerare än enskilda soldater. Boken kan sägas vara Halberstams förklaring till varför det gick (går, boken utgavs 1965) dåligt i Vietnam.
Han skildrar gapen mellan de misslyckade fältoperationerna och de högre officerarnas rapporter till Saigon och Washington om att kriget håller på att vinnas. Gapet mellan Diem och hans familjs lyxliv i Saigons palats och böndernas magra förhållanden. Gapet mellan de amerikanska rådgivarna som säger att läget bara blir värre och värre medan CIA, de högre officerarna och diplomatkåren försäkrar Diem och Washington om motsatsen.
Även om jag själv tycker att redogörandet för de inofficiella förhållandena inom den amerikanska diplomatkåren kan bli långdragna så visar Halberstam med klarhet de problem som blev en nedåtgående spiral och varför inget gjordes för att stoppa det. Hur alla grupperingar agerade rationellt utifrån sina begränsade perspektiv.
FNL utgör inte det främsta hindret i Halberstams bok. Att bekämpa Vietcong effektivt innebär paradoxalt nog att man riskerar avsked eller åthutning för överordnade. Att erkänna att det inte blir bättre finns blir att erkänna att man hittills har handlat fel. Låga förlustsiffror hos förbanden blir för regimen i Saigon ett tecken på att man vinner kriget, medan man i själva verket undviker FNL och låter dem ta makten över landsbygden obehindrat för att uppnå den statistiken.
Boken blir en resa genom otaliga paradoxer och rena galenskaper som förklarar Vietnamkriget tidiga skede. Och till skillnad från andra böcker på ämnet så är faktiskt Sydvietnamesiska militärer, statsmän och civilister representerade.
Skildringarna av det diplomatiska spelet, det tidiga Vietnamkriget och det Sydvietnamesiska perspektivet gör boken mycket läsvärd för den intresserade.
July 2, 2016
This account covers the Vietnam War through the overthrow of Diem, during the period where American involvement was officially in the form of advisors and aid, not combat troops. I'm sure plenty of students of the war have never forgiven Halberstam and his fellow reporters for their alleged "stab in the back" of American troops. Not only that, but Halberstam et al were unimpressed with Diem, his cronies, and the generally hapless ARVN. The reader comes away with the impression that the war was already lost before American troops arrived in earnest - we were backing the wrong horse, the enemy was too tough and too committed, and the peasantry were not sold on the Saigon government, bad as the Viet Cong could be.
Exciting read and a fine example of journalism as the first draft of history.
Exciting read and a fine example of journalism as the first draft of history.
August 24, 2014
This was hard for me as I had to admit halfway through that I didn't need to finish this volume. As one of Halberstam's first volumes, i noted differences in how he might have described situations In his later years as a reporter. Since I had just finished an extensive history of US involvement in Vietnam, many of the stories of political incompetence and corruption, although disturbing, were not new to me. What this well written volume did, however, was explain in great personal detail how misguided and wasteful the entire US effort in Vietnam was.
For those who are seeking a deeper understanding of this sad chapter of US history, this is important reading.
For those who are seeking a deeper understanding of this sad chapter of US history, this is important reading.
June 8, 2009
A great book that did an amazing job at setting up the conflict in Vietnam. Engaging and never boring. One of my favorite books!
July 22, 2016
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Unfortunately. A masterful early work by a master of American journalism.
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