Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past

by Lloyd C. Gardner (Editor), Marilyn B. Young (Editor), Christian G. Appy (Contributor)

Current Affairs, International Affairs, US Politics, Military Studies

Genres: History, War, Nonfiction, American, Middle East, Military Fiction, Military History

322 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

Reviews

[Pei-jean Lu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays that while interesting are also stating the obvious of the fact that people don’t consider history when getting involved with conflicts.
That’s not to say they don’t also make interesting points, but many of these meander on and keeps on repeating the same issues over and over again.

[Liam · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seemed a bit over-done at times, and tended to belabor the point to such a degree that it was noticeably repetitive in some places. Part of that was simply structural- some redundancy is to be expected in a work of this type, in which several authors are writing on the same topic or aspects thereof. I suspect that it would not have been quite so noticeable had I read this book prior to 2008, when the Bush administration was still in control of the U.S. government, but if I remember correctly, I don't think I even managed to get hold of a copy until several years after that. Several of the included essays were well worth reading, but despite the fairly stellar cast of contributors the overall quality was somewhat uneven. I found that extremely disappointing. I remember quite well the unease followed by shocked disbelief on the part of most Indo-China scholars at the seemingly endless procession of incredibly incompetent decisions made by the U.S. government leadership during the early years of the Afghanistan & Iraq wars. Those feelings were shared to a large extent by nearly all in the Indo-China studies community, from the most eminent professors and authors of well-known works in the field right down to independent amateur scholars such as myself. I had really hoped for a better, perhaps more magisterial, effort from these authors; in the event, while not a bad book it could perhaps have been a bit better than it is...