Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War

by Andrew Wiest (Editor), Michael Doidge (Editor)

More than thirty years later, the Vietnam War still stands as one of the most controversial events in the history of the United States, and historians have so far failed to come up with a definitive narrative of the wartime experience. With competing viewpoints already in play, Mark Moyar’s recent revisionist approach in Triumph Forsaken has created heated debate over who "owns" the history of America’s war in Vietnam. Triumph Historians Battle for the Vietnam War collects critiques of Triumph Forsaken from both sides of this debate, written by an array of Vietnam scholars, cataloguing arguments about how the war should be remembered, how history may be reconstructed, and by whom. A lively introduction and conclusion by editors Andrew Wiest and Michael Doidge provide context and balance to the essays, as well as Moyar’s responses, giving students and scholars of the Vietnam era a glimpse into how history is constructed and reconstructed.

Genres: History, Essays, War

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Andrew A. Wiest is presently a Professor of History at the University of Southern Misssissippi, and serves as director of the Vietnam Studies Program and co-director of the university's Center for the Study of War and Society.

Reviews

[James Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

History is perspective, and the processes of historical perspective are always shifting, a boiling stew of opinion, trends, methods, and conclusions. Histories of the Vietnam War are no different. Andrew Wiest, in his "Introduction" to Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War, compares the historiography of Vietnam to that of World War I. The dreadful sacrifice of that earlier war was traumatic, particularly in the view of British historians whose accounts we're more familiar with, and it was seen as having accomplished little. Disillusionment had a grip on the public in the 2 decades after the war. That orthodox historiography of mismanaged armies, wholesale slaughter, and despair became chiseled in the mind of the public. Wiest writes the same situation developed after the end of the Vietnam War. An orthodox historiography developed which had been influenced to a great extent by the news media and by the antiwar movement. By the time America's presence in Vietnam came to an end the public perspective and subsequent histories of the war was that it was a foolish venture, an unwinnable and wasteful war, and a failure of foreign policy. Both wars, however, have turning points in their respective historiographies. For the Great War it was the publication of the 1963 biography of the B. E. F. commander Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier, which created an intense academic debate about the true interpretations of the Great War and which in turn began reversing accepted ideas about many of the war's sacred cows. The 2006 history Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War 1954-1965 by Mark Moyar serves the same purpose for America's road to war in Vietnam.

Moyar's book re-energized the orthodox-revisionist debate about the war by claiming the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 was America's single worst mistake in the war, ending a competent government--and one which was winning--to be replaced by instability from which South Vietnam never recovered. Moyar writes the war was indeed winnable but was not, finally, successful because the Johnson administration failed to heed his military leadership who advocated taking the war to the enemy by physically interdicting the Ho Chi Minh Trail, by occupying southeastern Laos, and by invading and occupying parts of North Vietnam. In choosing to follow a strategy devised by civilian agencies of the government to gradually increase pressure on the North until they sought peace, remain on the strategic defensive, and in general, not threaten the North with defeat or even serious destruction, the U. S. mismanaged and lengthened a war they should have won.

Triumph Forsaken seems to have been a watershed event which serves, as did the Haig biography for the First World War, as the point when history begins to shift from the orthodox view to that of what's now called revisionist. Triumph Revisited is made up of 15 essays--called "reviews"--by a selection of leading Vietnam scholars about the various claims of Moyar's history. Most of these essays favor the orthodox view, I think, though the majority is a small one. It's divided into 3 sections: the war in the Asian perspective, Triumph Forsaken as history, and orthodoxy versus revisionism, and at the end of each section Moyar has written lengthy responses to the comments of the essayists. My impression is that Moyar's responses are the least interesting. I'd already read Triumph Forsaken and am familiar with his analysis. Here he merely writes rebuttals of counter-findings by colleague historians or else agreements with those who find his analysis of the history correct. The individual essays, whether orthodox or revisionist in outlook, were much more informative and therefore interesting. I especially liked the essay of David L. Anderson, persuasive in its examination of the true import of the famous domino theory. And Edward Miller writes a most interesting overall exploration of the orthodoxy-revisionist debate.

But ultimately the book is like being at a cocktail party at the end of a hard workday listening to 2 people, fueled by too much wine, argue their deeply-held beliefs about the war. At the end of the long evening neither has given ground because such convictions--as in all political, and even religious, debate are iron-clad. Vietnam remains, for now, a war of mixed and emotional perceptions.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A silly book about a silly book. This volume unnecessarily and unjustifiably aggrandizes Moyar's polemic. The quality of the contributions is uneven, though this is perhaps to be expected: it would be difficult to find serious, rigorous, objective professional historians to write laudatory essays. Moyar's "rebuttals" are unconvincing, and contain some remarkable howlers.

The problem with the Vietnam historiography is that there's too much unserious, one-sided, polemical garbage already out there. So when some charlatan writes unserious, one-sided, polemical garbage from the opposing ideological starting-point, people feel duty-bound to take it seriously. Don't.

[Jon Klug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Triumph Revisited is comprised of historians commenting on Dr. Mark Moyar’s revisionist book Triumph Forsaken and Mark responding to their comments. While mostly civil discourse, there are times when the academic knives are drawn. This is a great book for studying the historiography of the Vietnam War and for academic counterpunching; however, it is too academic for casual readers, but that was not its purpose.