Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

In early May, satisfied that he had achieved these goals and with the monsoon season fast approaching, he withdrew from all but one Laotian province (Sam Neua), leaving the French and their Laotian supporters badly shaken and Americans further convinced that the war effort was foundering.23 Eisenhower was particularly distraught. Until the Laos invasion, he told the National Security Council on April 28, he had thought the French would ultimately win the war; now that seemed far less likely. French commanders lacked the requisite aggressiveness and moreover had failed to “instill a desire to hold” among the Vietnamese population. With only limited manpower at their disposal, these commanders moreover had allowed their forces to become separated and divided into isolated pockets, each of which could be supplied only by air. The Viet Minh units, meanwhile, were able to wander