Vietnam

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s epic, 18-hour television series on the war in Vietnam left me feeling the same way that the war did: sad, depressed, disillusioned, and ready for it to end.

The recent acclaimed Burns-Novick documentary on Vietnam is great cinematic art but poor history.  Unfortunately, it will be generally judged as THE history.

8 May 1986 address by General Volney F. Warner at Saint Anselm College, New Hampshire. Posted here with the kind permission of General Warner.

Scholar and war correspondent Bernard Fall liked to gather information about combat in the field, near the front lines, where the fighting was going on - and he had done a lot of it.

As shown in a memorable War On the Rocks article, the legacy of the United States’ Counterinsurgency doctrine includes a contentious foundation.

U.S. vital interests need to be addressed through strong relationships and alliances. The U.S. cannot be content to rely on past goodwill and must actively build and nurture its ties within the region.

Rebuilding our special reconaissance capability.

If we ignore village life – or try to bend it to our view of what it should be – we will fail in Afghanistan as we did in Vietnam.

One consistently wrong—but always convenient—prediction has been the improbability of ground wars and the declining utility of ground forces.

The “U.S. in the Lead” COIN approach usually fails where security force assistance could succeed.