The Vietnam War myth

[Crossroads]

To keep up with the spirit of some recent thread titles, and again from Weider History Group's newsletter at armchairgeneral:

Interview of Dr Mark Moyar, author of "Triumph forsaken: The Vietnam War 1954-65"

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/sh...hp?t=90877

Among other things:

ACG: You are clearly part of what is often referred to as the revisionist school of thought on the Vietnam War, do you think works such as yours could contribute to change the generally negative image associated with this conflict in the collective's mind?

MM: Yes, I do. Most of the popular books on Vietnam, such as those by Stanley Karnow, Neil Sheehan, and David Halberstam, distorted events in horrific fashion. They exaggerated the faults of our allies, downplayed the crimes of our enemies, and misrepresented the global stakes. Now, many veterans and some others who lived through the period have distrusted that narrative, but their views haven’t been widely disseminated, in part because few of them worked in the media or academia. Triumph Forsaken and several other revisionist books, particularly Lewis Sorley’s A Better War, have been able to gain significant readership, with considerable help from the internet, which enables ideas to circulate more freely than in earlier decades, where the mainstream media had a near-monopoly on the distribution of information. I should note that my own interpretations of Vietnam do have some very negative aspects, such as America’s disastrous instigation of the 1963 coup and Lyndon Johnson’s rejection of highly valuable strategic options like the placement of U.S. ground forces in Laos.

and

RP: Do you believe that the US participation in the Viet Nam War was a surrogate confrontation between the East and West in order to spare a confrontation in Europe?

MM: A few people have advanced that argument, but the documentary record does not support it. U.S. relations with the Soviets were pretty good in the early and mid-1960s; we weren’t very concerned about containing them or avoiding war with them, but we were concerned about containing China and avoiding war. China and its Communist allies in various Asian countries did in fact pose a serious threat to the entire continent. We ultimately achieved our strategic aim of containing China, even though the Indochinese dominoes fell in 1975.

Now this tempts one to read the book really, but as I am stuck at Beevor's Stalingrad (as a result of their previous newsletter and the myth thread :P ) perhaps one of you fine gentlemen would do that and write a review to this site's Book Reviews? Or to just continue with this thread?