BOETTCHER : Vietnam (ajánló)
Surveying the tragically ill-fated role of the U.S. in Vietnam from the 1940s on, Thomas Boettcher's book bristles with insights into the personalities of the Cold Warriors and New Frontiersmen who planned and executed our opening moves there, bears poignant witness to the might-have-beens of history, and portrays the military side of the war on the battlefield and in the operations rooms as no general history has done to date.
Imbued with Kennedy-style idealism, Boettcher himself entered the Air Force Academy at precisely that moment in our past when a generation was on the verge of being torn apart by conflicting ideals of patriotism. Having served as air force liaison to the press in Vietnam in 1968-1969, he has now written the first popular history of the war from the point of view of one who served there.
Though the public assumes that it was the military who got us into Vietnam, Boettcher contends that, on the contrary, it was the military and the intelligence community who tried to keep us out. They knew, better than Kennedys Harvard-educated self-styled military strategists from the civilian sector, what the obstacles were, and how unprepared we were for the kind of war we would have to fight there. But in 1965, with the beginning of the air war against North Vietnam and the commitment of the first combat troops in the south, Harvard's war became West Point's.
With the insights gained in the ten years since the fall of Saigon, Boettcher distinguishes between the lessons the United States intended to teach in Vietnam and those we were forced to learn. Vietnam was the place were the U.S. was going to "make our power credible" to the Communists. Instead, Vietnam taught both the U.S. and the Communists (Soviet and Chinese alike) a lesson about wars of national liberation – that they are inspired more by the desire for self-determination than by ideology. And Vietnam, a Third World country facing a nation armed with state-of-the-art Western technology, further taught our leaders that wars are tests of national will, not of weaponry.
Boettcher's history puts into fresh perspective the mistakes we made in Vietnam, the losses we suffered, the failure of leadership that caused us to stay there long after the country as a whole had turned against the war, the courage and the suffering of those who fought. Published at a time of renewed interest in the subject of Vietnam, this book should contribute to the mood of national reconciliation that has possessed the country in recent days as it turns at last to the painful task of self-examination.
Illustrated with over 500 photographs, many never before published, this extraordinary history presents a new vision, both critical and healing, of the war we fought on two fronts – at home and in Vietnam.
Thomas D. Boettcher is a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he was commander of the 2,800-man Cadet Wing. He served in Vietnam during the period 1968–1969. He lives in Washington, D.C.
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