Vietnam war books and reading

[RadioResearcher]

This book might be interesting to RR.  I found it while looking for information on North Vietnamese and VC returnees.  I will read it when I get a chance. 

The Role of
Military Intelligence 1965-1967

Yes, it probably will be of interest.  I quickly found the 509th RR Gp on the org chart included!    Thanks.

-- RR

[Huyen]

I just started reading, "Why Viet Nam" by Archimedes Patti.  I found this book at Half Price Books in Dallas and bought it.  I paid $20 for it, which is quite a bit more than I usually pay for used books but this one is out of print and hard to find on the used book circuit.  In fact, I had heard of Archimedes Patti before from my reading but did not know he had written a book about his experiences.  So when I found this book I googled it and found that I would not be able to find it easily and if I did it would cost quite a bit.  Since this book is about a period in Vietnam that not much has been written about I decided to bite the bullet and spend the money.  I just had to read this one. 

Archimedes Patti was with the OSS in Vietnam during WWII and just after.  He had met with and talked to Ho Chi Minh several times.  This book is about his experiences in Vietnam and is also his attempt to put US involvement there into perspective.  I think this book is a valuable addition to my library.

So far it is a very interesting read.  I am reading about the complex situation in IndoChina during WWII and the difficult political relationships at the time.  The delicate balance between the US desire for Vietnamese independence, but also the desire to not sour relations with the French.  Plus the role of the Chinese as allies against Japan, but also historic interlopers in IndoChina. 

So far so good.  I will report back after I read more. 

[Huyen]

I just finished reading:

"Ho Chi Minh and his Vietnam" by Jean Sainteny.   

Coming on the heals of reading Archemedes Patti's book this was a very interesting perspective.  Patti was highly critical of the French and the motives of Sainteny.  Sainteny, on the contrary was not critical of the Americans and seemed to understand their motives even if he didn't agree. 

Sainteny calls himself the western diplomat who knew HCM the best.  He also considered himself a friend of Ho. He seems very sympathetic to HCM, which is not how Patti characterizes Sainteny. 

Sainteny characterizes HCM as prefering to use peaceful means, but willing to use violence to get what he wants, because that was most important to him.  He excuses Ho for some of the abuses of the Communists by accepting Ho's explanation that Ho could not control some of his overzealous followers and Ho's "complete ignorance of economics".


Most interesting though, Sainteny concludes that France should have lived up to its 1946 accords with HCM, even though he places a lot of blame for that failure on the Vietnamese.  He doesn't believe that by working with HCM France could have influenced Ho in a different direction.  Quite the contrary.  He believed that the communist would have eventually marginalized all opposition, like they had done in the "governments of unity" in Eastern Europe and the resulting totalitarian communist state was ineveitable under Ho.  His logic for working with Ho was simply that at least the war and destruction would have been avoided even though the political outcome the same. 

An interesting conversation Sainteny had with Ho in 1966 is worth relating.  He expressed to Ho his belief that as long as the Americans kept applying the amount of pressure they were currently applying, Ho would win.   However, he suggested to Ho that if the Americans ever got really serious about the war and applied more pressure Ho would lose.   Of course Ho rejected this, admitting only that there would be more destruction.