Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date:         Thu, 17 Dec 1992 18:03:00 EST
              USENET." <VIETNET@USCVM.BITNET>
From:         EEMOISE@CLEMSON.BITNET
Subject:      Re: POL/HIS Some books: Hoang Van Chi

On Wed, 16 Dec 1992 20:31:45 GMT David Kohr <drk@CS.UIUC.EDU> said:
>
> Dear Prof. Moise,
>
> Could you also provide your opinion about the accuracy and bias of the
> following writings about the Vietnam war (assuming you've read them):
>
> 1.  Gabriel Kolko's _Anatomy of a War_.
> 2.  Frances FitzGerald's _Fire in the Lake_.

      I have only glanced briefly at Kolko and Fitzgerald.  My
impression is that both are so-so; not terrible, but with certain
problems of leftist bias.  This shows in Kolko's exaggeration of
the extent to which the land reform of 1953-56 in North Vietnam
was a genuine peasant movement, and in Fitzgerald's exaggeration
of the extent to which the National Liberation Front was independent
of Hanoi's control.

> 3.  Gareth Porter's articles refuting the occurrence of a "massacre" by the
> NLF at Hue in 1968 (as claimed by Douglas Pike and others) and also (I
> think) refuting claims about the number of people killed during the land
> reforms in the North during 1954-6.

     The conflicting claims about the Hue massacre are a real can of
worms; I am not going to express much of an opinion until I have
spent a _lot_ more time looking at the evidence.
     Porter's work on the land reform in North Vietnam was a huge
improvement over anything that had been written on the subject before.
But it was an article; he did the limited amount of research that is
reasonable in the writing of an article.  While he was correct on
the central issue--that most previous authors had been hugely
exaggerating the number of people killed--his picture of what
had actually happened was very sketchy, and wrong on some details.

> 4.  Douglas Pike's early books on Vietnam, in particular _Viet Cong_.
> Also, do you know offhand if Pike held any official government position or
> was hired as a consultant on Vietnam during the period of U.S. involvement,
> or if he worked as a journalist of some sort during this time?

     Pike served in the US Embassy, Saigon, for a number of years,
working for USIA.  Rumor had it that he was the Embassy's best
expert on the Viet Cong.
     I read _Viet Cong_ when it was published in 1966.  It seemed to
me then to be reasonably good.  People whose opinions I respect tell
me it was in fact terrible, and that I simply didn't know enough to
spot the errors in it.
     Many years later, after I had acquired much more expertise, I
read Pike's _History of Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1976_.   It was
terrible.  The errors were endless: wrong dates, wrong geography,
mistranslations, and every other sort of inaccuracy.
     To put it frankly, the man puzzles me.  I haven't spent much
time talking with him in person about the Communist organizations
in South Vietnam, but what little sticks in my mind of such
conversation was sophisticated and intelligent.  The man I recall
talking with should have been able to write a better history.

> 5.  Stanley Karnow's _Vietnam_

     Quite good.

> 7.  David Halberstam's various books, particularly _Making of a Quagmire_
> and _Ho_.

     _Making of a Quagmire_ is very good for what it is--an account
by a young journalist, who noticed particular things
that were wrong with the US effort in Vietnam but didn't think to
doubt that it was appropriate for US military men to be in Vietnam,
fighting Communism.
     You might be interested in reading the article "Return to
Vietnam", which Halberstam published in _Harper's_ a couple of
years later (I think in either 1967 or 1968), after he had
come to question more fundamental aspects of US policy.  I recall
some interesting comments in this article on the less critical
attitude he had had at the time he wrote _Making of a Quagmire_.
     I have no particular impressions of _Ho_, and I read
_The Best and the Brightest_ before I myself knew enough really to
be able to judge it.

Ed Moise
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese