Books in Brief: America on Trial: The War for Vietnam

America on Trial: The War for Vietnam, by Gen. Thomas A. Lane (Arlington, 297 pp., $7.95). Sift through the rather inferior rhetoric of General Lane’s new book and you will find some interesting documentation and background on the Vietnam imbroglio (much good it will do you this late in the game). The worthy General, a sometime newspaper columnist and conservative of impeccable credentials, has assembled what looks suspiciously like an accumulation of unused notes, old clippings and extracted testimony, without benefit of index. It is filled with familiar cold war jargon and assumptions, but, then, that is only fair, since the cold war is still with us too. Unfortunately, General Lane is not all that much of a writer, for the story he tells is an important one. Some of the evidence he marshals is impressive, and the series of criminal blunders he chronicles deserves remembering, if only to be avoided in the future. As the war winds down for America, the whole story begins to take on a ghostly haze. Spirits appear on stage reminding other spirits of lost opportunities (e.g., the late Senator Dodd, telling the Senate in 1965 that the late President Diem had told him in 1961 that the way to knock out the enemy was to hit Tchepone in Laos—a piece of advice finally followed during the recent Laotian incursion which Dodd, at least, lived to see). Interestingly, while General Lane, who is no fan of Richard Nixon, expresses grave misgivings about Vietnamization, the brief foreword by General Wedemeyer says that it “gives promise of an honorable solution in the American tradition.” Alas, it seems that no one marches in locked formation these days—not even regulation model hawks.

AB

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Aram Bakshian Jr.

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America on Trial: The War for Vietnam, by Gen. Thomas A. Lane (Arlington, 297 pp., $7.95). Sift through the rather inferior rhetoric of General Lane’s new book and you will find some interesting documentation and background on the Vietnam imbroglio (much good it will do you this late in the game). The worthy General, a sometime newspaper columnist and conservative of impeccable credentials, has assembled what looks suspiciously like an accumulation of unused notes, old clippings and extracted testimony, without benefit of index. It is filled with familiar cold war jargon and assumptions, but, then, that is only fair, since the cold war is still with us too. Unfortunately, General Lane is not all that much of a writer, for the story he tells is an important one. Some of the evidence he marshals is impressive, and the series of criminal blunders he chronicles deserves remembering, if only to be avoided in the future. As the war winds down for America, the whole story begins to take on a ghostly haze. Spirits appear on stage reminding other spirits of lost opportunities (e.g., the late Senator Dodd, telling the Senate in 1965 that the late President Diem had told him in 1961 that the way to knock out the enemy was to hit Tchepone in Laos—a piece of advice finally followed during the recent Laotian incursion which Dodd, at least, lived to see). Interestingly, while General Lane, who is no fan of Richard Nixon, expresses grave misgivings about Vietnamization, the brief foreword by General Wedemeyer says that it “gives promise of an honorable solution in the American tradition.” Alas, it seems that no one marches in locked formation these days—not even regulation model hawks.