Bright, Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (Picador Books) (Paperback)

However, unlike other reviewers, I do not think it demonstrates the inevitable futility of US involvement.

On the contrary, the tragedy of this story is that it clearly demonstrates that with a different political strategy, and with people like Vann in command, things could have turned out very well indeed.

Not only is this alternative outcome shown as a real possibility, the book also shows that there were plenty of Americans with a clear vision of what should be done but without the power to change strategy either militarily or politically.

Vann began his involvement with Vietnam as an Army Lt. Colonel. Because of both some personal troubles and his outspoken criticism of the ineffective and unnecessarily cruel way in which the war was being conducted, he was in effect cashiered, and he returned briefly to civilian life back in the United States. Yet Vann couldn't help but be drawn back into this country he had fallen in love with while doing his initial military tour. He found the opportunity to return to Vietnam as a civilian supporting the American military mission, and threw himself into the opportunity with characteristic energy and enthusiasm. He seemed to have an almost instinctive understanding of how to conduct an effective counter-insurgency operation, and based on his tireless efforts and his success in pacifying the area he was assigned, he gained increased credibility and influence within both the American military as well as the South Vietnamese government, and as a result became much more influential and powerful.

Yet in the moments of his success Vann began to fatefully turn away from precisely those perceptions regarding the nature of the conflict and the need to be effectively engaged at the micro-level, and he, like many other individuals prosecuting the war, turned to more traditional and massive intervention techniques such as carpet bombing, that were not only indiscriminate, but also tended to be counterproductive in the longer term. Vann's slow but inexorable corruption by power and influence is a familiar tale, and indeed sadly documents one specific example of a widespread phenomena which continues to this day within our military; that of careerism. It is easy to understand how the quest for rank in order to do what one believes is right gets twisted into an eventual accommodation with the very devil one is combating in order to get ahead.

Of course, once makes the necessary accommodation to succeed in a military career by mindlessly following orders, then when the particular officer eventually succeeds in getting promoted (by going along with the wrong-headed policies of his or her superiors) he or she becomes exactly that corrupted and compromised type that he or she was originally so motivated to replace. This, then, is the true tragedy of both John Paul Vann in particular and the American Army in Vietnam in general. In my humble opinion, everyone in the officer corps shared this dirty little secret of co-option that made each of them, to some degree, at least, un-indicted co-conspirators in a quite deliberate and systematic campaign to murder countless men, women, and children in living in nameless hamlets and villages in Vietnam. Of course, I am not alone in this view, and former officers such as Col. David Hackworth and Lt. Col Anthony Herbert have written poignantly about this very subject. This is a wonderful book about a terrifying truth, and we should all read in order to better understand the true dimensions of the tragedy in Vietnam.