Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned (Blue Jacket Bks)

Rufus Phillips

ISBN 10: 1591146747 / ISBN 13: 9781591146742

Published by Naval Institute Press, 2008

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0001629314

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned (Blue Jacket Bks)
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1591146747
• ISBN 13: 9781591146742
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Rufus Phillips offers an extraordinary inside history of the most critical years of American involvement in Vietnam, from 1954 to 1968, and explains why it still matters. Describing what went right and then wrong, he contends that our failure to understand the Communists, our South Vietnamese allies, or even ourselves took us down the wrong road of a conventional war until it was too late-we missed the war's essential political character. Documenting the story from his own personal files, now available at the Texas Tech Vietnam Archive, as well as from the historical record, the former government official paints striking portraits of such key figures as John F. Kennedy, Maxwell Taylor, Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot Lodge, Hubert Humphrey, and Ngo Dinh Diem, among others with whom he dealt.

About the Author

Rufus Phillips became a member of the Saigon Military Mission in 1954 and the following year served as the sole adviser to two Vietnamese army pacification operations, earning the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work. He later worked as a CIA civilian case officer in Vietnam and Laos, then joined the U.S. Agency for International Development's Saigon Mission to lead its counterinsurgency efforts. In 1964 he became a consultant for USAID and the State Department and served as an adviser to Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He lives in Arlington, VA.