programmer, agreed.

There was nothing inherently wrong with John Paul Vann’s counterinsurgency doctrine. I read Sheehan’s book too long ago to state it with certainty, but my remembrance is that not even he argued the point differently. What failed was our leadership higher up. Westmoreland was the wrong general for this particular war, although he may have been fine for WW II. Yet in the end it was the failure of our civilian leadership that was determinative. As already stated, that failure includes not only those in Congress who defunded a by then succeeding effort, but most also, to be fair, include Nixon who kept the promises made to the S. Vietnamese secret from the American Public. (Not that it would have made any difference to some in our otherwise noble and steadfast Republic.)