Who Lost Vietnam? Mark Moyar’s New Book Spreads the Blame
The book trashes what Moyar calls the “orthodox” view of the war.
by Francis P. Sempa
January 29, 2023, 10:35 PM
Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968
By Mark Moyar
(Encounter Books, 732 pages, $50)
Scholars and writers who challenge conventional accounts of history are often courageous and invaluable seekers of truth. They don’t always find the whole truth, but their work often gets us closer to what really happened. One such scholar is Mark Moyar, whose second volume of a projected three-volume study of the Vietnam War has just been published by Encounter Books. Titled Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968, the book effectively trashes what Moyar calls the “orthodox” view of the war — the view of most American history books and the famous and widely watched PBS documentaries of Stanley Karnow and Ken Burns.
Moyar’s most important conclusion after reviewing U.S., South Vietnamese, and especially North Vietnamese sources is that the United States and its allies were on the verge of winning the war in 1968, after the North Vietnamese Army suffered devastating defeats in the Tet Offensive and two subsequent offensives, but self-imposed political restrictions on bombing, troop levels, interdicting the Ho Chi Minh trail, and attacking communist sanctuaries in Laos, Cambodia, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and North Vietnam, as well as elite media misinformation snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. (READ MORE: The Lingering Fog of War and Lessons From Vietnam)
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https://spectator.org/who-lost-vietnam-mark-moyars-new-book-spreads-the-blame/