Book Review: "The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and Vietnam", Max Boot, author

Artist Rendering of Gen. Edward Lansdale

Book Cover

       Have you ever wondered what happened in Vietnam after the French got their ass kicked in 1954 after 100 years of colonial occupation?  Maybe you thought that the most powerful country on earth would have had a walkover there.   But, no, it didn't happen, as we know.  After 10 years of fighting and 58, 000+ deaths of American troops, sailors, and pilots, the US left the South Vietnamese on their own, and the North Vietnamese Army walked in, almost unopposed in April, 1975 or 45 years ago.
How did this happen? is a question posed by historians, politicians, philosophers, and soldiers and marines who did the bloody fighting all those years.  Thousands of books, articles, research papers, theses, and unit histories have been written and published over the last 52 years.   Max Boot's biography adds to the list.   His biography of a central figure through out the experience answers many of the questions posed about the war.
      Two  years ago, acclaimed writer/journalist Louis Menand wrote an insightful review article in the New Yorker magazine, dated Feb. 25, 2018.  In the lengthy review of Max Boot's opus, Menand managed to identify historical data related to Lansdale's era of international activities in which the future general of the Air Force was working with and for the C.I.A. in the Phlippines Islands and later in South Vietnam.   In both places, Lansdale used his personality and drive to bring the situation as he found it to a good end.  Unlike in Manila, his efforts in South Vietnam were short lived.  Acting mostly on his own,  he was able to ingratiate himself to political leaders, to gain trust and confidence; to engender true mutual respect.  These efforts were largely abandoned by 1963, months before Pres. kennedy was assassinated and Premier Diem was also assassinated.   Lansdale had left South Vietnam by 1956, returning to Washington, D.C. to an obscure roll, working on a wild goose effort against Castro and Communist Cuba.   As the clock ticked forward, the political environment in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate, until the State Dept., the Pentagon, and the Nat. Security Council had had enough.   The US Army generals(veterans of WW II) took over and the die was cast for the future failure.