The Army and Vietnam.

• Author: Colby, William Egan

The Army and Vietnam.

The 11 years since Saigon's fall to North Vietnam's forces have allowed our initial rejection of all things Vietnamese (except the refugees) to be replaced by thoughtful searches for the reasons for America's failure there. A younger generation is curious how such a debacle could have occurred, and some of the participants are looking critically at the actions in which they were involved. In particular, Army officers such as General Bruce Palmer and Colonel Harry Summers have analyzed the experience to try to find whether it might have been done differently, or better.

Major Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. has joined this effort* with honesty and diligence. He has focused on the U.S. Army, assessing its ability to meet the challenges posed by our military involvement in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975. To a stunning degree, Krepinevich has found that ability sadly wanting--the result of what can only be called an intelligence gap. This gap did not stem from a lack of information about the enemy, but from a failure to inquire about and adapt to the very plain evidence of the enemy's intentions and techniques.

* The Army and Vietnam. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. Johns Hopkins University Press, $26.50.

Major Krepinevich finds the heart of the problem in what he has named the Army Concept: a focus on conventional war and reliance on high firepower to minimize American casualties. The Army's insistence on this concept caused it to fight in Vietnam the war it wanted to fight rather than meeting the one the enemy actually fought--the people's war. He points out how the U.S. military insisted that the Vietnamese be organized, trained, and armed to fight a Korean-style war, ignoring the kind the Vietnamese communists actually fought against the French, as well as the success the British had in a similar war in Malaya. When the American Army entered the war directly in 1965, it continued its efforts to "find, fix, fight, and finish' the enemy units in best conventional fashion, ignoring the fact that the enemy kept itself difficult to find and broke off contact as soon as possible to resume its penetration of the population and erosion of the local forces to protect them. The major correctly identifies the Tet 1968 attack as the straw that broke the back of American political and popular support of the Army, which led to the American withdrawal and final defeat.

From the Army...