Could The War in Vietnam Have Turned Out Differently?

Jim Buie will present us with an exploration of how the war in Vietnam may have turned out differently.  He writes on Substack (Slender Threads), and this presentation is based on his post back in May.  Here’s an excerpt from that post:

“The most convincing and disturbing thesis was by historian Max Boot’s “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam (2017). It profiled the CIA operative who was so successful in thwarting a leftist revolt in the Philippines and who was an early architect of Vietnam policy. Landsdale was a constructive, benign adviser to South Vietnamese President Diem, Boot contends. But he was shifted to the Cuban crisis in 1956, and then returned to Vietnam after that fiasco — takeover by the communist revolutionary Fidel Castro — to salvage Vietnam.

“If the US had followed Lansdale’s early Vietnam strategy, Vietnam’s course might have been different, Boot wrote. Without Lansdale’s influence, Diem became paranoid and reactionary, and set his country to become, within a decade, “a failing state kept alive only with heavy infusions of American blood.”

This meeting is a Zoom “hybrid” meeting.  We will meet at our regular venue, Extraordinary Ventures, where the program will take place.  We will also Zoom the program.    If you wish to attend via Zoom, please use our contact us form (https://ehstnc.org/contact-us/) to make your request.