Back to Viet Nam.....

 A book review by Mark Moyar has some very familiar themes.  This is about Viet Nam, the incompetent State Department (and ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge) and how it cost about 58,000 US lives.

Here's the first VERY FAMILIAR theme:

... Only in the final chapter does Cheevers make a clear break with the orthodox school. Invoking the pro-Diem officials who inspired the revisionists, he embraces their conclusion that the Diem government fell because of American diplomatic malpractice, rather than Diem's inherent flaws. Cheevers faults Lodge and other State Department officials for promoting a coup with little comprehension of what would follow, and blasts Kennedy for letting them do so. He also chastises the Kennedy administration for trying to liberalize an authoritarian country in a time of war. "Kennedy would have been well-advised to stop hammering Diem to get rid of Nhu and let the brothers do their best to win the war," Cheevers writes. "Free and fair elections could never be held, nor strong democratic institutions established, until the Viet Cong were largely cleared out of the country."...

 Can you spell "I-R-A-Q"??  We left that sandbag in a state of total disarray--where it remains today, minus all of  the Catholics who were either killed or fled the country.  And when we achieve Netanyahu's fever-dream of regime-change in Iran------what's the plan, Donald?  Bibi?? 

Next, and more of a concern:

 ...The book, therefore, would have benefited from greater incorporation of elements of the revisionist narrative. One such element is a deep skepticism of the Buddhist protesters. In revisionist accounts, the Buddhists are more dishonest, more sympathetic to the Communists, and more clearly intent on overthrowing the Diem government than in Kennedy's Coup, and therefore they show Diem's actions to be more reasonable, and his political standing to be stronger....

Gee.  Religion being abused by liars and Lefties.  Scofield-ites in the case of Iran.  And certain Catholic (and Protty) figures pushing immigration-at-any-cost, not  to mention openly Socialist "theology."

Some things never change.