Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 75

INSIGH
INSIGHT
INSIGHT

A Reply to Arnold R. Isaacs’ Review Essay,
“Remembering Vietnam”
(Military Review, September-October 2013)
William Stearman, Ph.D.

I

N ARNOLD R. ISAACS’ CRITIQUE cum review essay “Remembering Vietnam,”
he is determined to disabuse those of us who served in Vietnam of the belief that
our service was for an honorable cause. Isaacs insists that the Pentagon’s website for
the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Vietnam War is “treating [the veterans] as
children…” by “turning the history of Vietnam into a false, feel-good fable.” Isaacs is
emphasizing the atrocities committed by American troops, thereby inferring that the war
was intrinsically immoral. He insists the war was unwinnable and should never have
been fought. I would like to document that he is wrong on all three counts. I was involved
with Vietnam continuously from December 1965 to January 1976, including 20 months
“in-country.”

Isaacs’ First Point
As evidence of the first point, Isaacs cites at length from Nick Turse’s book Kill Anything That Moves: “[in] an unsparing account of American complicity in a huge amount
of civilian death and suffering. . . . Turse . . . sees the U.S. war in Vietnam as an immoral
and unjust conflict in which atrocities were not accidents or isolated crimes, but reflected
the true nature of the war as it was conducted by American forces.”1
William Lloyd Stearman, Ph.D., is a retired [flag rank] senior U.S. Foreign Service officer who served on the
National Security Council staff under four presidents. He was the director of the National Security Council
Indochina staff from January 1973 to January 1976. He was also an adjunct professor of international
affairs at Georgetown University from 1977 to 1992.
PHOTO: Twentieth Century “Angel of Mercy” D.R. Howe (Glencoe, Minn.) treats the wounds of Pfc. D.A. Crum (New
Brighton, Pa.), “H” Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, during Operation Hue City. (U.S. Marine Corps)

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March-April 2014

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