Beyond the Quagmire: New Interpretations of the Vietnam War

History professors Jensen (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University) and Stith (University of Texas at Tyler) bring together 13 academic analyses (including two of their own) on different Vietnam War subjects that aim to be “provocative and timely” by providing “new ideas and directions.” Most succeed, offering well-thought-out takes on important political, military, and cultural issues. Among the best are Heather Marie Stur’s “Women, Gender, and the War,” a nuanced portrait of women who served, and Sarah Thelen’s “Claiming the Flag: Patriotism and the Nixon White House,” which draws a connection between Nixon’s White House promoting patriotic gatherings and displays that conflated the flag with unquestioning loyalty to the president and the war and President Trump’s “efforts to use patriotism for political ends.” Among the less successful entries are Geoffrey C. Stewart’s attempt to find merit in the failed rural development programs of the notoriously corrupt regime of South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem and Jensen’s look at Robert McNamara’s Project 100,000, in which low-IQ men were drafted into the military; Jensen unconvincingly concludes this was “not the absolute failure or moral atrocity that it has been made out to be” largely because the plan “was cooked up before the war.” These academic analyses will be of interest primarily to historians of the conflict. [em](Mar.) [/em]