Book Review: 'The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam: 1945-1975'

(C) 1981 St. Martin's Press. Book cover photo: Goodreads

In the early 1980s, back when I was in high school, I developed an interest in the Vietnam War, a conflict that took place when I was too young to understand but was a shadowy presence in everyone's lives in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Around the same time that I was navigating the hallways of my senior high school's campus as a wide-eyed sophomore, Canadian writer-producer Michael Maclear's 13-part documentary series, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War, was aired in syndication in the U.S. Written by Peter Arnett and narrated by actor Richard Basehart (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), this series - which originally aired on Canadian television in 26 half-hour episodes but was presented in 13 one-hour installments in U.S. television markets - was the first in-depth examination of what was, until the post-September 11, 2001 war in Afghanistan, America's longest war. 

Like many documentaries of this genre and scope, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War had a "companion" book that complemented the 13-hour television series. Written by the series' executive producer - the British-born Michael Maclear - and based on the series scripts by Peter Arnett, The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam: 1945-1975 covers the thirty-year tragedy that brought death, misery, and destruction to millions of Vietnamese men, women, and children on both sides of the conflict, and caused a traumatic divide in American society that has yet to fully heal. 

Published in January of 1981 by St. Martin's Press, The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam: 1945-1975 is divided into 20 chapters that correspond roughly to the 26 parts of the TV series as aired on Canada's CBC network. And like the documentary it supplements, Maclear's book covers the labyrinthine story of the two wars in Vietnam - the frustrated French effort to reassert Paris' imperialist will on an unwilling Southeast Asian colony that declared its independence on September 2, 1945, and America's "lost crusade" that began almost as soon as a defeated and war-weary France withdrew its last troops in 1954 and ended in a humiliating last-minute evacuation by helicopter in April of 1975.  

Maclear covered the Vietnam War as a reporter for Canadian television in the 1960s and early 1970s. Because Canada - like Maclear's native Britain - did not join the U.S. effort to support the Saigon government in South Vietnam, he was able to report from North Vietnam, where he established connections to senior Communist Party officials and military commanders that were later useful during the making of Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War. 

Perhaps this explains why both the series and The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam: 1945-1975 were the first major explorations of this long and tragic conflict. Considering that the series was made at a time when the images of a Soviet-made T-55 tank flying the blue-and-red Viet Cong flag knocking down the iron gates of Saigon's Presidential Palace were still fresh in America's collective memory, it's hard to imagine a balanced and nuanced account of the Vietnam War coming from an American producer or writer. 

Maclear's book - as well as the series - doesn't pull its punches regarding the author's conclusions about the thirty-year struggle between two irreconcilable forces: the Vietnamese people's desire to achieve independence, and two Western democratic governments' attempts to impose their will on a restive and proud people that was willing to pay any price to be a free and sovereign nation. From the author's point of view, the Vietnam War was a conflict that could have been avoided had it not coincided with the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. 

This thesis - which has been echoed in other, more prominent documentaries along the lines of Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A Television History (1983) and The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick - was not widely accepted by many Americans at the time. Some of the senior military and diplomatic decision makers on the U.S. and South Vietnamese side thought that the war was worth fighting and could have been won if the "left-leaning liberals" in Congress and the anti-war movement not tied the Pentagon's hands and let the generals make tactical and strategic decisions that could have led to victory. 

Yet, Maclear's book indicates that such Monday morning quarterbacking is delusional. In many of  The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam: 1945-1975's chapters, the reader will note that the Communist-led North Vietnamese regime was willing to fight on for 10, 20, thirty, and even fifty years in order to defeat the French and Americans to achieve its goals of winning independence and reuniting North and South under one cohesive government. They were aware that Western democracies, such as those in France and the U.S., will support a war only as long as it's short and winnable. But if a conflict bogs down and the casualty lists become longer than the public can bear, then it only becomes a matter of "how long will it be till the people tells the government leadership, 'Stop the war; bring the troops home!'"

When I first read  The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam: 1945-1975 as a high school student, I was not prepared emotionally or intellectually for such a harsh indictment of U.S. foreign policy. As a result, I didn't like Maclear's book much and dismissed its conclusions as pro-Vietnamese propaganda. 

Now, nearly 40 years later, I've re-read  The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam: 1945-1975 after watching both Vietnam: A Television History and The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. Maclear's stance still rankles in my mind; I don't like knowing that my country fought a war that could have been avoided based on false assumptions and misunderstandings. Yet the book, as well as all the other sources I've perused since I was in high school, says exactly that. America intervened in Southeast Asia with the best of intentions, her leaders' minds full of misguided notions that Ho Chi Minh was simply a stooge being manipulated by the Soviets and Communist Chinese. Had we heeded the words of American agents who had fought alongside with Ho against the Japanese in the closing months of World War II, we should have supported his bid for independence - and prevented so many needless deaths, both American and Vietnamese.