David Halberstam Quotes
[Vietnam was] the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.
David Halberstam, 1934-2007, Journalist & Write, The Best and the Brightest, Fawcett, 1969
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
After the French were driven out, Vietnam was supposed to have a national election to choose a government but the people of Vietnam were deeply split between those supporting the Communists and Ho Chi Min (who had led the campaign to oust the French from their colony) on one side and Vietnamese who were more Westernized and favored a democracy. Vietnam was mostly Buddhist but most of the Western oriented leadership of the Democracy advocates were Christians. They wanted to delay the election to give them a chance to organize to catch up with the communists at political organization. Ho Chi Min and the Communists already do facto controlled the North of Vietnam and decided to use force against the Western oriented forces whose military was much smaller than the Communists who had ejected the French. The United States provided financial aid and supplied weapons and Central Intelligence Agency assistance to the South Vietnam forces who were afraid of being overrun by the Communists headquartered in the North. Taylor’s mission was to go to Vietnam, assess the situation and make recommendations to President Kennedy.
The occasion was the visit to Washington of French Minister M. Jean Letourneau. The French were fighting the communists in Vietnam and the U. S., not yet in the fight, promised material and political aid, but no military participation. It was almost a decade later that America sent its first military personnel to Vietnam. The West was persuaded that the French could handle the situation. When they were defeated, America and Britain assumed that it was the notorious military incompetence of the French that accounted for the situation rather than the competence and commitment of the Vietnamese Communists and their support of the majority of the people.
sending American troops to Vietnam
Boggs was working on some compromise positions that could be taken by the party at the 1968 Democratic National Convention to provide the anti war wing of the party with something. The President found out and met with Congressman Boggs.
David Halberstam was an American writer, journalist, and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and later, sports journalism. He won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964. Halberstam was killed in a car crash in 2007, while doing research for a book.
