Review: “History Unfolding” Looks at We Meant Well

February 20, 2012

Tags: David Kasier, History Unfolding, Review
Posted in: Embassy/State, Iraq, PRT Life

The blog History Unfolding, written by Naval War College professor David Kaiser, takes a look at We Meant Well.

Kaiser writes:

It’s not clear how much of a future [Van Buren] still has in the foreign service. But it’s clear that we have had very little positive impact–although plenty of total impact–in Iraq, and we will have just as little, I am pretty sure, in Afghanistan. There will be no dramatic collapse, probably, like that of 1975 in Vietnam, and the effect on our society will be much less because we have a relatively small professional army now instead of a very large draftee one. (That is not to deny the enormous impact on surviving veterans, however.) The problem is not with our soldiers: it’s with the decision to try to use American military to transform two societies with which we have virtually nothing in common. We never had a chance. Van Buren’s book is interesting, because I don’t think I have ever read a book on Vietnam whose tone was comparably cynical. It really reads like All Quiet on the Western Front, even though death is nothing like such a constant presence.

Note: Kaiser guesses in the review that I am in my mid-to-late forties, though notes my picture “looks a little older”; I am 52 years old, having enjoyed my 50th birthday while in Iraq, standing atop Sumerian ruins at midnight drinking smuggled whiskey from paper cups with two Army colleagues.

Read the full review online at History Unfolding.

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