Summer's inspired analysis of America's war in Vietnam answers the most pressing questions remaining from that terrible conflict more than a decade before Robert McNamara's painful admissions.

"This important book is one man's critical analysis of American strategy in the Vietnam war. That man, Harry Summers, is an active Army officer who began professional life as an enlisted soldier, knows personally the bayonet-point reality of war, and has thought widely about strategic issues. His commitment to the nation and Army he serves is unstinting." ..". Colonel Summers has focused his attention at that point in the strategic continuum where military strategy and national policy come together. His main thesis is that a lack of understanding of the relationship between military strategy and national policy caused us to exhaust our will and endurance against a secondary enemy, the guerrilla movement in South Vietnam, instead of focusing our military efforts to check North Vietnamese expansion in support of our national policy of containment. ..." DeWitt C. Smith, Jr. Lieutenant General, United States Army (Retired)

This study explodes prevailing myths about the Phoenix Program, the CIA's top-secret effort to destroy the Viet Cong by neutralizing its "civilian" leaders. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with American, South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese sources, Mark Moyar examines the attempts to eradicate the Viet Cong infrastructure and analyzes their effectiveness. He addresses misconceptions about these efforts and provides an accurate, complete picture of the allies' decapitation of the Viet Cong shadow government. Combining social and political history with a study of military operations, Moyar offers a fresh interpretation of the crucial role the shadow government played in the Viet Cong's ascent. Detailed accounts of intelligence operations provide an insider's view of their development and reveal what really happened in the safe havens of the Viet Cong. Filled with new information, Moyar's study sets the record straight about one of the last secrets of the Vietnam War and offers poignant lessons for dealing with future Third World insurgencies. This Bison Books edition includes a new preface and chapter by the author.