Even though it was written by a reformist liberal and tells the history of the Vietnam War through the experiences of an Amerikan military commander and psy-war operative, Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" is a useful book for anti- imperialists. Sheehan analyzes both broad strategies and small case studies in order to tell how Vietnamese revolutionaries defeated the Amerikan military, despite the latter's immense advantage in technology and sheer firepower.
For example, Sheehan devotes one whole chapter to the battle of Ap Bac, where southern Vietnamese guerrillas with no heavy weapons defeated a force three times their size, shooting down several Amerikan helicopters and routing a column of armored vehicles along the way. Sheehan uses this to illustrate how the guerrillas adapted their tactics to defeat the "invincible" armored vehicles and to contrast the discipline and determination of the guerrillas against the timidity and calculated ineptitude of the south Vietnamese puppet troops - most of whom were mercenaries or conscripts and saw no point to risking their necks for the Saigon government du jour.
Because of battle accounts like this, which detail the heroism and immense sacrifices made by the Vietnamese revolutionary forces, the book is often suspenseful and inspiring.
John Paul Vann, the Amerikan whose life Sheehan follows, was disgusted with the corruption of the south Vietnamese government and the callous disregard the Amerikan military showed for the life of the civilian population. Sheehan documents the brutality of the "strategic hamlet" programs and "free fire zones," which Vann (correctly) thought would make the Vietnamese hate the united $tates. Instead of "bombing Vietnam into the stone age," Vann thought that the u.$. should back a program of land reform and democratization in the countryside, while waging "low intensity warfare" against the guerrillas. This way the people in south Vietnam would come to identify with the puppet regime in Saigon. What Vann never realized was that the revolutionaries were carrying out land reform and combating corruption -- as part of their program to fight for the will of the Vietnamese people. The people of south Vietnam already largely identified with the underground revolutionary government. Attacking the revolutionary movement meant attacking the interests of the people of Vietnam. The Vietnamese did not need Amerikan land reform imposed by military force. Vann's cynicism is demonstrated in the fact that he wanted the Amerikan military in Vietnam to push a program that the Vietnamese revolutionaries were carrying out already.
This why imperialism is bound to be defeated. Vann was right: If the Amerikans were to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, they had to solve pressing Vietnamese political and social problems and stop massacring them indiscriminately. But the imperialists had created the pressing Vietnamese problems -- directly or indirectly, beginning with imperialist opposition to a truly independent and socialist Vietnam. The imperialist mission was not to solve the problems of their own creation, instead they relied on guns and bombs to try and force the Vietnamese to accept their will.
MIM Theory no. 4: A Sprial Trajectory (available from MIM for $5) includes a detailed discussion of successful imperialist co-optation of the Communist strategy of land-reform as used in China. "The United States and East Asian capitalists jumped on the bandwagon of class struggle at a crucial point at the completion of World War II and the Korean War. ... They copied land reform [from China]. Why did they copy it? Because the communists had just kicked capitalist ass in China and were starting to do the same in Korea and Vietnam."(p. 77)
MT4 goes on to explain why imperialism can only succeed in making such reforms in a few colonies, and how the exceptional countries in which imperialist-sponsored land reform succeeds can only exist within the rule of imperialist exploitation of the majority of nations. The case of Vietnam demonstrates that imperialism is not principally interested in land reform for the interests of the people. Amerika used land reform to achieve control of south Korea and the other Asian Tigers, but spend decades working to destroy the benefits of land reform in Vietnam.
The massive bombing in Vietnam is another example of how the imperialists' nature gets in the way even of their own strategizing. The bombing in north and south Vietnam had little military value and was detrimental politically, but it remained a central part of Amerikan strategy throughout the war. Sheehan hints that this was because aircraft and bomb production was very profitable.
In typical liberal fashion, Sheehan occasionally slanders the Vietnamese revolutionaries. He claims that the revolutionaries ruled the city of Hue through terror and violence when they liberated it during the Tet offensive - but a French reporter in the city at the time remarked at how supportive the population was of the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries did kill a handful of corrupt local officials, but there is no evidence that they killed people on the scale Sheehan and the CIA cite (see Marilyn Young, "The Vietnam Wars").
As long as the reader keeps a critical perspective, "A Bright Shining Lie" can serve as a good introduction to the history of the Vietnam War - which is important, as more and more Amerikans only know of Vietnam through Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris movies.