"Five American and three Vietnamese participants in the early days of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia offer compelling arguments here that the failure of American policy in Vietnam was not inevitable.

The common theme of their individual essays suggests that the war in Vietnam might have had a much different - and far less tragic - outcome if only U.S. policy makers had listened to experts familiar with Asian cultures and communist revolutionary warfare tactics and pursued a coherent counterinsurgency strategy instead of militarizing and Americanizing the struggle."--BOOK JACKET.