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A 4 page book review. Herrington served on the front lines during the Vietnam War, not in combat, but rather in the war for the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people. In his text, he describes the logistics of his mission, which was the "identification and destruction of the Vietcong shadow government" (41). Herrington offers an insightful commentary that examines the Vietnam War, not through massive troops movements or overall strategies of, but on the microcosmic level that shows the war at the grassroots level. His fascinating analysis suggests lessons that could greatly aid American leaders in the current war in Iraq. No additional sources cited.
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of the Vietnamese people. In his text Silence Was A Weapon, The Vietnam War in The Villages, A Personal Perspective (1982), he describes the logistics of his mission, which was
the "identification and destruction of the Vietcong shadow government" (41). As this suggests, Herrington offers an insightful commentary that examines the Vietnam War, not through massive troops movements or
overall strategies of, but on the microcosmic level that shows the war at the grassroots level. His fascinating analysis suggests lessons that could greatly aid American leaders in the current
war in Iraq. Early on in his book, Herrington describes how he came to understand the cultural dichotomies that differentiated the way that Americans saw the war and the
way that the average Vietnamese perceived it. Herrington asked a local advisor "would the villagers report to the government about the covert activities of the resistance?" to which, the man
smiled and explained the "Vietnamese way" (22). To report a fellow villagers would be to "subject a fellow Vietnamese to arrest, torture or even death at the hands of westerners,"
which virtually no one was willing to do, regardless of personal political orientation (22). While Americans saw the war as fighting to protect South Vietnamese independence, the Vietnamese saw American
forces as simply the latest in a string of Western outsiders. Herrington explains that Vietnam was occupied by the West for over a century and the delineation to the Vietnamese
was "them" against "us," meaning the West against native Vietnamese. As this suggests, what emerges from Herringtons text is not only a detailed account of US activities to win
the war at the grassroots level by ferreting out the Vietcong leadership from Vietnams villages, but also that there was a wide ideological gulf between the worldviews of the participants.
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