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Warriors and Fools

How America's Leaders Lost the Vietnam War and Why It Still Matters

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Warriors and Fools is not just another book about the Vietnam War. It is different from most. Unlike some others, the author is a veteran of that conflict, and a retired military officer with nearly thirty years' service. He has spent much of the last three decades studying the war and taught a course on Vietnam at a prestigious senior military war college. This book is also different from others because it is a story not just of the American decisions and actions during the war. This Vietnam War story uses the latest, ground breaking research and released documentation of the war from the Communist Vietnamese side of the conflict. Consequently, the book delves deeply into the decision making, strategies, motives, and goals of the North Vietnam leaders as they waged their war for unification, first against the French and then against the Americans. The book also uses memoirs, interviews, and oral histories of former South Vietnamese leaders and combatants to discover their views on their struggle to form a new nation free from communist aggression. Warriors and Fools is both broad and deep in scope in its narration of the Vietnam War story. It takes the reader from the White House's oval office and Hanoi's Politburo room, to the Pentagon's and North Vietnam Army's command centers, to Vietnam's mountain and rice patty battlefields to show the determination, deceit, foolhardiness, mistakes, courage, and horrors of war from the views of both sides. While it examines multiple participant views, overall the book seeks to answer one specific question - why did the US fail to achieve its principal objective to defend South Vietnam from communist aggression? The story's findings and conclusions are neither orthodox nor revisionist. Those trying to gain insights on how American civilian leaders lost the war that its military could have won; or how the US Congress, Press, or Antiwar activists convinced the Public to stop its support will be disappointed. None of these traditional 'answers' on why the US lost are really valid. Rather, as this story explains the answer is much more linked to human factors, interactions, and relationships. In this case, the interrelationship between American civilian and military leaders and advisors was extraordinarily divisive and dysfunctional. So much so that it resulted in flawed, timid policies and foolish strategies that led to defeat. Moreover, that troublesome interrelationship was primarily a result of mistrusts, misunderstandings, and misperceptions on their roles, responsibilities, and what they thought would lead to a positive end to the war. In addition, primarily because they were either ignorant of the nature of war or overconfident from their past experiences, civilian and military policymakers ignored or misunderstood their enemy. Warriors and Fools should be of interest to those who served in the war, and serious students and teachers of this event and period. It is not intended as light reading, or for someone trying to get just a brief understanding of what happened there and in America at the time.

Weniger Details

Colonel (Ret) Rothmann served as an active duty Army officer for over twenty-nine years. He is a 1967 graduate of the United States Military Academy. Upon being commissioned in the Infantry, he served in numerous troop duty assignments in airborne, infantry and ranger organizations, both as a commander and staff officer. These included platoon and company command in combat, and company command and battalion/ brigade operations and training staff officer positions in Vietnam, Germany, and the United States from 1968 to 1980. In 1985 he assumed command and supervised the reconstitution of the 3rd Battalion, 502d Infantry (Air Assault), which had been decimated in the Gander, Newfoundland air disaster. Colonel (Ret) Rothmann also served on the Army and Joint Staff. From 1982-1985 he was a principal staff officer for NATO and European war planning on the Army Staff. In that position he made recommendations to the Chief of Staff on war plan development and NATO defense issues. From 1990 to 1993, he served as a Strategic Planner for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS). In that capacity he participated in or led efforts on the development of the National Military Strategy, the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, and the Roles and Missions Report. During this time he advised the CJCS on the military strategy for Desert Shield/Desert Storm and other defense issues. As a representative for the CJCS, he traveled extensively to the US Combatant Commands to discuss military strategy and defense policy issues. Colonel (Ret) Rothmann also taught Military History at West Point from 1976-1979, was the Army Chief of Staff personal representative at the National War College from 1993 to 1994, and lectured and taught strategy and operations there. Upon his retirement in 1996 he held the position of Chairman of the Department of Military Strategy and Operations at the National War College. Colonel Rothmann currently resides in New York with his wife Susan Flaherty Rothmann, and has three sons and daughters-in-law, and ten grandchildren.