This is a book that would be of much interest to individuals who are interested in having the knowledge about the Vietnam War during the Kennedy/Diem period. This book entails on the participation of the Vietnam War that was politically motivated in the United States. The Pulitzer-prize winning author David Habersham in this book has analyzed the most crucial time of the United States cold days (David 34).
This book entails the actions that happened in the Vietnam wars in reality but through writing. This war took place in between the year 1961 and 1962 in the United States. The reader of this book gets today can see the similarity of the Iraq and Afghanistan war today and the disastrous Vietnam War. This trauma of the Vietnam War still haunts them up to date. The quagmire constitutes of the full march of confidence and the military strength that saw the Americans win every battle but finally loose the war due to the high number of deaths that was witnessed. The author explores the role of the politics in this Vietnam in a detailed manner. The author writes that President Ngo Dinh Diem failed to get the precise comprehensive information from his underlings on the awful things that were happening in other provinces in his country, this was an act of ignorance. For instance, ambassador Nolting and Harkins did not take into account the poor development of the war whereas they were fast to look into the issue of personal based information to the then president John Kennedy (David 145).
Madame Nhu was an influential person in politics. She was married to the president’s brother. Originally, she was a Buddhist but later converted to Christianity due to the social and political factor. In page 127 of the book, David the author lists the challenges that ware face by the Buddhists in the 1960s. These issues according to the writer s were largely raised by Madame Nhu upon ditching the religion. The hatred that she has for the Buddhism is portrayed by the accusation of throwing a bowl of soup at President Diem when she knows that the president was in the process of signing a compensatory report to the relatives of Buddhists protestors who had been killed by the police. The second scenario for the hatred that she has on the Buddhist is when a Buddhists human activist torches himself in Saigon while protesting against the shootings to the Buddha’s, upon hearing this, she is not compassionate at all ad instead makes fun of the whole situation by saying the she would provide free fuel and lighters. Madam Nhu is an evil character during the Vietnam War. She stood in the way of the war at a time when the United States government was trying the best to end the war (David 127).
The press and the government were among the largest bodies that were in the forefront in the campaign of ending the Vietnam War. David, the author writes of how the press recounts of the occurrences as they had journalist who happened to have first hand information and for this reason gave out the correct information to the public. The government on the other hand concealed the information that could be more confidential and not so good for the public I regard to the Vietnam War. The government instead of giving out the actual happening of the war said that they were in control of the Vietnam War thus losing their credibility. The Making of a Quagmire is a book that is worth reading by everyone so that one can have his or her own understanding and interpretation of the Vietnam War (James 70).
