The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam

Gibson, James William. The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam. Harry Evans, ed. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1986.

Analyzes "how U.S. military and civilian leadership developed the theory of limited war as a kind of production system in which the officer corps served as managers, the enlisted men functioned as workers, and the product was enemy deaths or body count. To the war managers, American economic and technological superiority over Vietnamese insurgents and North Vietnamese regular forces was inevitable; any temporary setback could be reversed through escalation. By comparing the managerial approach found in official documents and military histories to the stories told by troops and journalists on the ground, Gibson details what went wrong with the production model of war and why the United States lost."[1] See, H. B. Franklin, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination.[2]

RDE, Title, 28Aug19