In Reckoning Vietnam and America’s Cold War Experience, author Neal F. Thompson fearlessly navigates through the murky waters of history, revealing truths long obscured by Cold War
Neal F. Thompson entered the United States Army as a warrant officer candidate in August 1970, two months after graduation from high school. He completed flight school at Ft. Rucker, Alabama in November 1971 and served a one-year tour of duty in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot in Troop F, 8th US Cavalry, 1st Aviation Brigade. He logged nearly 600 hours of combat time was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (1 oak leaf cluster) and the Purple Heart. Following his discharge in 1974, he attended Triton Junior College in River Grove, Illinois, from which he graduated with high honors in 1976, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was a Lincoln Scholar, receiving a B.A. in history with high honors in 1978.
He completed his education at Northwestern University Law School, from which he graduated cum laude in 1981. After ten years of private practice, he became a prosecutor in DuPage County, Illinois, where he remained for the next thirteen years, being appointed Supervisor of the Financial Crimes and Public Integrity Unit in 1996. He taught legal writing at DePaul University Law School and lectured at both the state and the national level on trial practice, reckless homicide prosecution and forensic evidence. Mr. Thompson joined the Illinois National Guard as a helicopter pilot in 1975 and served for 28½ years, retiring in January 2003. He practices law today in Chicago and lives in Naperville, Illinois, with his wife Jaime and their children, Nick, Zack and Cate.
In Reckoning: Vietnam and America’s Cold War Experience, author Neal F. Thompson fearlessly navigates through the murky waters of history, revealing truths long obscured by Cold War orthodoxy. With meticulous research and unwavering honesty, Thompson exposes the tangled web of political intrigue, military blunders, and moral ambiguities that defined America’s engagement in Southeast Asia.
Thompson delivers a searing critique of Cold War orthodoxy, challenging long-held beliefs and revealing the hidden complexities of America's Cold War legacy.
Through insightful analysis and careful attention to historical context, Thompson challenges simplistic narratives of victory and defeat, presenting a more nuanced understanding of America's engagement in Southeast Asia.
Vietnam and America's Cold War Experience." Whether you're a history enthusiast, a student of political science, or simply curious about the complexities of Cold War history, there are many ways to get involved
From exposing the extensive Soviet espionage network within North America to critiquing the misguided strategies of presidents Truman.
Thompson offers a sobering analysis of America's involvement in the Korean War, portraying it as campaign marked by folly and brutality.
American society was poisoned by the Communist movement of the 1930s, and "those who rule the dominant institutions" have built a historical narrative designed to shield Truman from the effects of his choices as he maneuvered to protect himself and his party from decades of ineptitude, dishonesty and folly.
Thompson examines the Vietnam War within the broader framework of Cold War geopolitics, challenging simplistic narratives of victory and defeat.
In Reckoning: Vietnam and America’s Cold War Experience, author Neal F. Thompson fearlessly navigates through the murky waters of history, revealing truths long obscured by Cold War orthodoxy. With meticulous research and unwavering honesty, Thompson exposes the tangled web of political intrigue, military blunders, and moral ambiguities that defined America’s engagement in Southeast Asia.
Through insightful analysis and careful attention to historical context, Thompson challenges simplistic narratives of victory and defeat, presenting a more nuanced understanding of America's engagement in Southeast Asia.
This book by Neal Thompson should be on the required reading list of anyone who is interested in the truth about the Vietnam War. Marines who fought in that war and Marines who have fought in more recent wars will find his analysis, well-reasoned and informative. Some may even find it inflammatory since it makes a very powerful case against the civilian leadership of our nation during the period of the Cold War. He puts the Vietnam War into the context of the political and geo-strategic imperatives of the Cold War, providing clarity and honesty about the decisions made by our "leaders" from the close of WWII to the Fall of the Soviet Empire. As a Vietnam War veteran and distinguished lawyer who has studied the war for decades, Thompson brings his highly trained legal mind and logical approach to analyze the motivations of American political leaders during the Cold War and how those motivations resulted in disaster in South Vietnam. In addition, he exposes how the same motivations that produced the Vietnam War could be found in every military action our nation has embarked on since the end of the Cold War. His book is well-researched, richly footnoted, and compelling, and his lucid prose style makes for a highly readable and informative presentation. It is broad in scope, yet he provides ample detail to support his arguments. I was especially impressed with his analysis in Chapter 13, The "Unwinnable War," where he utterly destroys the orthodox mantra that there was no way to win the Vietnam War. He lays out in exquisite detail how there was a clear plan for winning the war by cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Southern Laos and how the pernicious and foolish adherence to the 1962 Geneva Accords on the Neutrality of Laos and Cambodia by President Johnson’s administration made this option impossible until it was too late to implement. His argument on this topic is strengthened by the words of the North Vietnamese. Equally impressive is Thompson’s take down of what he labels the “war crimes industry,” the endless cascade of war crimes allegations by the antiwar left that served to demonize an entire generation of veterans. With a detailed analysis of various books and media presentations, he demonstrates clearly that the veterans identified therein are not who they claim to be and that the war crimes alleged are demonstrably false. In fact, when the facts and figures regarding day-to-day operations in Vietnam are compared to that of the operations in Korea and World War II, it becomes clear that the men who fought in Vietnam were as honorable and decent as any generation of American veterans. Thompson also poses a rather unique argument and one that I have never seen before in print: that had the Democratic Party won the 1968 presidential election, the war might not have been lost. He is critical of both political parties, providing evidence that both parties were more influenced by domestic political concerns than the geo-strategic realities they were confronted with. Many readers will be surprised by his comparison of the actions taken to trigger President Trump’s impeachment with those taken by other former presidents, making the case that they often did things that were far more egregious than the actions taken by President Trump. He cites several actions taken by Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Johnson that, given the controlling standards and law, should have triggered impeachment proceedings. In Thompson’s final chapter he sums up his basic argument, which is the military disasters our nation has suffered during the Cold War and since were highly predictable and the natural result of domestic political considerations. In this sense, his argument is rather unique, and some readers will find it unsettling or even inflammatory. However, Thompson’s book is not a polemic, it is a rich and detailed history of the Vietnam War in the context of Cold War political decisions. It is a cautionary tale of which political and military readers should take note.
A revisionist history of the Cold War challenges simplistic notions of America’s heroic victory over communism.
The now-conventional historical interpretation of the Cold War imagines a relentless half-century of bipartisan resistance against the global spread of communism inspired by American diplomat George F. Kennan’s famous theory of containment. It sees the low points of anti-communist policy as being the unhinged witch hunts of McCarthyism and the morally and strategically disastrous military campaigns in Southeast Asia. However, debut author Thompson, a practicing attorney, contends that the real story is a far messier one and that foreign policy during the Cold War years was largely shaped by domestic political squabbles, electoral opportunism, and brazen mendacity. President Harry Truman, he says, was skeptical about the strategic significance of South Korea but understood that its surrender to communistic forces would be a political catastrophe for the Democratic Party. Truman’s intervention in Korea became the paradigm for U.S. foreign policy in Asia as a whole, the author notes; neither Presidents John F. Kennedy nor Lyndon Johnson were ever truly committed to repelling communists in Vietnam, he says, but both worried that the perception of weakness in the face of communist aggrandizement would be punished at the polls. The book offers similar analyses of the distance between conviction and action for Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter. Thompson argues that U.S. foreign policy, built around the Truman Doctrine, did in fact contribute to the demise of both communism and the Soviet Union, but the implementation of that doctrine was still largely “directed from start to finish by an incompetent, dishonest, corrupt political class, with evil conduct, dumb luck, and the law of unintended consequences providing this country with its Cold War victory.”
The author researched and wrote his study over a span of 16 years, and his meticulousness is evident on every page; his command of the relevant historical materials, both primary and secondary literature, is beyond reproach. His thesis is an impressively subtle one, avoiding demonization or valorization of any of the primary actors. For example, President Ronald Reagan is described as the one American president who governed in a way that was congruent with his own political philosophy, attached in word and deed to the destruction of the Soviet Union. However, the author also points out what he sees as the lawlessness of Reagan’s presidency—a continuation of the Cold War legacy in the executive branch, established by Truman. As a whole, the study largely covers familiar ground and relies heavily on the secondary literature—a fact the author acknowledges by calling it a “work of synthesis rather than original history.” Nevertheless, it’s a valuable single-volume introduction to a plausible counter-history of the Cold War that ably calls into question, among other things, the notions that the Vietnam War was unwinnable and that McCarthyism was motivated by baseless fantasy. Also, Thompson provides some trenchant thoughts on how to rehabilitate American democracy, including recommending compulsory military service for all citizens.
An impressively argued takedown of historical orthodoxy.
Real Stories, Real Impact
Reckoning: Vietnam and America's Cold War Experience" by Neal F. Thompson is a compelling exploration of the untold truths surrounding America's engagement in Southeast Asia.
Through meticulous research and thought-provoking analysis, Thompson challenges conventional narratives of heroism and victory, offering readers a fresh perspective on this tumultuous period in history.