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Article: The Key to Failure: Laos and the Vietnam War.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- February 19, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Key to Failure: Laos and the Vietnam War
ABOUT 21 years ago an envelope arrived on my desk in the White House from William P. Bundy, Assistant Secretry of State for East Asia and the Pacific. Enclosed was a "Top Secret" document of about thirty pages with no listed author, and a handwritten note from Bill: with his slighty arch humor he asked me as "our resident Clausewitz" for my views on the enclosure.
The memorandum itself was an extremely persuasive argument for corking the bottle--that is, inserting land forces to block the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. The author maintained (correctly, in my view) that it was nonsense to abide by the 1962 Geneva ...