Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam

Moyar's Phoenix and the Birds of Prey is a well researched and balanced account of the Phoenix Program that deconstructs the myths of the Phoenix Program as an assassination program or that it advocated and supported widespread torture and detention of civilians in South Vietnam. As a resource on the Phoenix program the book is fantastic for documenting parts of the Phoenix Program and pacification such as intelligence collection, the effectiveness of the controversial Provincial Reconnaissance Units, and the problems and complexities with neutralization statistics. However the book is not without its criticisms.As other reviewers have noted Moyar makes very careful use of his footnotes, often including much less footnotes than one would expect for a history that seeks to embrace a much different view of the Vietnam War than the one commonly taught in high school or college survey courses. He also tends to make broad statements supported with no footnotes or very little evidence, forcing us to believe that his assertions are either widely held in academic circles or that we must take the author at his word. Moyar himself attempts to criticize liberal academics for being biased in their research on the Vietnam War by categorizing it as an unjust war or by framing the war as morally wrong and the tactics used by US forces as unjust. Yet Moyar suffers from the same bias because as the book indicates he deliberately sought in his research to refute the claims of liberal academics that he felt were wrong about the war. A fact that makes me wonder a little bit about the objectivity of his research. Moyar also attempts to frame his book in the wider discussion of the counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam and whether the U.S. employed the right strategy and tactics. In this sense, his book is a criticism and counter to the thesis advocated by John Nagl in his book- Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam . I highly recommend Phoenix and the Birds of Prey as a resource on the Phoenix Program and counterinsurgency in the Vietnam War, but readers should also keep in mind that claims supported by little research or with little evidence need to be taken with a grain of salt. Given the amount of primary source documents and research done on the Vietnam War it is simply ridiculous that Moyar cannot support some of these claims. I only recommend this book for those who have an extensive knowledge of the Vietnam War and some knowledge of the counterinsurgency effort. I also highly recommend Stuart Herrington's book about his time as an advisor to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam as a companion to Moyar's work  Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account .Note on other reviews of the book: If the other reviewers are who they say they are and are not catfishing, then the comment section has a number of extremely qualified reviewers. The reviews by Robert Gillespie, Kevin Boylan, and Andrew Finlayson are all by scholars that have written extensively about the Vietnam War, and are well qualified to offer their opinions on this book. While their reviews offer different opinions about the Vietnam War, I highly recommend that any potential buyer of this book check them out.

This expanded edition of Moyar's work from the University of Nebraska arrived at the time that the U.S. Army finally discovered itself in another counterinsurgency war (three years sfter that war had already begun). The text, however, is not an improvement on the original. Although a healthy balance to previous works on the Phoenix program (especially that of Douglas Valentine)it should not be taken as the definitive history, which will have to wait for the opening of the Vietnamese archives.Moyar makes careful use of his footnotes, especially when they support his positions and tends to forget them when they do not. This tome is one of the least documented works on the Vietnam Conflict that I am aware of (among those writers that bothered with footnotes). The author also tends to like to make sweeping unsupported statements to maintain his thesis, contradicts his own supporting facts (often on the same page), and spends lots of time debunking other historians whose works on the counterinsurgency activities (or lack of them) in Vietnam contradict his own. One example of selective editing was Robert Komer's famous quote that Phoenix was "a poorly managed and largely ineffectual affair," does not appear anywhere in the text. This is pretty slack, considering that the CIA ran the program under the aegis of Komer's CORDS).The old bugaboos of Vietnam also tend to raise their hoary old heads - the politicians and the anti-war protesters were responsible for the loss of Vietnam, not the generals, not the strategy, and most certainly not their enemy. The only fact that appeared in the text that was "new" to this reviewer was that one of the participants in the program laid the blame for any psychological problems faced by returning veterans solely at the door of the anti-war protesters. Interesting.For basic information on Phoenix, its predecessors, the personalities involved (Vietnamese and American), its operations, etc... this is as good a work as we have gotten so far, but take it with a large dose of salt.

Tremendous follow-on read after Triumph Forsaken. I was there and I didn't realize what the CIA's involvement was.

Ordered it for my husband as a required text for a graduate school class, but he really enjoyed reading it. Came in good shape and quickly.

A very well researched and written account. Too bad we (Americans) tired before we succeeded!!!

Excellent resource on Counterinsurgency and the PHOENIX program. It is a fairly heavy read but well worth it. By far one of the best books I've read in a while.

Good book, good condition.

everything ok