SOURCE: Marshall, Charles Burton. “Lucky No Longer.” National Review 34, no. 6 (2 April 1982): 363-64.

In the following review, Marshall agrees with Podhoretz's opinions in Why We Were in Vietnam regarding the lack of popular support for United States military intervention in Vietnam.

Norman Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam is a sharp disquisition in political pathology. Given my own reactions at the time—as long ago as 1954 I was convinced of the futility of getting into war over the future of a distant and recalcitrant land against close-by forces bent on possession, but once we had entered the conflict I was loath to be seen siding with people who assailed the U.S. for criminality rather than mere bumbling—I am favorably disposed toward Podhoretz's negative answers to these questions: “… did that defeat truly mean what the antiwar movement seems to have persuaded everyone it meant? … Does the United States...