War Comes to Long An Book Review

War Comes to Long An Embedded in a push and pull between two different parties, the citizens and peasants of South Vietnam found themselves left with a choice: stand and defend their own government, or join the revolutionary movement of the Vietcong. Although both sides claim that they were winning the war and fighting for the people, speculation has to be cast on which one really was. In Jeffery Race’s book, War Comes to Long An, Race makes an argument for the Vietcong that is hard to refuse.
The conclusion that the Vietcong overwhelmingly beat the South Vietnamese at garnishing the majority of the hearts of the public is no secret. The real question is, how? The Southern Vietnamese government was undoubtedly a statistical favorite in nearly every category. Militarily, they were larger, at one point reaching the fourth largest in the world. They also had more advanced weapons and machinery. This was due in large part to the backup by the U.S., which could have arguably been their greatest strength of all. With all of these advantages, how could South Vietnam lose support from their people? Jeffery Race attempts to answer that question in a rather different manner than most historians have in the past. Instead of looking at the broad scale of things, he micro-analyzes it, looking at the province of Long An as an example of what was happening all over South Vietnam. The two main questions that the book answers are where did South Vietnam fail and where did the Vietcong succeed? The first can be answered by multiple reasons, according to Race. Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes that South Vietnam made was the over-centralization of the government. Saigon did attempt to meet the needs of the public. For instance, they did have in place a land redistribution plan for the peasants and misplaced citizens. However, many of the decisions made for the people were made at the national level, and did not always comply with their needs. Furthermore, many of these