Reddit mentions of A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam

I haven't read this one yet, but I've heard A Better War is really good on the last few years of Vietnam.

If you'd like to go down the Kristol rabbit hole, The Neoconservative Persuasion is a collection of his essays on the subject.

By coincidence I just finished A Better War by Lewis Sorley. It's an excellent examination of the Vietnam war from the Tet Offensive to the end. He points out that most histories of the Vietnam war give the vast bulk of their coverage to the war up until Tet, and then skip to the final NVA victory over the south, ignoring what is probably the most important aspects of the war itself.

If America was justified in fighting WWII, what sense is there in crushing one colonizing autocracy only to hand the now-bloody terrain over to another totalitarian ideology with a history of suborning and enslaving other states?

The West managed to split Korea and Germany, but of course, France was not in Korea (and Japan, which annexed Korea in 1910, was happily deprived of any say) but had a vested interest dividing Germany. Neither the RoK nor the BRD created a perfect society (indeed, RoK has suffered the usual zany government hijinks), but they beat the Red Fascists hands down.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/lost-victory-by-william-colby/
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/30521-Review-Of-Ken-Burns-Vietnam-PBS-Series.html
https://www.amazon.com/Better-War-Unexamined-Victories-Americas/dp/0156013096

I would "blame" Vietnam on, first, the Communists (Ho Chi Minh, Mao and Stalin), second, the French, trying to maintain their SE Asian colony (or truly blind to the optics). America is the last in blame: they aided the French after only 1949 (when the CHICOM victory allowed the Soviets to arm the Viet Minh, a Nationalist umbrella movement dominated by the Communists, not unlike Castro in Cuba) but they should have forced one of three options:

1. Burn it down (hand Vietnam over to the Communists),
   
2. Forced the French to agree to a timetable of independence, while bolstering South Vietnam, or
   
3. Kick the French out, if they wouldn't cooperate, and go in and build South Vietnam almost from scratch.
   
   The American people were exhausted by a Vietnam war that began in 1945, not 1964. I think anyone would have lost patience.

https://www.amazon.com/Better-War-Unexamined-Victories-Americas/dp/0156013096/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524068687&sr=8-1&keywords=a+better+war

Maybe I'll buy this book and go full American tankie