Shooting at the Moon : The Story of America's Clandestine War in Laos

Rating:
Summary: Bullseye for Shooting At The Moon
Review: The author spent years gathering the material for this book and Warner has written the definitive book on the period. Rarely has a non-participant so closely captured the feel and intensity of the times. I worked as a fighter pilot with the Raven FACs and was totally astounded at how good this book reads. A triumph.

Rating:
Summary: Failed Strategies
Review: Warner accurately captures the bizarre twists and turns of the U.S. surrogate warfare efforts in Laos. My experience as a direct participant during the 1972-75 time frame gives me the advantage of being able to attest to some of Warner's chronicle. The historical record also provides us information on the failed strategies used by the American State Department in their desire to control events in Laos. Although the North Vietnamese considered all of Southeast Asia as their theater of operations, the American effort, in contrast, became one of disjointed and , at times, bumbling entities running into each other without effective command and control. This does not in any way diminish the heroic efforts of honest men trying too carry out tactical operations while complying with unreasonable controls of the American government bureaucracy. The legacy of these failed strategies can be seen with the difficult acclimation of the Hmong into American society. Warner's spares us the micro detail and intense emotionalism of other books on the same surrogate warfare. This makes "Shooting at the Moon" a good compelling read. With the above bureaucratic absurdities in mind, Warner was right on when he said that "it was the Americans who were shooting at the moon"!