American Valor Quarterly Issue 4 - Autumn 2008 | Page 19

Counterinsurgency in Vietnam
Lessons Learned, Ignored, Then Revived
By Rufus Phillips
Rufus Phillips, the author of Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness
Account of Lessons Not Learned recently published by the Naval
Institute Press, spent the better part of the years 1954 to 1968 in
carrying out counterinsurgency in Vietnam while trying to influence
U.S. policies in Saigon and back in Washington. Successively, as an
Army officer detailed to the CIA, a CIA Case Officer, USAID
director of an on-the-ground, unconventional, economic and social
rural development program in support of counterinsurgency, and
as a consultant to the State Department, he was involved from
the rice paddy level to the President’s National Security Council in
implementing U.S. policies and programs while trying to make
changes. His efforts brought him into contact with all the major
players of that era: President Ngo Dinh Diem, his brother