Bret Devereaux

If someone felt they didn't even know enough to ask an intelligent question, what would you tell them first (besides 'read my book when it comes out')?

I'd say you can only learn by asking questions––whether to a historian or Google.

Fair enough. Phu Yen is a province in Vietnam. I assume we are asking about a military action (or actions?) that took place there? What were the goals in that operation, were they achieved and what greater import does that have for our understanding of the war?

Otherwise, I'm gonna ask things like, "What is the primary agricultural crop in Phu Yen? How is that farmed? How are the farmers organized there now? How did that change in the last 100 years? What is the degree of market penetration there now? 100 years ago?"

Funny you should ask about all that. Rice. It was all about rice. All the U.S. operations were either focused exclusively, or in support of, securing rice production.

Such operations often involved conventional military forces, which helps me make the argument that pacification does not exist outside of conventional warfare.

Now does supporting securing rice production here mean mostly guarding the extraction of the harvest, or is there actually an effort to aid in the production itself or guard efforts to do so? What does support here look like?

Everything from manning checkpoints to providing transportation of civilians.