The Bureaucrat as Strategist

摘要

In the literature on the Vietnam War, Robert Komer emerges seemingly out of nowhere as President Lyndon Baines Johnson's expeditor for pacification. Often depicted as a prickly character, and nicknamed "Blowtorch Bob" who already had a reputation for orchestrating effective action among hidebound bureaucrats, Komer was dispatched to Saigon by Johnson to bring together civilian agencies, military commanders, and a reluctant South Vietnamese government to orchestrate a concerted approach to the "other war," the effort to wrest control of the Vietnamese countryside from the Vietcong. Komer worked for nearly two years at what was considered a virtually impossible task, making steady progress in developing an increasingly effective pacification campaign, only to see his efforts in Vietnam truncated by the Tet Offensive and Johnson's decision not to run for re-election in 1968.