What! Yet another article on the Vietnam war! Don't we know enough about it by now to avoid repeating it? The answer is no. We ought to, but we don't. In time there will be probing studies based on the Pentagon Papers and as yet unpublished documents and memoirs. But presently available evidence strongly indicates that the reigning explanations are one-sided and incomplete. So overwhelming has been the compulsion to blame the war on the mistakes of the civilian decision-makers that the military responsibility for beginning and prolonging the war has been virtually ignored.