Military Review English Edition September-October 2013 | Page 93

R E V I E W E S S AY

had become a more perfect place for him. The war satisfied him so completely that he could no longer look at it as something separate from himself. He had finally bent the truth about the war as he had bent other and lesser truths in the past.” Among the thousands of books that have been written on Vietnam, A Bright Shining Lie stands out for its unbent truths on America’s war there and the reasons it failed—reasons that lay in many historical circumstances but also in the character of a generation that believed too strongly in a myth of American infallibility. Long after the war ended, some still clung to the belief that Americans could not lose a war—and did not lose in Vietnam. One such believer is Lewis Sorley, who declared in his book, A Better War (Harcourt Brace and Company, New York, 1999): “There came a time when the war was won. The fighting wasn’t over, but the war was won.” It can be argued that that statement defies not just history but elementary logic. It is hard to see how a war has been won if the enemy is still fighting, much less if the bloodiest battles are still to come, as Vietnam’s did in 1972—well after Sorley says victory was achieved. It seems even more illogical to declare that a war was won if, after it ends, the enemy rules the country where the war was fought. Yet the claim that the U.S. military effort actually succeeded in Vietnam has become a theme for a number of historians. That alternative narrative of the war is relevant to recent policy debates, not just to the historical argument about Vietnam. That’s because the case made by Sorley and others is, in essence, that the United States succeeded in Vietnam by adopting many of the methods and principles now labeled as “counterinsurgency warfare.” Thus, rather than being remembered as a mistake, the American effort in Vietnam becomes a positive model for present-day strategists looking for solutions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The “better war” of Sorley’s title is the one led by Gen. Creighton Abrams after he succeeded Gen. William Westmoreland in mid-1968 as the top U.S. commander in Vietnam. In place of his predecessor’s search-and-destroy strategy, Abrams declared protecting South Vietnam’s population as the main mission of U.S. forces. That policy, then usually called “pacification” rather than “counterinsurgency,” was undoubtMILITARY REVIEW ? September-October 2013

edly wiser than Westmoreland’s. But Sorley’s claims for its success and his uniformly rosy spin on Abrams’s generalship rest on a deceptively selective version of the facts. His argument that the Abrams strategy “won” the war is based on the low level of enemy action in the years after Abrams took command. But while the relative quiet on the battlefields in 1970 and 1971 may have been partly a result of pacification successes, it did not mean that U.S. actions had decisively destroyed the enemy’s ability to fight. The lull also occurred because the Communist forces deliberately avoided battle in order to rest, reequip, and replace losses. When they returned to the fight in 1972, in the attack that became known as the Easter Offensive, the fighting was more intense than in any previous stage of the war—far heavier, by any reasonable estimate, than would have been possible if they had really been defeated just a year or so before. Some argue that to the extent that the 1972 attack was mounted by regular North Vietnamese units, it is valid to claim that pacification defeated the guerrilla threat in the South. Even if it were true, that is a meaningless argument, since U.S. efforts all along were directed at defeating Hanoi’s forces. And in fact, although the headlined battles in 1972 were with main-force units, local guerrillas reappeared strongly in many areas as well. In the revisionist narrative, the Easter offensive is invariably portrayed as a clear victory for the South, but that too is false. With U.S. air support, Saigon’s troops successfully defended the three province capitals that came under attack, but lost almost all of the chain of inland bases they had held as an outer defense line protecting the populated coastal lowlands, while unprecedented casualties and destruction permanently depressed civilian morale. The Communist side also suffered huge losses witho ???????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????M????Y??????e????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Q????q???????????t???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????%?e?????????? ?H??5?5????e???????????????????????????????????????????????????????Y????????????]????????Q?????????????(??((0