Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (70 page)

Reasons for the American loss in Vietnam are examined carefully by J. Record,
The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam
(Annapolis, Md., 1998)—mostly military ineptitude and the absence of political and strategic reasons for being there in the first place. G. Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York, 1978); L. Sorley, A Better War: The
Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam
(New York, 1999); and M. Lind,
Vietnam, the Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most
Disastrous Military Conflict
(New York, 1999), all mention the misrepresentations of Tet as part of larger efforts to correct the standard wisdom that Vietnam was not winnable and was morally wrong—as represented perhaps best by the popular accounts of S. Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York, 1983), and N. Sheehan, A Bright
Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
(New York, 1988).

Tet looms large in various collections of primary documents, speeches, and articles that are designed as readers for university courses; the editors of such anthologies adopt a critical approach to America’s intervention and the military’s conduct in general in Vietnam. See J. Werner and D. Hunt, eds.,
The American War in Vietnam
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1993); G. Sevy, ed., The American Experience in Vietnam: A Reader (Norman, Okla., 1989); M. Gettleman et al., eds.,
Vietnam and America: A
Documented History
(New York, 1995); and J. Rowe and R. Berg, eds.,
The American
War and American Culture
(New York, 1991). More balanced collections of documents are found (through 1965) in M. Raskin and B. Fall, eds.,
The Vietnam Reader:
Articles and Documents on American Foreign Policy and the Viet-Nam Crisis
(New York, 1965), and H. Salisbury, ed.,
Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War
(New York, 1994). For favorable accounts of those protesters who went to North Vietnam, see M. Hershberger,
Traveling to Vietnam: American Peace Activists and the War
(Syracuse, N.Y., 1998), and J. Clinton, The Loyal Opposition: Americans in North
Vietnam, 1965–1972
(Boulder, Colo., 1995).

There are also numerous recent narratives of the twenty-six-day, house-to-house fighting at Hué, many of them memoirs by veterans of the ordeal. See N. Warr,
Phase
Line Green: The Battle for Hue, 1968 (Annapolis, Md., 1997); K. Nolan, Battle for Hue,
Tet, 1968
(Novato, Calif., 1983); G. Smith,
The Siege of Hue
(Boulder, Colo., 1999); and E. Hammel,
Fire in the Streets: The Battle for Hue, Tet 1968
(Chicago, 1991). On Khesanh, see the moving narrative of J. Prados and R. Stubbe,
Valley of Decision: The
Siege of Khe Sanh
(New York, 1991), and cf. R. Pisor,
The Siege of Khe Sanh
(New York, 1982). The role of airpower in the siege is well chronicled in B. Nalty,
Air Power and
the Fight for Khe Sanh (Washington, D.C., 1973), published by the Office of Air Force History.

There are good revisionist, strongly opinionated memoirs written shortly after the war by some of the principal American military figures involved. Start with W. C. Westmoreland,
A Soldier Reports
(New York, 1976); M. Taylor,
Swords and Plowshares
(New York, 1972); and U. S. Sharp, Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (New York, 1978).

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

Carnage and Culture

Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian who is a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno. He has written several scholarly and popular books on ancient history and classical warfare, including
The Other Greeks, The
Western Way of War,
and
The Soul of Battle.
He lives in Selma, California.

Also by Victor Davis Hanson

Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece
The Western Way of War
Hoplites
(editor)
The Other Greeks
Fields Without Dreams
Who Killed Homer?
(with John Heath)
The Wars of the Ancient Greeks
The Soul of Battle
The Land Was Everything
Bonfire of the Humanities
 (with John Heath and Brian Thornton)
An Autumn of War

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2002

Copyright © 2001 by Victor Davis Hanson

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Doubleday edition as follows:
Hanson, Victor Davis.
Carnage and culture: landmark battles in the rise of Western power
Victor Davis Hanson.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.

Contents: Salamis, Sept. 28, 480 B.C.—Gaugamela, Oct. 1, 331 B.C.—Cannae, Aug. 2,
216 B.C.—Poitiers, Oct. 11, 732—Tenochtitlán, June 24, 1520–Aug. 13, 1521—
Lepanto, Oct. 7, 1571—Rorke’s Drift, Jan. 22–23, 1879—Midway, June 4–8, 1942—
Tet, Jan. 31–Apr. 6, 1968—Western warfare: past and future.
1. Battles. 2. History, Military. I. Title.
D25.5 .H25 2001
904’.7—dc21
00-065582

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eISBN: 978-0-307-42518-8

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