In A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (Harvest Books, 2000), Lewis Sorley endeavors to fill a gap in Vietnam scholarship concerning the years 1968-1973, when Creighton Abrams replaced William Westmoreland as COMUSMACV and made substantial leaps forward in the operational prosecution of the war. In the end, Sorley concludes, the U.S. accepted in the Paris Peace Agreement a less-desirable “peace” than might have been obtainable given the situation on the ground for North Vietnam after Linebacker II. (Sorley does concede North Vietnam’s obstinacy on the issue of leaving troops in South Vietnam, showing he doesn’t go quite so far as other authors in arguing that we bargained away victory.) Sorley’s book suffers from its biases, its lack of organization, and its tendency toward hagiography. While I generally agree with Sorley’s theses, his approach to proving them turned me off.

            Sorley establishes the exigency of his book in the Prologue — that previous Vietnam scholarship devotes insufficient attention to the war after Tet. Even works Sorley endorses (such as George Herring’s America’s Longest War and Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie) fail to properly credit the performances of his protagonists Creighton Abrams, John Paul Vann, Ellsworth Bunker and William Colby. Previous Vietnam studies, Sorley contends, also accept the eventual result of the war as a fait accompli. Everyone aggress that Tet 1968 was a turning point. However, rather than viewing it is the beginning of the end for the anti-Communist struggle in Vietnam, Sorley envisions it for what it was tactically and operationally: the end for the Viet Cong and the beginning of the end for the PAVN. As the top American leader in South Vietnam, Abrams was therefore caught between two crosscurrents — the opportunity created by the decay of the communist forces and the diminished anti-communist capability created by the American “phased withdrawal” (to use a phrase that has gained some currency lately).

            Sorley’s thesis is that Abrams outdid Westmoreland by recognizing and seizing new opportunities while correcting old mistakes. The main positive developments Sorley identifies are Abrams’ better understanding of the tactics and strategy of the North Vietnamese, a focus on enemy logistics rather than the attrition of enemy soldiers, and an emphasis on population security rather than “body count.”

            Sorley credits Abrams with recognizing the imperative for a team effort with our ambassador to South Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker. Unlike Westmoreland who had had less solid relationships with Bunker’s predecessors, Abrams trusted Bunker and sought to win his trust. He directed his J-3 to never take significant action without first consulting the ambassador. Abrams also saw the need for improving the South Vietnamese forces and protecting South Vietnamese governmental stability not only in terms of Nixon’s Vietnamization policy (which Sorley considers politically driven) but in terms of practicalities. The enemy knew there was “just one, repeat one, war,” (meaning the war for the villages and the war for political control of Vietnam was one and the same) Abrams said, and Abrams determined to fight the same way. Abrams began applying the lessons learned by the Marine Civil Action Platoons (CAPs) on the big picture level in a strategy that included military operations, training and equipping the South Vietnamese, and offensive and defensive pacification.

            Another Abrams innovation was understanding the importance of logistics. Under Westmoreland, American commanders had been denied permission to take the war to the enemy’s sanctuaries in Cambodia. Starting a year before Nixon’s decision to allow a Cambodian incursion, Abrams leveraged his intelligence capabilities to interdict COSVN logistics and predict future offensives. The breakthrough came with painstaking analysis of signals intelligence that revealed COSVN forces used a forward-heavy “logistics nose” rather than rear supply lines, eventually allowing MACV J-2 to get a handle on the complex network of "binh trams" and "T-stations" that enabled COSVN movement. With this knowledge Abrams could plan spoiling attacks and air strikes as well as detect preparations for offensive movement. Finally, Abrams appreciated the significance of the long-ignored Sihanoukville trail. By understanding logistics Abrams moved the American effort in South Vietnam from search and destroy missions vainly hoping to kill more North Vietnamese than could be fed into South Vietnam, and instead began a methodical campaign against COSVN centers of gravity.

            The other revolution Abrams led against “body count” was the shift from search and destroy tactics to “clear and hold” ones intended to provide population security. During the mini-Tet offensive in May 1968, Abrams remarked, “I have estimated that we can successfully defend Saigon seven more times, and then we’re going to be faced with the embarrassment that there’s no city left.” By Tet 1971 the situation had improved so much that not only was Saigon safe from rocket attacks, but John Paul Vann and Ambassador Colby were able to ride across the Meikong Delta unescorted on motorcycles. The difference was Abrams’ commitment to population security, manifested in the defensive pacification strategy and Colby’s offensive PHOENIX counterinsurgency program. One commentator was heard to remark that by 1973 Saigon was safer than many major American cities. The revolution in population security might have enabled South Vietnamese civil society to eventually progress enough for a stable, democratic government to take hold absent the reverses of 1974 and 1975.

            The main problems with Sorley’s book are in its structure and its hagiographic tendencies. A Better War takes a chronological approach, beginning with Abrams' arrival in theater and progressing toward the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975. Perhaps this is because of the gap that Sorley is trying to fill — making A Better War a comprehensive history of that period. It seems however that Sorley is simply in love with his main character.

            The book draws heavily on the over 400 hours of tape recordings made at MACV headquarters during Abrams’ tenure, and as a result often reads like an oral history of Abrams instead of a sober, balanced analysis. Contributing to the oral history feel is Sorley’s immodest use of italics to emphasize words and phrases in Abrams' quotes. Sorley seems to want the reader to hear the inflection in Abrams’ voice. This wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t happen several times on nearly every page of the book. More troubling is the way the book seems to contextualize every operational decision made at MACV with some folksy Abrams wisdom from the tapes. In addition to the Abrams tapes Sorley commonly cites other oral histories. Contemporaneous documents are cited much less often, detracting from the objectivity of the work. Sorley’s analysis of the impact of Abrams’ tactics against PAVN logistics would be much more insightful if Sorley drew more from primary sources. And never in my reading of the book did I find Abrams making a mistake.

            While the chronological structure of the book made it more readable on a general audience level, I feel it undercut his arguments by spreading his evidence throughout the book rather than massing it in chapters or sections on common themes. He did do this a little in chapters like “Intelligence” and “Soldiers,” but in my opinion not nearly enough.

            Finally, the book contains an omniscient bias reflecting both Sorley’s own service in Vietnam and his conservative worldview. While I certainly share the latter and can understand how hard it must be to minimize the former, I think this bias detracted from the overall strength of the book. For instance, in the beginning of his chapter “Soldiers,” Sorley writes of the 1960s that American culture had been seized by resistance to “established authority, to received wisdom, to long-standing customs, to concepts of individual freedoms and responsibilities, to whatever consensus had previously existed on proper and personal conduct.” [Emphasis mine.] Personally I completely agree with Sorley’s interpretation, but that doesn’t make it a historical one. Sorley’s argument could have been strengthened by anecdotal evidence, statistics, or even a single quote or citation from a secondary source.

            In conclusion, A Better War does a very good job of demonstrating command leadership from the point of view of Bunker, Colby, Vann, and most of all Abrams, but suffers mightily for being a presentation rather than a study. I think Sorley found a very good primary source in the Abrams tapes and then failed to live up to his responsibilities as a historian by contextualizing and analyzing that source instead of merely transcribing it. Analysis of logistics and use of the North Vietnamese official history aside, A Better War represents a missed opportunity to better understand the last few years of the Second Indochina War. The book is a great tribute to great Americans but falls short as a historical work.

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