The horror, the horror

But while the military effect of Tet was minimal, culturally it was devastating. The way the tale was told by Western journalists, from the inevitably grim street-level view of the common soldier (and with few countervailing facts concerning the larger military situation), shocked and demoralized Americans and South Vietnamese alike. The effect of the offensive was particularly devastating coming as it did after Gen. Westmoreland's confident statements the preceding November that the Vietnam war was "winding down" and that he could see "light at the end of the tunnel."

The demolition of Westmoreland's pleasant fiction of imminent victory accelerated what Hanson otherwise sees as the Western virtues of dissent and self-critique about the conduct of warfare. In some of his landmark battles, the participants' internecine fighting over intent and methodology actually improved their strategy and tactics, and the pooling of brainpower helped them avoid pitfalls. But in retrospect, the deep divisions between the military and its civilian controllers over matters of mission and scope in Vietnam created a military no man's land where there was no possibility of victory. The stories our journalists were telling us -- "We're doing this for nothing" or "We're making no strategic progress" or "We're perpetrating more horrors than we're stopping" -- Hanson maintains, essentially prevented the military from acting in accordance with other, more crucial Western characteristics like our preference for direct, pitiless and decisive battle, and our tendency to systematically continue any given slaughter until the enemy's ability to return to the field is completely obliterated.

Our leaders' acceptance of convincing scenarios about the potential entry of China or the Soviet Union into the Vietnam conflict also warped our military decisions and responses. We hesitated to mine North Vietnamese harbors or to effectively bomb military and industrial facilities or to stringently and directly interdict supply lines in Cambodia and Laos.

Worst of all, according to Hanson, we didn't let ourselves even dream of invading North Vietnam itself with the full, efficient weight of our military superiority. A completely serious Western-style military assault on the North would have been horrifically costly on both sides, of course, but the overall human losses might have been significantly less in the long run (especially if we add the deaths that occurred after the fall of South Vietnam). But we didn't have the will to win that way, and we didn't have the grace to quit.

The stories told in both "Carnage and Culture" and "The Bridge at No Gun Ri" foster two entirely opposite dangers. Hanson pretends that he has laid aside questions of morality, but his thesis actually presents a moral justification for gigantic, no-holds-barred, scorched-earth warfare by arguing that this strategy makes the most productive use of resources, is most likely to achieve definitive victory and is soonest over. Shooting or bombing refugees who might conceivably have posed even the slightest danger to the allied troops is therefore perfectly in consonance with his principles of "amoral" efficiency. "The Bridge at No Gun Ri," on the other hand, demonstrates what Hanson's businesslike sort of warfare involves at the human level, and is likely to make Westerners protest the use of such brutality in the future.

In the Western way of war, there is a constant tension between utility and justification, which has only grown greater as our culture has developed. The Western principles of individual freedom and the consent of the governed weigh heavily on the kinds of stories we are able to tell ourselves about why and how we will make war. A free press protected by the ideals of democratic government and a mass media created by capitalism and innovative technology can now widely disseminate war stories, like that of No Gun Ri, that bring us face-to-face with the realities of combat and utterly destroy our ability to believe in the gallant mythology of "civilized warfare." Thus Western culture might now have "crystallized" to the point that our growing interest in honesty and truth about war could hamper our future ability to apply the ugly but pragmatic principles of our past triumphs.

Hanson is right that Western civilization, such as it is, was built and maintained on carnage of the most obscene and terrifying kinds, up to and including firebombings of cities and distraught kids killing refugees -- and their own buddies -- in battlefield backwaters. The question now is whether Westerners can view blood-chilling true stories of retail warfare like "The Bridge at No Gun Ri" with a clear eye and still recognize the necessity, when and if the time comes, to use our superb abilities -- and our will -- to kick ass and take names.

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