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There was a moment when the United States had the Vietnam War wrapped up, writes military historian Lewis Sorley (biographer of two Vietnam-era U.S. Army generals, Creighton Abrams and Harold Johnson). "The fighting wasn't over, but the war was won," he says in this convention-shaking book. "This achievement can probably best be dated in late 1970." South Vietnam was ready to carry on the battle without American ground troops and only logistical and financial support. Sorley says that replacing General Westmoreland with Abrams in 1968 was the key. "The tactics changed within fifteen minutes of Abrams's taking command," remarked one officer. Abrams switched the war aims from destruction to control; he was less interested in counting enemy body bags than in securing South Vietnam's villages.

A Better War is unique among histories of the Vietnam War in that it focuses on the second half of the conflict, roughly from Abrams's arrival to the fall of Saigon in 1975. Other volumes, such as Stanley Karnow's Vietnam and Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, tend to give short shrift to this period. Sorley shows how the often-overlooked Abrams strategy nearly succeeded--indeed, Sorley says it did succeed, at least until political leadership in the United States let victory slip away. Sorley cites other problems, too, such as low morale among troops in the field, plus the harmful effects of drug abuse, racial disharmony, and poor discipline. In the end, the mighty willpower of Abrams and diplomatic allies Ellsworth Bunker and William Colby was not enough. But, with its strong case that they came pretty close to winning, A Better War is sure to spark controversy. --John J. Miller

The New York Times Book Review, Jeffrey Record
...a comprehensive and long-overdue examination of the immediate post-Tet offensive years .... [Sorley is a] first-rate historian.

From Booklist , May 15, 1999
The debate continues. Was the Vietnam War "lost" because of a failed national policy that refused to recognize Vietnamese Communism as a legitimate nationalist movement, or was it lost because of the spinelessness and meddling of Washington politicians who undermined brave Americans and South Vietnamese in the field? Sorley, a West Pointer and former CIA official, leans toward the latter explanation. Sorley points out the considerable successes in prosecuting the ground war and "nation building" in the hamlets and cities. The triumvirate responsible for those successes was General Creighton Abrams, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, and the director of the pacification program, William Colby. Sorley convincingly portrays them as both dedicated and wise, and he passionately argues that, given time and support, they could have achieved America's goal of a viable, non-Communist South Vietnam. Unfortunately, Sorley gives short shrift to counter arguments. Still, his points are well supported by reliance on newly available source material, and he makes a strong contribution to our unending national argument. Jay Freeman
Copyright© 1999, American Library Association. All rights reserved

Jay Freeman, Booklist, 5/15/99
the debate continues. Was the Vietnam War "lost" because of a failed national policy that refused to recognize Vietnamese Communism as a legitimate nationalist movement, or was it lost due because of the spinelessness and meddling of Washington politicians who undermined brave Americans and South Vietnamese in the Field? Sorley, a West Pointer and former CIA Official, leans toward the latter explanation...His pints are well supported by reliance on newly available source material, and he makes a strong contribution to our unending national argument.

From Kirkus Reviews
A fawning paean to General Creighton Abrams, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, and former CIA chief William Colby and their stewardship of the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1975. The stab-in-the-back theory is alive and well in Sorleys (Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times, 1992, etc.) heavily footnoted but biased and flawed analysis of the post-1968 Vietnam War. Sorley's heroes are Abrams, Bunker, Colby, and others who worked to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese. His villains are those he claims subverted that effort: Congress (especially Ted Kennedy), the antiwar movement (especially Jane Fonda), and the American media. In making this weak argument, Sorley lionizes virtually every action taken by his heroes and demonizes the actions of those he considers villains. His sections on Congress, the antiwar movement, and the media are brief, facile, and one-sided. His analyses of Abrams, Bunker, et al., are long, worshipful, and one-sided. Sorley contends that by late 1970 the Americans and South Vietnamese had won the war, a victory snatched away by a defeatist Congress and abetted by the antiwar movement and the media, particularly Walter Cronkite. In focusing on the war's last eight years, Sorley sets out to right a wrong: Most of the better-known treatments of the Vietnam War, he says, as a whole have given relatively little consideration to these later years. But he sabotages his own argument by providing almost no background on the war, even though the US became involved in the area in 1950. He assesses the post-1968 period virtually in a vacuum. And what came before had a great deal to do with how the war was prosecuted afterward, including the actions of those in Congress, the antiwar movement, and the media. A partisan, wholly unconvincing attempt to explain the Communist victory in Vietnam. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen; 5 maps) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
With exclusive access to highly classified material, an award-winning historian illuminates the Vietnam War. Neglected by scholars and journalists alike, the years of conflict in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 offer surprises not only about how the war was fought, but about what was achieved. Drawing on authoritative materials not previously available, including thousands of hours of tape-recorded allied councils of war, award-winning military historian Lewis Sorley has given us what has long been needed-an insightful, factual, and superbly documented history of these important years. Among his findings is that the war was being won on the ground even as it was being lost at the peace table and in the U.S. Congress. The story is a great human drama of purposeful and principled service in the face of an agonizing succession of lost opportunities, told with uncommon understanding and compassion. Sorley documents the dramatic differences in conception, conduct, and-at least for a time-results between the early and the later war. Meticulously researched and movingly told, A Better War is sure to stimulate controversy as it sheds brilliant new light on the war in Vietnam.

Synopsis
An award-winning historian and former Army commander and CIA official illustrates the dramatic successes and final tragedy of the Vietnam War. 28 pages of photos. 7 maps.

From the Author
How A Better War Came to Be Written: When General Creighton W. Abrams returned in 1972 to become Army Chief of Staff, he brought with him certain highly classified materials relating to his service in Vietnam. Then when, in the autumn of 1974, Abrams died while still in office, his successor, General Frederick C. Weyand, ordered that these materials be sequestered, with both their existence and location treated as classified information. Eventually, however, I learned of these materials from sources in the Army hierarchy who were friendly to my work. With the invaluable help of the Army's Chief of Military History, I was granted access to the "Abrams Special Collection" by the Army Chief of Staff (coincidentally the only Armor officer other than General Abrams to have held that post). After certain other agencies sharing a security interest in the materials concurred, I commenced research in these holdings. Thus began what turned out to be a year-long endeavor. The collection was housed in a secure facility at Carlisle Barracks, some two hours from where I resided. Beginning in May 1994 I departed home at 5:30 a.m. each Monday morning, getting to Carlisle Barracks by the time the vault opened for the day's business. There I typically spent a ten-hour day working with the materials until the vault closed in late afternoon. In the evenings I used the fine library of the U.S. Army War College, also located at Carlisle Barracks. My home away from home for each week was a modest but friendly motel frequented primarily by drivers of eighteen-wheeler trucking rigs. Friday evenings I would, after the day's work, make my way back home. This routine continued for an entire year of weekdays, interrupted only by holidays and other occasions on which the vault was not open, and by a one-week respite for our family's annual beach outing. The heart of the collection turned out to be 455 tape recordings made at Headquarters, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, during the four years General Abrams was in command. Of the old reel-to-reel variety, these tapes ran two to six hours in length, and I used up or wore out three ancient machines in the process of screening them all. Keeping these machines limping along or finding successors when they finally collapsed was no small part of the process. In the final weeks the last machine was kept going only through use of a wooden jig, inserted to hold the worn-out play lever in place. Listening to these tapes and making handwritten single-spaced notes that eventually ran to nearly 3,200 pages was a laborious and time-consuming process, but also a fascinating one, for I never knew what the next tape would reveal. What emerged was a portrait of a senior commander and his closest associates-something like Napoleon and his marshals-working together to prosecute a complex and challenging military campaign in an equally complex and difficult political context. The interchanges were candid, spirited, often funny, and included not only what were called the Weekly Intelligence Estimate Updates-Saturday morning sessions held at MACV Headquarters-but also many sessions conducted for such visitors as the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, and consultant Sir Robert Thompson. In May 1995, almost exactly a year after I began, my screening of these materials was complete. It took most of another year to get the notes through the mandatory declassification review process by the Army, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Even so I needed the absolutely invaluable assistance of three senior officers who are also valued and long-time friends to reach a favorable outcome.

Once the cleared notes had been returned to me, it took over two months of more or less non-stop work to enter them-nearly 835,000 words in all-in a computer. Many other public records and private recollections yielded valuable research material. Over the past decade and a half I have interviewed about 500 people, many of them repeatedly, for this book and the two preceding biographies of Generals Creighton Abrams and Harold K. Johnson, some of them repeatedly, and worked my way through the papers of both men. Now, however, I was privileged to be the first researcher ever granted access to the fascinating, authentic, and extensive collection of materials on these tapes. Each day brought something new, and in the aggregate the story that emerged provided many new insights and much significant evidence concerning conduct of the war during the later years by Abrams, Bunker and Colby. It was a treasure trove indeed, so much so that it is my intention to publish an extensive volume of excerpts from the notes I compiled, thereby making available to other researchers the most interesting and historically significant portions of this rich historical record.

The publisher, Harcourt Brace & Company , April 21, 1999
Praise for Lewis Sorley's A BETTER WAR
"The story of how Creighton Abrams moved toward his better war is one that must be told if ever we are to understand what happened to us as a nation in those tragic years. It will be a long time indeed before anyone tells that story better than it is set forth by Lewis Sorley in this magnificent book." -General Donn A. Starry, U.S. Army (Retired)

"The research supporting A BETTER WAR is the best I have seen on the conflict in Vietnam, [and] Lewis Sorley's insight and analysis far surpass other books about the war. He makes clear that, had we stayed the course, a different story would have evolved, but the brutal fact is that at the critical point we abandoned our ally."-General Bruce A. Palmer, Jr., U.S. Army (Retired)

"A masterful treatment of military realities and court intrigue; of strategic competence and political betrayal. Carefully researched and exactingly detailed, there are revelations on every page." -John M. Del Vecchio

"Bob Sorley, working with newly discovered documentation, has illuminated in this fine book the historically neglected final four years of the Vietnam conflict. In the process he has found a number of surprises, and he's done a great service to history and to all those who fought in this tragic episode. This book fills a gap among the half-dozen key volumes essential for understanding the Vietnam War."-General John R. Galvin, Former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

"A compelling narrative and a powerful antidote to the self-justifying myth that the Vietnam War was "unwinnable." By 1972, when Creighton Abrams departed from Vietnam, the Viet Cong had been decimated and the North Vietnamese military effectively neutralized. That advantageous position was subsequently squandered in large part through our own actions-for by then too many had developed a vested interest in seeing South Vietnam defeated."-James Schlesinger, Former Secretary of Defense

"A BETTER WAR is a revelation, and too often a heartbreaking one."-Rob Cowley, Editor MHQ: Military History Quarterly

"In his illuminating narrative of Creighton Abram's war, Lewis Sorley has deployed all his talents as historian and storyteller. A BETTER WAR reaffirms the strength of Abram's spirit and vision as well as his undeniable accomplishments in the face of enormous obstacles."-W.E.B. Griffin

"Lewis Sorley has done a great job making sense out of a complex piece of history. I'd classify it "compulsory reading" for anyone who wants to understand the American involvement in Vietnam."-General John W. Vessey, U.S. Army (Retired)

"[A BETTER WAR] does much to fill an important gap, and does so on the basis of authentic, primary source material. As a result it provides a far truer understanding of the "second half" of the Vietnam War than we have seen before, and brings out with clarity how it was ultimately caused to end in defeat. The author is to be commended for his initiative in opening up the records of the MACV weekly updates, and for a work of unique value with information well beyond anything previously available."-General Andrew J. Goodpaster, U.S. Army (Retired)

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