We Were Soldiers Once and Young: Ia Drang—The Battle That Changed the War In Vietnam (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 157 developing a common approach to these conflicts, on the grounds that "no other nation or group of nations has the global interests or the political will to lead." They then go on to point out, however, that the compelling U.S. interests—"to prevent war, to avoid human suffering, [and] to promote the right ofall individuals to pursue their destiny in peace as they choose"—are "shared by much ofthe world community and increasingly embodied in international and regional agreements." We are then left with the "political will to lead," which cannot reliably energize a people to fight on behalf of another, nor does it provide sufficiently firm basis on which to claim legitimacy in the management of affairs others deem internal, as our own people and the rest of the world continue to remind us from time to time. There are also more concrete recommendations, such as the resurrection of the UN Trusteeship Council to assess self-determination claims, and the establishment ofa standing U.N. force ready to intervene to enforce certain internationally accepted code ofconduct. For Halperin and Scheffer, the proper prescription is "the collective use of military force, particularly to deal with the violent convulsions ofsome self-determination claims." Combined with the U.S. "global interests" and its "political will to lead," but absent a U.S. redefinition of its conception ofworld leadership, another vision of the U.S. as the reluctant warrior for world peace looms large in the background. Aside from the fact that the political will for collective multilateral action has remained stubbornly elusive, it is not clear that these steps will remove the warring parties' incentive to fight. What is clear is that the recommendations represent concessions ofthe limits ofthe CSCE strategy, which has been to create a set of conditions under which everyone feels impelled to play by a set ofcommonly accepted rules. Mastn/s outlook for the future ofthe CSCE, seen in this perspective, is also an acknowledgment of these limits. We Were Soldiers Once and Young: Ia Drang—The Battle That Changed the WarIn Vietnam. By Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway. New York: Random House, 1992. 412 pp. $25/Hardcover Reviewed by Jonathan B. Harris, MA. Candidate SAIS. We Were Soldiers Once and Young is a gripping story about the battle ofIa Drang, one of the bloodiest battles waged in Vietnam. During three days in November 1965, 234 Americans lost their lives in this confrontation, more casualties than those suffered by "any regiment, North or South, at the Battle ofGettysburg." The battle was the culmination of the Pleiku campaign carried out in the central highlands of Vietnam during the months of October and November 1965. The Ia Drang Valley lies in the shadow of the Chu Pong Massif, "ajumble ofmountains, valleys, ravines, andridges"that runs westwardformore thanfifteenmiles through Vietnam and into Cambodia. The battle began on November 14, 1965 and ended on November 17, and was a clash between the U.S. Army's 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry (1/7), the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry (2/7) and 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry (2/5), and the 320th, 33rd and 66th People's Army regiments of North Vietnam. The names of those Americans who fell are engraved on the first three panels to the right of the apex at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. 158 SAIS REVIEW Toldbythe survivors, the story ofIa Drang is a gut-wrenchingandunapologetic account ofthe men who witnessed its terror. It is a story of blood and bravery and a microcosm of all that was "right" with American intentions in Vietnam in the beginning, but all that went wrong with them as well. Unlike other books written about Vietnam, drugs and rock-and-roll play no part in this story. We Were Soldiers Once and Young documents a time early on in the war, before the protests at home, when men went to war driven by a sense of duty and purpose. It was a time when America's role in Vietnam made sense to those knew about it, and therefore seemed noble and worth dying for. In this respect, it is more than a war story. It...