Expendable Warriors: The Battle of Khe Sanh and the Vietnam War

Description

For those with a vivid memory of the Vietnam war, there is consolation in knowing that the impact of that war altered and shaped politics and warfare for the next generations. But in that altering we must take the lessons and apply them to new situations, new challenges and new policy dilemmas. To fail to do so would mean that the warriors at Khe Sanh and all of Vietnam were truly expendable, The battle of Khe Sanh was won and the Vietnam war was lost at the same time."Expendable Warriors" describes at multiple levels the soldiers and marines who were expendable in the American political chaos of Vietnam, 1968. On January 21, 1968, nine days before the Tet offensive, tens of thousands of North Vietnamese regulars began the attacks on the Khe Sanh plateau, which led to the siege of the Khe Sanh Combat Base. Gen. Westmoreland was fully aware that the North Vietnamese would attack but he declined to alert or warn the small unit of American soldiers and marines serving at Khe Sanh in an advisory capacity, considering them expendable in the greater strategy. Not just an analysis of the battle, "Expendable Warriors" also ponders the question of how to win an unpopular war on foreign soil, linking battlefield events to political reality.

Col. Bruce B. G. Clarke, USA (Ret.), a graduate of West Point and UCLA, was director of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College in the early 1990s. He is also the author of Conflict Termination. He lives in Fullerton, California.

"Clarke describes the experiences of himself and his colleagues in the battles around the Khe Sanh Combat base in 1968, during the Vietnam War. He looks at the decision-making at multiple levels surrounding the battle, which he judges to have been a bloody tactical victory and a strategic defeat for the United States."-Reference & Research Book News