In the popular culture, the Vietnam "generation" is bifurcated. On the one hand, the "best and brightest" are portrayed in a way that reflects the claim of Sixties radical and present Democratic politician, Tom Hayden, who wrote in his memoir, Reunion, that "We of the Sixties accomplished more than most generations in American history." In this view, the Sixties were exciting, heroic, and uniquely infused with moral passion, the "Promethean moment," in the words of one commentator "when the Chosen Ones went through hell to save their souls and ours." These were the protesters who opposed the war and who now are presumed to speak for the Vietnam "generation."

On the other hand, those who actually fought the war are, for the most part, portrayed as losers who were victimized by the war. They were drafted and shipped off to fight an immoral war, all too often returning as burned out wrecks. Indeed, the Traumatized Vietnam Vet has become a staple of the popular culture, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

According to the conventional wisdom, those who served in Vietnam were mostly young, poor, and non-white. Many, if not most, committed or observed atrocities (Thank you John Kerry). The horrors of the war led many to turn to drugs and a life of crime. Vietnam veterans are disproportionately represented among the homeless and the incarcerated. The Vietnam veteran was and is a time bomb waiting to go off.

The clear sense of Mr. Hanson’s last sentence is that he accepts these caricatures as true, and accepts the judgment of American elites that the former are the legitimate voice of the Vietnam generation. But as Jim Webb, the best-selling novelist who was awarded a Navy Cross for valor in Vietnam as a Marine infantry officer and who served as Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, has observed, the cohort that came of age in the 1960s is not so much a "generation" as an age-group divided along cultural fault lines, none of which was more important than conflicting attitudes toward the war. Writing in The American Enterprise several years ago, Webb observed:

The sizable portion of the Vietnam age group who declined to support the counter-cultural agenda, and especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during the Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades have claimed to speak for them. In fact, they are much like the World War II generation itself. For them, Woodstock was a side show, college protestors were spoiled brats who would have benefited from having to work a few jobs in order to pay their tuition, and Vietnam represented not an intellectual exercise in draft avoidance or protest marches but a battlefield that was just as brutal as those their fathers faced in World War II and Korea.

Here are some figures on the three million men who served in Vietnam. Two-thirds of them were volunteers; 73 percent of those who died were volunteers. According to a 1980 Harris Poll commissioned by the Veterans’ Administration (VA), acknowledged to be the most accurate survey of Vietnam veteran attitudes, 91 percent of those who saw combat in Vietnam were "glad they’d served their country," 74 percent enjoyed their time in the service, and 89 percent agreed with the statement that "our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win." 80% disagreed with the statement that "the US took advantage of me." And remarkably, nearly two out of three said they would go to Vietnam again, even knowing how the war would end. Most returned from the war and got on with their lives. The "dysfunctional" Vietnam vet is a slander.

When I think of the men with whom I served in Vietnam—Jack Higgins, Tim Rabbitt, Andy O’Sullivan, Carl Marlantes, Vic Reston, Buzz Fry, Calvin Spaight, Larry Boyer, and many others—I would be willing to put them up against any other group of soldiers in history. As Webb writes:

Dropped onto the enemy’s terrain 12,000 miles away from home, America’s citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity and quality that may never be truly understood. Those who believe the war was fought incompetently on a tactical level should consider Hanoi’s recent admission that 1.4 million of its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 58,000 total U.S. dead. Those who believe that it was a "dirty little war" where the bombs did all the work might contemplate that it was the most costly war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought—five times as many dead as World War I, three times as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in all of World War II.

Significantly, these sacrifices were being made at a time the United States was deeply divided over our effort in Vietnam.

If Mr. Hanson believes that we would have "failed miserably" had we been called on to fight a war like World War II, perhaps he should read the citations of Medal of Honor recipients from Vietnam. Or he could read Jim Webb’s Navy Cross citation, which in World War II would have earned a Medal of Honor.

The point of course is not to denigrate the unparalleled accomplishments of those who fought and won World War II. My dad was a Marine who took part in two campaigns in the Pacific. Had President Truman not dropped the bomb on Japan, my dad would have been involved in the assault on the Japanese home islands. But to suggest, as Mr. Hanson does, that there is something historically unique about this group of men doing their duty in World War II is unfair to other generations of American fighting men.

Mackubin T. Owens is an associate dean of academics and professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. In 1968 he led a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam.