Word: americans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Pentagon was appalled that no full mobilization of U.S. manpower was ordered, and that their suggestions for committing up to 750,000 troops as soon as they could be assembled were ignored. "Gradualism was the classic mistake of the McNamara crowd," sums up one Pentagon officer. Says another: "The American people won't support a long war-but they would have supported a short one if we had got in and got out quickly...
...effort. Especially in the conflict's early years, the professionals of war were thinking in the old way of victory on the battlefield, and troops conventionally trained by the U.S. were a little like the British redcoats fighting in lines as they engaged in forest skirmishes against the American colonists and their Indian allies. Clumsy U.S. battalions in the mid-1960s were out of place in the jungles, swamps and highlands of South Viet Nam. The excitement of technology became an almost spiritual feeling among the military. Generals thought that bigger, faster weapons systems, particularly against peasants, would...
Fortunately, American officers do not have a tradition of taking their grievances to the political barricades. Yet the belief that the U.S. military was betrayed or let down by civilian leaders, in or out of Government, is comparable to the idea, on the other side, that the U.S. was led into a hopeless war by the "militaryindustrial complex." Both notions fail to fit the facts. Both are dangerous to future American unity...
...somewhat grudgingly that they have "no objection" to the U.S. and Canada attending. For Moscow, the primary purpose of the conference would be to formalize the status quo in Europe by guaranteeing existing borders. The long-range Soviet goal may well be to convince the Europeans that an American military presence is no longer needed on the Continent and thereby isolate the U.S. from Europe...
Several of the foreign ministers, including West Germany's Walter Scheel, remained convinced that the West nonetheless should display a readiness to negotiate with the Soviets. The final communique, though weighted in favor of the American position, was a compromise. While the NATO ministers welcomed the Warsaw Pact's call for talks, they stressed that careful preparations would have to be made beforehand...