Word: civilianizes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...neither the military nor the civilian leaders were willing to admit that a military victory in the classic World War II sense was impossible under the conditions imposed by the Red Chinese and the Soviets and the nature of the war. The Pentagon should have tried harder to persuade its civilian commanders that both ought to narrow their goals. They could hope to prevent a conquest of South Viet Nam and bolster the South Vietnamese forces for a limited time-and that, perhaps, is all that the President and the nation should have expected to accomplish in Viet Nam. Military...
...unsuccessful military leaders are apt to grope for some kind of stab-in-the-back explanation. The U.S. is certainly not headed in Viet Nam for any defeat remotely akin to Germany's humiliation in World War I, which the German generals blamed on treacherous politicians and civilian softness. Nor is Viet Nam likely to prove quite as bitter a military experience as the French abandonment of the Algerian war, in which some French officers even threatened to attack Paris in their rage against De Gaulle's pull-out orders. In fact, the U.S. military harbors...
...words were wistful and defensive, and they raised an issue that has long stirred controversy in the U.S.: civilian limitations on the use of military power. Most top military officers refrain from public alibis, criticism and rebukes. But many privately agree with Westmoreland's complaint, and there are signs that a stab-in-the-back, or Versailles, complex is developing. Some officers contend that they were not permitted to move quickly, massively and without restrictions-either on bombing targets or in hitting enemy sanctuaries along Viet Nam's borders-once the decision was made in 1965 to commit...
...even earlier, asserts TIME Pentagon Correspondent John Mulliken, top military officers should have exercised "their responsibility of advising the civilian leadership in military matters." Instead of automatically embracing President Johnson's proposition in 1965 that U.S. combat forces might go into Viet Nam, the Joint Chiefs should have warned with greater insight-and greater force-of the difficulty of waging guerrilla warfare against an enemy that could match U.S. manpower...
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...