Word: westmorelands
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...maybe they will see it as our coming of age--in the highlands and paddies of Indochina the distinctions of war blurred into My Lai Four and the question became not just who was crazy and who was sane, but who was there and who was not. Westmoreland and LBJ were not there--they dreamed of conquering Gaul. Tim O'Brien, the ex-infantryman and former Washington Post reporter who is the author of this fine novel was, and wondering why he had not gotten on the bus to Canada. And Cacciato was marching the 8,600 statute miles that...
...survivor, a competent soldier who doesn't care much for soldiering, the man who escapes the daily horror by wandering after Cacciato to Paris. The epigram that starts the book--"Soldiers are dreamers," by Siegfried Sassoon--reminds us that they are, from Cacciato to Berlin, yes, even to Westmoreland, sitting in Saigon wanting to be another Grant, forgetting how Grant won battles: by throwing wave after wave of young men against the fire...
...made this Viet Nam documentary which has received the repercussive cracks of retrospective masterminds lately. There are some cheap touches (to be sure, the interjection of old movie clips and football footage overstate the obvious) but the scenes show on location are touching and unforgettable, and the interviews (with Westmoreland in a verdant set It's not Ophuls, but it's a miracle it was made...
...Mullens had the courage to make the juxtapositions and draw the necessary conclusions: they refused to take refuge in the warmth of Westmoreland's logic. That core of patriotism that exists in the heart of even the most hardened and bitter radicals did not prevent them from acknowledging that the war served no purpose, that Michael's death was not invested with the meaning concocted for it by comfortable liars in Washington. It is a hard and bitter truth, but the Mullens both accepted it--and acted upon it to save others from Michael's fate...
...their kitchen table cluttered with correspondence, the Mullens juxtaposed letters in revealing ways. General William C. Westmoreland wrote, "In Vietnam today brave Americans are defending the rights of men to choose their own destiny and to live in dignity and freedom." One of Michael's own letters said, in reference to the antiwar protest in the United States, "Most of the grunts (infantrymen), E-6's and below, are pulling that things get wilder at home...