Word: westmorelands
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Last week retired General William Westmoreland, who ran the massive combat over there more years than anyone, was back on the White House grounds barking out his lament that Ford could not use "tactical air support" and "B52 strikes" and "the mining of Haiphong Harbor." He stood like a ramrod, his chiseled jaw working, his eyes flashing as if he once again heard the distant trumpet, asserting of his old antagonists: "The only language that Hanoi understands is the language of force...
Yellow Peril. Even on unassailable territory, Hearts and Minds cannot let hell enough alone. When General Westmoreland makes the infamous statement that the Oriental does not prize life as highly as the Westerner, the footage is juxtaposed with a sequence of weeping Vietnamese as a body is lowered into the parched earth. Weaker still is the film's examination of popular culture. Clips are offered from the 1942 film Bataan, from Bob Hope movies and American Legion war games of the McCarthy epoch. These imply that motion pictures are instruments of behavioral conditioning: we fought the Viet...
Earthy Soldier. The same gift for deftness and diplomacy, still widely unsuspected, emerged in his dealings with South Vietnamese officers. Assigned in 1967 as deputy to General William Westmoreland, Abrams courted top Saigon officers, accepting slights with patience and devouring a Vietnamese meal intended to make him gag-chicken heads, goat meat and paddy...
Appointed by President Johnson in mid-1968 as Viet Nam commander, Abrams presided with considerable skill over the American withdrawal from the fighting. He de-emphasized the Westmoreland strategy of massive search-and-destroy missions, favoring more mobile "spoiler" patrols of four or five men sent out to ambush and disrupt the enemy. Abrams gave subordinate commanders unusually wide latitude. Always a strong believer in risking machines more than men, he smoothly replaced ground forces with planes as troop reductions proceeded...
Tactical differences cannot easily be compared: Westmoreland was the crusader sent to win the war; Abrams was the realist sent to help end U.S. involvement in it. Differences in style, however, were clearer. Westmoreland was the stiff, ramrod, ceremonial-looking commander who saw light at the end of the tunnel. Abrams was a blunt, earthy soldier who gave reporters refreshingly frank estimates of the precarious American position and surprised critics of the Army by insisting on the prosecution of six Green Berets who murdered a suspected Vietnamese double agent...