Word: westmorelands
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...Unless it was beyond my control," General William Childs Westmoreland has said proudly, "I have never left any job that I hadn't finished." Last week, his task in Viet Nam far from finished, Westy got the word that he would be coming home to replace General Harold Johnson in July as Army Chief of Staff...
...Westmoreland, 54, was long overdue for a new assignment. Though most fighting men are rotated home after a year's tour of duty, he has been on the job for more than four years, and since June 1964 has served as commander of all U.S. forces in Viet Nam. Still, the timing of the announcement, less than a week after Senator Robert Kennedy had entered the presidential race on an antiwar platform, lent more than a little credence to speculation that the President might be contemplating a change in Viet Nam policy-or else had taken the opportunity...
...handwritten "alternatives" and "recommendations" and dated Jan. 19-more than a week before the Viet Cong's murderous Tet offensive. Thus did the President bring back the commander of the third greatest overseas force in American history, faint-praising him as "a very talented and very able officer." Westmoreland, it was clear, was no longer an unalloyed political asset...
Until the Tet offensive, Westmoreland's judgment had never been seriously questioned. There was no lack of dissent about the bombing and the basic U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, but rarely had a commander in the field been so immune to technical criticism of his own performance. Justly, management-minded Westmoreland was given great credit for the herculean logistical feats of 1965 and 1966. Until last year, anyway, his basic strategy, a compromise between search-and-destroy and a holding operation in the populated areas, seemed to be successful...
...still too early to say whether this strategy, given the situation, was right or wrong, but the big question is still why, with more than half a million well-trained troops, abundant supplies and the greatest concentration of firepower in history, Westmoreland was not able to achieve greater success. His generalship can ultimately be assessed only by the requests and equivocations that for now are sealed in Pentagon filing cabinets. Strategy aside, however, his clearest single failure was not to have built the South Vietnamese army into a respectable fighting force. His deputy and possible successor, General Creighton ("Abe") Abrams...