General Westmoreland Dies at 91; Led U.S. in Vietnam
NY Times
Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded the United States forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, overseeing the vast troop buildup and the height of the fighting, died last night in a retirement home in Charleston, S.C., his son, James Ripley Westmoreland, announced. The general was 91.
Westy, as he became known while a West Point cadet, was driving and combative - in World War II, leading a fast-moving artillery battalion; in Vietnam, directing “search and destroy” missions meant to decimate the enemy; in retirement, suing CBS for a television documentary that he said had defamed him.
The libel suit, which he brought to trial in 1984 but dropped early in 1985, revived long-standing controversy about him. Over the years, he was widely criticized, inside and outside the armed forces, for his prime role in the conduct of the Vietnam War. One of his deputies in Vietnam, Gen. Bruce Palmer Jr., who rose to be vice chief of staff of the Army, later called the war “the first clear failure” in American military history.
But in his memoirs, General Westmoreland blamed the outcome on the South Vietnamese Army and on President Johnson’s refusal to broaden the war into Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. The general contended that in Vietnam the American forces’ record of “achievements was remarkable: the mammoth logistical buildup, various tactical expedients and innovations, the advisory effort, civic action programs.”
“But perhaps most impressive of all,” he wrote, was “the accomplishment for the first time in military history of a true air mobility on the battlefield.”
Over the years, other highly placed officers and officials praised the logistical effort but argued that under General Westmoreland’s command, war-of-attrition tactics failed, and that emphasis on military operations carried out by American forces damaged the South Vietnamese Army psychologically.
A military historian and former Army major, Andrew F. Krepinevich, argued that the general had suffered from self-delusion in Vietnam. In a 1986 book, “The Army and Vietnam” (Johns Hopkins), the major said, “In focusing on the attrition of enemy forces rather than on defeating the enemy through denial of his access to the population,” General Westmoreland’s command “missed whatever opportunity it had to deal the insurgents a crippling blow.”
In 1990, the author Jessica Mitford asked the general at a newspaper industry convention in Washington whether he had suffered from “massive self-delusion.” Chin jutting, he dismissed her question as nonsense.
Critics also said that the priority given to fighting major Communist units in the field impeded efforts to regain control of villages, and that the mobility gained by the lavish use of aircraft was misused. Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975, seven years after General Westmoreland was replaced as commander and two years after the last American combat troops were withdrawn.
