On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:32:45 -0800, wrote:

On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:37:47 -0800, Charles Hamblin
wrote:

December 30, 2011|By Tony Perry | Los Angeles Times

Reading Lewis Sorley's scalding biography of Army Gen. William
Westmoreland, "Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam," is like
watching a slow-motion replay of an oncoming train wreck.

The result of this collision is known: failure of the U.S. military
mission, 58,000-plus dead Americans, the U.S. divided and at political
war with itself, a once-proud military left tarnished, exhausted and in
disrepute.

Sorley, a West Point graduate and retired Army lieutenant colonel, is
unsparing in his analysis of Westmoreland, the top U.S. general in
Vietnam from 1964 to 1968 and then Army chief of staff in the latter
years of the war.

In Sorley's view, the general whose rock-like jaw and prominent eyebrows
made him look like a Hollywood casting agent's dream of a military
leader was arrogant, duplicitous, vain and not altogether smart. When he
arrived in Saigon, there were 16,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam; when he
left there were 535,000. In between, Westmoreland delivered a litany of
speeches and statements asserting that the war against the North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong was being won.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec...orley-20111230



The war, of course, was not being won, was never being won, and most
likely never could have been won, but contrary to the view still offered
today by apologists for the war, it was not lost due to feckless
American politicians or an insufficiently committed public - it was lost
because of utter incompetence and arrogance at the top.

I especially liked this in the review:

When Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the coalition forces
in the Gulf War of 1991, in his book "It Doesn't Take a Hero,"
wrote that the Army had lost its integrity because of inflated
counts of enemy bodies in Vietnam, Westmoreland was furious and
tried to pressure Schwarzkopf into changing the text. "Nothing
came of those efforts and the criticism stood."

Westmoreland was lying about the body counts, everyone knew he had lied
about them, yet more than 30 years later, he didn't want anyone pointing
out the obvious.

Of course, either the reviewer or Sorley still makes one big error:

For readers of modern military history, Sorley's take on Vietnam
precedes his work: Westmoreland's dogged determination to stick
with a "search and destroy" policy was disastrous; his successor,
Gen. Creighton Abrams, was more successful in building the South
Vietnamese forces, but the U.S. lost the war because Washington
failed to follow through on promises to support the government in
Saigon once U.S. troops left.

The regime in the south never had a shred of legitimacy in the eyes of
ordinary Vietnamese, plus their army was worthless - they wouldn't
fight. We lost the war because whether we were fighting it, or our
proxies were, it was unwinnable. It was not ever a war against
communism - it was in the eyes of the Vietnamese, a war against imperialism.


One of the biggest problems wiwth the Vietnam debacle was the
micro-managing by Johnson and some of the legislators, who knew
considerably less about military affairs than those actually doing the
fighting. As a crew member on Puff the Magic Dragon (AC-47 for those
who know), it was always a source of frustration to us to be told that
we couldn't shoot here or there because there were "too many
friendlies" in the area, or that we had to stand down to honor some
Vietnamese holiday or other. Of course that didn't stop THEM from
shooting at us. Politics played a very large part in that mess.
Westmorland was just a part of the problem. If the damned
politicians, from both parties, would stay out of military operations
and let the military loose to take care of business instead of having
to "win the hearts and minds" of the enemy, we wouldn't have such
messes.

Jim

The problem in Vietnam was not politicians getting in the way of the
military. It was letting the military loose to fight in a place where
the politicians should not have sent them.

--
Ed Huntress

On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:39:52 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:32:45 -0800, wrote:

On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:37:47 -0800, Charles Hamblin
wrote:

December 30, 2011|By Tony Perry | Los Angeles Times

Reading Lewis Sorley's scalding biography of Army Gen. William
Westmoreland, "Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam," is like
watching a slow-motion replay of an oncoming train wreck.

The result of this collision is known: failure of the U.S. military
mission, 58,000-plus dead Americans, the U.S. divided and at political
war with itself, a once-proud military left tarnished, exhausted and in
disrepute.

Sorley, a West Point graduate and retired Army lieutenant colonel, is
unsparing in his analysis of Westmoreland, the top U.S. general in
Vietnam from 1964 to 1968 and then Army chief of staff in the latter
years of the war.

In Sorley's view, the general whose rock-like jaw and prominent eyebrows
made him look like a Hollywood casting agent's dream of a military
leader was arrogant, duplicitous, vain and not altogether smart. When he
arrived in Saigon, there were 16,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam; when he
left there were 535,000. In between, Westmoreland delivered a litany of
speeches and statements asserting that the war against the North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong was being won.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec...orley-20111230



The war, of course, was not being won, was never being won, and most
likely never could have been won, but contrary to the view still offered
today by apologists for the war, it was not lost due to feckless
American politicians or an insufficiently committed public - it was lost
because of utter incompetence and arrogance at the top.

I especially liked this in the review:

When Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the coalition forces
in the Gulf War of 1991, in his book "It Doesn't Take a Hero,"
wrote that the Army had lost its integrity because of inflated
counts of enemy bodies in Vietnam, Westmoreland was furious and
tried to pressure Schwarzkopf into changing the text. "Nothing
came of those efforts and the criticism stood."

Westmoreland was lying about the body counts, everyone knew he had lied
about them, yet more than 30 years later, he didn't want anyone pointing
out the obvious.

Of course, either the reviewer or Sorley still makes one big error:

For readers of modern military history, Sorley's take on Vietnam
precedes his work: Westmoreland's dogged determination to stick
with a "search and destroy" policy was disastrous; his successor,
Gen. Creighton Abrams, was more successful in building the South
Vietnamese forces, but the U.S. lost the war because Washington
failed to follow through on promises to support the government in
Saigon once U.S. troops left.

The regime in the south never had a shred of legitimacy in the eyes of
ordinary Vietnamese, plus their army was worthless - they wouldn't
fight. We lost the war because whether we were fighting it, or our
proxies were, it was unwinnable. It was not ever a war against
communism - it was in the eyes of the Vietnamese, a war against imperialism.


One of the biggest problems wiwth the Vietnam debacle was the
micro-managing by Johnson and some of the legislators, who knew
considerably less about military affairs than those actually doing the
fighting. As a crew member on Puff the Magic Dragon (AC-47 for those
who know), it was always a source of frustration to us to be told that
we couldn't shoot here or there because there were "too many
friendlies" in the area, or that we had to stand down to honor some
Vietnamese holiday or other. Of course that didn't stop THEM from
shooting at us. Politics played a very large part in that mess.
Westmorland was just a part of the problem. If the damned
politicians, from both parties, would stay out of military operations
and let the military loose to take care of business instead of having
to "win the hearts and minds" of the enemy, we wouldn't have such
messes.

Jim

The problem in Vietnam was not politicians getting in the way of the
military. It was letting the military loose to fight in a place where
the politicians should not have sent them.


A point well taken, Ed. However, once they did send us there, they
should have gotten the hell out of the way and let us do our jobs.

Jim

On 2/4/2012 9:39 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:

The problem in Vietnam was not politicians getting in the way of the
military. It was letting the military loose to fight in a place where
the politicians should not have sent them.


And then getting in the way...


But I have no problem with your thesis.