N2272V

General Westmoreland: Veteren, Patriot, American.

Your contributions to Freedom will be remembered. Rest in peace and may God be with you.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - General William Westmoreland, the highly decorated former commander of US forces in Vietnam has died at a retirement home in Charleston, South Carolina. He was 91.

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Westmoreland, a veteran of three wars and recipient of three dozen military decorations during his career, commanded US forces in Vietnam from 1964-68, a critical period in the conflict.

Chief architect of the "war of attrition" strategy, he came home from Southeast Asia to find himself identified with macabre body counts and seemingly endless requests for more US troops.

The plain-spoken general maintained in decades following the US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975 that the war had not been a failure and that history would vindicate the US military involvement there.

He blamed the war's worst follies on president Lyndon Johnson, charging in his memoir "War in Vain?" that the Democratic president -- insecure and too eager to please -- refused to make the tough choices Westmoreland advocated.

In that memoir, Westmoreland lashed out at critics and blamed the ultimate US and South Vietnamese military defeat on "politicians and policymakers" in Washington "who forced us to fight with one hand."

The four-star general said the conflict might have ended in a US victory had Johnson not "listened to too much faulty advice" and ignored his plan to step up bombing of North Vietnam and invade Cambodia and Laos.

"Washington timidity was an outgrowth of the advice of well-intentioned but naive officials and of its effects on a president so politically oriented that he tried to please everybody rather than bite the bullet and make the hard decisions," Westmoreland wrote.

He defended his strategy of trying to win a war of attrition, despite its unpopularity dating from World War I, on grounds that a full land invasion was out of the question.

As recently as 1991, Westmoreland maintained that US aims in Vietnam were realized: Communism was checked in Southeast Asia, he told The Los Angeles Times, China's influence diminished, and hundreds of thousands of fleeing Vietnamese proved communism a failure and embarrassment to its adherents.

"Few people realize that the way history has unfolded, our objectives have been met in Vietnam without our having to keep a single soldier there ... The history books haven't caught up with history yet -- but I think they will."

An outspoken critic of the media during the war, Westmoreland questioned whether journalists were loyal to the communist North or US-backed South.

Westmoreland was honored as Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" in 1965. In its profile, the news weekly described him as a "sinewy personification of the American fighting man."

"As commander of all US forces in South Vietnam ... (he) directed the historic buildup, drew up the battle plans, and infused the 190,000 men under him with his own idealistic view of US aims and responsibilities," Time wrote.

justin

I think Westmoreland was a loyal servant of his country, but his view of Vietnam seems far out to me. The North's ambition was to unify Vietnam under their leadership, a aim achieved in 1975, so the North undoubtedly won the war. Ultimately it was for South Vietnam to defend their own country, with US support if needed but US support to work had to be just that, support, if the ARVN and South Vietnamese leadership couldn't defend their country then the USA should have pulled out and let events take their course. To me the tragedy of Vietnam was that there was indeed a huge anti-communist constituency in the South but they were never harnessed by a government worthy of their support (South Vietnamese politics were a bit of a sewer from day one of the country right up to the end, if the various leaders had given a fraction of the attention to polliticking in Saigon to fighting the war things might have been different) and the South fell as there was too little worth fighting to defend at the end of the day. His view on extending the war into Laos and Cambodia has I believe already been judged by history, and the attempts of the ARVN to cross the border were catastrophic. If the army couldn't defeat their enemy in the South I don't see how extending the area of operations would help, especially when the amount of supplies needed by the VC was tiny. The fundamental problem was how to identify the enemy and how to achieve a victory when the fundamental problem was political. There was always a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Vietnamese communism too, they may have been communists but they were Vietnamese first, the idea of them being Chinese puppets was absurd, any look at Vietnamese history shows they fought the Chinese a lot longer than the French or the American's and as soon as they unifyed Vietnam the Chinese became their number one enemy once more. They used Chinese help to fight their war but were never just a extension of Chinese power or a way of China extending power into SE Asia. About the victory over China, I think a look at any financial paper shows how China has grown in power and influence since 1975. Just my thoughts,

Justin

N2272V

Statistics and Myths about the Vietnam War

Submitted by: Gary Harrington

"No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic." [Nixon]

The Vietnam War has been the subject of thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, hundreds of books, and scores of movies and television documentaries. The great majority of these efforts have erroneously portrayed many myths about the Vietnam War as being facts. (Nixon Library)

Myth: Most American soldiers were addicted to drugs, guilt-ridden about their role in the war, and deliberately used cruel and inhumane tactics.
The facts are:

91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served (Westmoreland papers)

74% said they would serve again even knowing the outcome (Westmoreland papers)

There is no difference in drug usage between Vietnam Veterans and non veterans of the same age group (from a Veterans Administration study) (Westmoreland papers)

Isolated atrocities committed by American soldiers produced torrents of outrage from antiwar critics and the news media while Communist atrocities were so common that they received hardly any attention at all. The United States sought to minimize and prevent attacks on civilians while North Vietnam made attacks on civilians a centerpiece of its strategy. Americans who deliberately killed civilians received prison sentences while Communists who did so received commendations. From 1957 to 1973, the National Liberation Front assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted another 58,499. The death squads focused on leaders at the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the peasants such as medical personnel, social workers, and schoolteachers. (Nixon Library) Atrocities - every war has atrocities. War is brutal and not fair. Innocent people get killed.

Vietnam Veterans are less likely to be in prison - only 1/2 of one percent of Vietnam Veterans have been jailed for crimes. (Westmoreland papers)

97% were discharged under honorable conditions; the same percentage of honorable discharges as ten years prior to Vietnam (Westmoreland papers)

85% of Vietnam Veterans made a successful transition to civilian life. (McCaffrey Papers)

Vietnam veterans' personal income exceeds that of our non-veteran age group by more than 18 percent. (McCaffrey Papers)

Myth: Most Vietnam veterans were drafted.
2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. (Westmoreland papers) Approximately 70% of those killed were volunteers. (McCaffrey Papers)

Myth: The media have reported that suicides among Vietnam veterans range from 50,000 to 100,000 - 6 to 11 times the non-Vietnam veteran population.
Mortality studies show that 9,000 is a better estimate. "The CDC Vietnam Experience Study Mortality Assessment showed that during the first 5 years after discharge, deaths from suicide were 1.7 times more likely among Vietnam veterans than non-Vietnam veterans. After that initial post-service period, Vietnam veterans were no more likely to die from suicide than non-Vietnam veterans. In fact, after the 5-year post-service period, the rate of suicides is less in the Vietnam veterans' group." [Houk]

Myth: A disproportionate number of blacks were killed in the Vietnam War.
86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races. (CACF) and (Westmoreland papers)
Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their recently published book "All That We Can Be," said they analyzed the claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during Vietnam "and can report definitely that this charge is untrue. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia - a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war." [All That We Can Be] NOTE: "All That We Can Be" by Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler

Myth: The war was fought largely by the poor and uneducated.
Servicemen who went to Vietnam from well-to-do areas had a slightly elevated risk of dying because they were more likely to be pilots or infantry officers.
Vietnam Veterans were the best educated forces our nation had ever sent into combat. 79% had a high school education or better. (McCaffrey Papers)

Here are statistics from the Combat Area Casualty File (CACF) as of November 1993. The CACF is the basis for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall):

Average age of 58,148 killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years. (Although 58,169 names are in the Nov. 93 database, only 58,148 have both event date and birth date. Event date is used instead of declared dead date for some of those who were listed as missing in action) [CACF]

Myth: The average age of an infantryman fighting in Vietnam was 19

The oldest man killed was 62 years old. [CACF]

11,465 KIAs were less than 20 years old. [CACF]

Assuming KIAs accurately represented age groups serving in Vietnam, the average age of an infantryman (MOS 11B) serving in Vietnam to be 19 years old is a myth, it is actually 22. None of the enlisted grades have an average age of less than 20. [CACF] The average man who fought in World War II was 26 years of age. (Westmoreland papers)

Myth: The domino theory was proved false.
The domino theory was accurate. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand stayed free of Communism because of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. The Indonesians threw the Soviets out in 1966 because of America's commitment in Vietnam. Without that commitment, Communism would have swept all the way to the Malacca Straits that is south of Singapore and of great strategic importance to the free world. If you ask people who live in these countries that won the war in Vietnam, they have a different opinion from the American news media. The Vietnam War was the turning point for Communism. (Westmoreland papers)

Democracy Catching On - In the wake of the Cold War, democracies are flourishing, with 179 of the world's 192 sovereign states (93%) now electing their legislators, according to the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union. In the last decade, 69 nations have held multi-party elections for the first time in their histories. Three of the five newest democracies are former Soviet republics: Belarus (where elections were first held in November 1995), Armenia (July 1995) and Kyrgyzstan (February 1995). And two are in Africa: Tanzania (October 1995) and Guinea (June 1995). [Parade Magazine]

Myth: The fighting in Vietnam was not as intense as in World War II.
The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter.

One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. 58,169 were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.59 million who served. Although the percent who died is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II. 75,000 Vietnam veterans are severely disabled. (McCaffrey Papers)

MEDEVAC helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions. Over 900,000 patients were airlifted (nearly half were American). The average time lapse between wounding to hospitalization was less than one hour. As a result, less than one percent of all Americans wounded who survived the first 24 hours died. (VHPA Databases)

The helicopter provided unprecedented mobility. Without the helicopter it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the 800 mile border with Cambodia and Laos (the politicians thought the Geneva Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords or 1962 would secure the border) (Westmoreland papers)

More helicopter facts:
Approximately 12,000 helicopters saw action in Vietnam (all services). (VHPA Databases)
Army UH-1's totaled 7,531,955 flight hours in Vietnam between October 1966 and the end of 1975. (VHPA Databases)
Army AH-1G's totaled 1,038,969 flight hours in Vietnam. (VHPA Databases)


Outstanding article on communism in Vietnam: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...04/ai_n9173464

justin

I'd actually agree with almost everything in that post, one major problem with the history of Vietnam is that it's became polarised between two extremes. Anti- war people who villify the men who served their country and ignore the dreadful crimes of the North, ignore the fact many Vietnamese didn't want to be enslaved to the North, on the other hand those who ignore the fact that the Saigon government was a sewer incapable of inspiring any real loyalty or willing to fight for it's own existence, the fact that the South broke as many agreements as the North and that partition was only meant to be temporary (the South cancelled the original plebiscite as they knew the Communists would win) etc. etc. The truth is somewhere in between. My own view is that the war was indeed "a noble cause", the men who fought there fought with honour and courage, but that the war was also a dreadful mistake and it would have been better for everybody if the USA had left events to run their course in the early 60's with a Northern victory.
The bit I'd disagree with is the domino theory, that theory always assumed events were inter connected in a structured way as part of a larger plot, and whilst there were links between Communist groups the countries either defeated or surrendered to Communism according to conditions in the local area of operations. The Communists in Malaya were defeated as the Malaysians themselves produced a structured political, economic and military response, the British firepower made their job a lot easier but the British would not have defeated communism there unless the Malaysians were fully supporting the effort. In Indonesia the KPI was defeated by Suharto with tactics that would be considered genocidal by most historians and his brutality has left a lasting legacy in Indonesia, although I think the KPI would have been equally brutal if they'd won power,

Justin

ARIUS

The examples cited do not support the assertion that the domino theory was accurate.

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Fly Air North,Yukon's Airline