Editing William Westmoreland (section)

== Commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) ==
[[File:President Lyndon B. Johnson in Vietnam, With General William Westmoreland, Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Thieu, Prime... - NARA - 192508.tif|thumb|Left to right: President Johnson, Westmoreland, South Vietnamese President [[Nguyễn Văn Thiệu]], and Prime Minister [[Nguyễn Cao Kỳ]] in October 1966]]
[[File:General William Westmoreland and President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office - NARA - 192557.tif|thumb|Westmoreland with President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] in the [[Oval Office]] in November 1967]]
Westmoreland was sent to Vietnam in 1963. In January 1964, he became deputy commander of [[Military Assistance Command, Vietnam]] (MACV), succeeding [[Paul D. Harkins]] as commander in June. Secretary of Defense [[Robert McNamara]] told President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] in April that Westmoreland was "the best we have, without question".<ref>{{cite web|title=The Best in the Army|url=http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/lyndon-johnson-robert-mcnamara-best-army|work=Presidential Recordings Program|access-date=16 March 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140221205333/http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/lyndon-johnson-robert-mcnamara-best-army|archive-date=2014-02-21|url-status=dead}}</ref> As the head of the MACV, he was known for highly publicized, positive assessments of US military prospects in [[South Vietnam|Vietnam]]. In 1965, [[Time (magazine)|TIME]] named him man of the year.<ref name="derided">{{cite news|last=Ollove|first=Michael|url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1995-04-28-1995118151-story.html|title=Derided Westmoreland led losing effort in Vietnam, but still refuses to retreat TATTERED IMAGES|date=April 28, 1995|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210622182702/http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1995-04-28-1995118151-story.html|archive-date=June 22, 2021|access-date=November 5, 2021|url-status=live}}</ref> He was mentioned in another ''Time'' magazine article as a potential candidate for the [[1968 United States presidential election|1968 Republican presidential nomination]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,836932-9,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071104122247/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,836932-9,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 4, 2007|title=The Temper of the Times|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|date=1967-04-14|access-date=2007-09-14}}</ref>
 
As time went on, the strengthening of communist combat forces in the South led to regular requests for increases in US troop strength, from 16,000 when Westmoreland arrived to its peak of 535,000 in 1968 when he was promoted to [[Chief of Staff of the United States Army|Chief of Staff of the US Army]]. On 28 April 1967, Westmoreland addressed a joint session of Congress. "In evaluating the enemy strategy", he said, "it is evident to me that he believes our Achilles heel is our resolve. ... Your continued strong support is vital to the success of our mission. ... Backed at home by resolve, confidence, patience, determination, and continued support, we will prevail in Vietnam over the communist aggressor!" Westmoreland claimed that under his leadership, United States forces "won every battle".<ref name = "Sheehan">Sheehan, Neil (1988). ''A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam''.</ref> The turning point of the war was the 1968 [[Tet Offensive]], in which communist forces attacked cities and towns throughout [[South Vietnam]]. At the time, Westmoreland was focused on the [[Battle of Khe Sanh]] and considered the Tet Offensive to be a diversionary attack. It is not clear if Khe Sanh was meant to be distraction for the Tet Offensive or vice versa;<ref>Willbanks, James H. ''The Tet Offensive: A Concise History''. Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 104–09</ref> sometimes this is called the Riddle of Khe Sanh. Regardless, US and South Vietnamese troops successfully fought off the attacks during the Tet Offensive, and the communist forces took heavy losses, but the ferocity of the assault shook public confidence in Westmoreland's previous assurances about the state of the war. Political debate and public opinion led the [[Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson administration]] to limit further increases in US troop numbers in Vietnam. Nine months afterward, when the [[Mỹ Lai massacre|My Lai Massacre]] reports started to break, Westmoreland resisted pressure from the incoming [[Presidency of Richard Nixon|Nixon administration]] for a cover-up,{{citation needed|date=October 2009}} and pressed for a full and impartial investigation by Lieutenant General [[William R. Peers]]. However, a few days after the tragedy, he had praised the same involved unit on the "outstanding job", for the "U.S. infantrymen had killed 128 Communists [''sic''] in a bloody day-long battle". Post 1969 Westmoreland also made efforts to investigate the [[Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất massacre]] a year after the event occurred.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://h21.hani.co.kr/section-021003000/2000/021003000200011150334008.html|title="한국군도 많이 당했다" 채명신 전 주월한국군총사령관 인터뷰… 남베트남군 사령관 만나 사과한 적도|author=Kim Chang-seok|newspaper=[[Hankyoreh]]|date=2000-11-15|access-date=2011-02-06}}</ref>
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| video1 = [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6LR-UJsYRc Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam], at the [[United States Army War College|U.S. Army War College]] in [[Carlisle, Pennsylvania]], on November 3, 2011
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[[File:General William Westmoreland Press Conference Outside the White House - NARA - 192558.tif|thumb|Westmoreland at a press conference outside the [[White House]] in April 1968]]
Westmoreland was convinced that the Vietnamese communists could be destroyed by fighting a war of [[Attrition warfare|attrition]] that, theoretically, would render the [[People's Army of Vietnam|North Vietnamese Army]] unable to fight. His war strategy was marked by heavy use of artillery and airpower and repeated attempts to engage the communists in large-unit battles, and thereby exploit the US's vastly superior firepower and technology. Westmoreland's response, to those Americans who criticized the high casualty rate of Vietnamese civilians, was: "It does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn't it?"<ref>Murray Kempton, "Heart of Darkness," New York Review of Books, 24 Nov. 1988, p. 26</ref> However, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the [[Viet Cong|National Liberation Front of South Vietnam]] (NLF) were able to dictate the pace of attrition to fit their own goals: by continuing to fight a guerrilla war and avoiding large-unit battles, they denied the Americans the chance to fight the kind of war they were best at, and they ensured that attrition would wear down the American public's support for the war faster than they.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://nation.time.com/2011/09/30/the-general-who-lost-vietnam/|title=The General Who Lost Vietnam|first=Mark|last=Thompson|magazine=Time|date=30 September 2011|via=[[time.com]]}}</ref>

Westmoreland repeatedly rebuffed or suppressed attempts by [[John Paul Vann]] and [[Lewis William Walt|Lew Walt]] to shift to a "pacification" strategy.<ref name="Sheehan" /> Westmoreland had little appreciation of the patience of the American public for his time frame, and was struggling to persuade President Johnson to approve widening the war into [[Cambodia (1953–1970)|Cambodia]] and [[Kingdom of Laos|Laos]] in order to interdict the [[Ho Chi Minh trail]]. He was unable to use the absolutist stance that "we can't win unless we expand the war". Instead, he focused on "positive indicators", which ultimately turned worthless when the Tet Offensive occurred, since all his pronouncements of "positive indicators" did not hint at the possibility of such a last-gasp dramatic event. Tet outmaneuvered all of Westmoreland's pronouncements on "positive indicators" in the minds of the American public.<ref>{{cite web|last1=McPherson|first1=Harry|title=Vietnam, a television history: Tet (1968) minute 3:24|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oMu3MHsmxM| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150525160209/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oMu3MHsmxM| archive-date=2015-05-25 | url-status=dead|publisher=PBS|access-date=4 December 2014}}</ref>{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

At one point in 1968, Westmoreland considered the use of [[nuclear weapon]]s in Vietnam in a contingency plan codenamed [[Fracture Jaw]], which was abandoned when it became known to the White House.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/world/asia/vietnam-war-nuclear-weapons.html|title=U.S. General Considered Nuclear Response in Vietnam War, Cables Show|last=Sanger|first=David E.|date=October 6, 2018|work=The New York Times|access-date=2018-10-08|language=en}}</ref>