Editing William Westmoreland (section)

==Views on the Vietnam War==
[[File:Westmoreland.png|thumb|A 1972 portrait of Westmoreland by [[Herbert Abrams]]]]
In a 1998 interview for ''[[George (magazine)|George]]'' magazine, Westmoreland criticized the battlefield prowess of his direct opponent, North Vietnamese general [[Võ Nguyên Giáp]]. "Of course, he [Giap] was a formidable adversary", Westmoreland told correspondent [[W. Thomas Smith Jr.]] "Let me also say that Giap was trained in small-unit, guerrilla tactics, but he persisted in waging a big-unit war with terrible losses to his own men. By his own admission, by early 1969, I think, he had lost, what, a half million soldiers? He reported this. Now such a disregard for human life may make a formidable adversary, but it does not make a military genius. An American commander losing men like that would hardly have lasted more than a few weeks." In the 1974 film ''[[Hearts and Minds (film)|Hearts and Minds]]'', Westmoreland opined that "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. And as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it: Life is not important."<ref>{{cite book|author1=Quỳnh Phạm|author2=Himadeep Muppidi|editor1-last=Blaney|editor1-first=David L.|editor2-last=Tickner|editor2-first=Arlene B.|title=Claiming the International|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|location=Abingdon|isbn=978-0-415-63068-9|page=179|chapter=Wrestling the Frame}}</ref>

Westmoreland's view has been heavily criticized by [[Nick Turse]], the author of the book ''Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam''. Turse said that many of the Vietnamese killed were actually innocent civilians, and the Vietnamese casualties were not just caused by military cross-fire but were a direct result of the US policy and tactics, for example the policy "kill everything that moves" which enabled the US soldiers to shoot civilians for "suspicious behavior". He concluded that, after having "spoken to survivors of massacres by United States forces at Phi Phu, Trieu Ai, My Luoc and so many other hamlets, I can say with certainty that Westmoreland's assessment was false". He also accused Westmoreland of concealing evidence of atrocities from the American public when he was the Army Chief of Staff.<ref name = "nick">[[Nick Turse|Turse, Nick]] (October 9, 2013). [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/opinion/for-america-life-was-cheap-in-vietnam.html?_r=0 "For America, Life Was Cheap in Vietnam"]. ''The New York Times''.</ref>

{{blockquote|In more than a decade of analyzing long-classified military criminal investigation files, court-martial transcripts, Congressional studies, contemporaneous journalism and the testimony of United States soldiers and Vietnamese civilians, I found that Gen. William C. Westmoreland, his subordinates, superiors and successors also engaged in a profligate disregard for human life.|Nick Turse<ref name="nick"/>}}

Historian Derek Frisby also criticized Westmoreland's view during an interview with [[Deutsche Welle]]:

{{blockquote|General William Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. military operations in the Vietnam War, unhesitatingly believed Giap was a butcher for relentlessly sacrificing his soldiers in unwinnable battles. Yet, that assessment in itself is key to understanding the West's failure to defeat him. Giap understood that protracted warfare would cost many lives but that did not always translate into winning or losing the war. In the final analysis, Giap won the war despite losing many battles, and as long as the army survived to fight another day, the idea of Vietnam lived in the hearts of the people who would support it, and that is the essence of "revolutionary war".|Derek Frisby<ref>Gabriel Domínguez [http://www.dw.de/vo-nguyen-giap-a-master-of-revolutionary-war/a-17141733 Vo Nguyen Giap – 'A master of revolutionary war'] Deutsche Welle, 07.10.2013</ref>}}

For the remainder of his life, Westmoreland maintained that the United States did not lose the war in Vietnam; he stated instead that "our country did not fulfill its commitment to South Vietnam. By virtue of Vietnam, the U.S. held the line for 10 years and stopped the [[Domino theory|dominoes from falling]]."