General William Westmoreland Quotes

General William Westmoreland Quotes

• Anytime it was advertised that I was going to be at a particular place, the radicals would be there, the cameras with TV news.
• As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion – and I worried about it.
• I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy.
• I don’t take criticism lying down.
• I don’t think I have been loved by my troops, but I think I have been respected.
• I’ve made this statement many times: If I would have to do it over again, I would have made known the forthcoming Tet Offensive.
• In the end, we lost IndoChina to the communists. But we did not lose Southeast Asia.
• Militarily, we succeeded in Vietnam. We won every engagement we were involved in out there.
• President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone.
• The last man in the world who should have been criticized was the American soldier. They should have criticized me.
• The military don’t start wars. Politicians start wars.
• The Vietnam memorial is a masterpiece. The names of the dead are listed there, chronologically. Just the names.
• This was a type of war that we’d had no experience with before. Some of our policies were kind of trial and error in character.
• Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
• War is fear cloaked in courage.
• When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves.