A Conversation on . . . General Principles : William Westmoreland Reflects on America’s Recent Wars

The blue Buick parked outside his home bears a bumper sticker that says “I AM A VIETNAM VET,” and when he answers his doorbell, his appearance is so familiar--6 feet tall, ramrod-straight posture, a jutting chin set beneath steady brown eyes--that a visitor feels transported back to the jungles of Southeast Asia.

His hair is white now, and he is just shy of his 77th birthday, but William C. Westmoreland--the man who commanded America’s other recent war, the one America thinks it lost--still moves and talks and thinks with the confidence and military precision of the general that the nation came to know so well in Vietnam a generation ago.

If the bruising battles of the past 25 years have taken a toll, it does not show, and Westmoreland seems content in the belief that history will vindicate the United States’ role in its most painful military experience.

“Why don’t you sit there?” he says with formal politeness, pointing to a chair by the piano. “Margaret (the maid) will bring coffee.”

On the table nearby is a small statue of three soldiers in Vietnam--like the one at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. And by the door stands the bust, sculpted by Robert Berks, that appeared on the cover of Time when the magazine made Westmoreland its Man of the Year in 1965.

Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. troops in Vietnam from June, 1968, to July, 1972, sees few parallels between Operation Desert Storm--a war that lasted only 100 hours on the ground--and Vietnam, which dragged on longer than any war in America’s history.

Surely, though, with the Charleston airport decorated with flags and banners and balloons to welcome American troops arriving on weekly flights from Saudi Arabia, the reception given the returning men and women from the two wars--and their commanding generals--is as starkly different as the desert is from the jungle.

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, bolstered by an adoring public and a supportive press, comes home amid suggestions he should run for President and with a videotape of one briefing he gave a hot seller.

“It was just a standard military briefing,” Westmoreland says. “I was surprised America was so enthralled.”

Westmoreland came home pursued by the shadows of body counts and lights at the end of the tunnel and requests for more troops, perceived, perhaps unfairly, by many as a symbol of what Americans saw as the failure of Vietnam. He ran for the governorship of South Carolina and didn’t survive the Republican primary.

“I haven’t lost much in life,” he said at the time, “but I guess this just proves I’m not a politician.”

He shrugs off any feelings he may have about personal mistreatment, but adds, “I do think some Vietnam vets felt neglected in light of a (ground) war that lasted only three days. I think President Bush senses that, too. He gave the impression at one point he was speaking of Vietnam in a disparaging way, though I deduced in what he said welcoming home troops the other day that he is more sensitive now.”

Like many Americans, Westmoreland watched the Persian Gulf War unfold on his television screen and concludes that “we have just seen the best performance by an army ever put on a battlefield.”

He marveled at the new U.S. weapons systems, applauded Schwarzkopf’s leadership and praised the improved tactics and the ability of the volunteer American troops, whose average age was just over 26. The average age of the soldiers he commanded in Vietnam was 19.

“Vietnam was so different from the Gulf War,” he says, “that common denominators are few and far between. The terrain, the enemy, the objective, the role of the (allied) coalition in the Gulf--about the only common denominator was that there were a lot of weapons being used both times.”

All but forgotten now by history is the fact that America once cheered Westmoreland and the nation’s presence in Vietnam with almost as much gusto as it has lavished on Schwarzkopf and the Desert Storm troops. In its profile of Westmoreland as Man of the Year, Time wrote:

“With courage and a cool professionalism that surprised friend and foe, U.S. troops stood fast and firm in South Viet Nam. In the waning months of 1965, they helped finally to stem the tide that had run so long with the Reds.

“As commander of all U.S. forces in South Vietnam, General William Childs Westmoreland, 51, directed the historic buildup, drew up the battle plans and infused the 190,000 men under him with his own idealistic view of U.S. aims and responsibilities. He was the sinewy personification of the American fighting man in 1965. . . .”

Although most popular literature and movies have portrayed the U.S. experience in Vietnam as a futile one, Westmoreland believes otherwise. Communism was checked in Southeast Asia, he says, China’s influence was diminished and the continuing flight of “boat people” has underscored the failure of communism and proved an embarrassment to communist governments everywhere.

“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,” Westmoreland says. “People still think Vietnam was a lost cause. The history books haven’t caught up with history yet--but I think they will.”

Even though he was denied the freedom that Schwarzkopf had to fight a military, not political, war, Westmoreland has hardly been a forgotten general since retiring to Charleston 19 years ago.

His secretary sifts through hundreds of requests for speaking engagements that pour into his office across the courtyard from his home, and he continues his two-decades-old crusade in behalf of the Vietnam veterans he still refers to as “my troops.”

He was at the dedication of the Vietnam memorial, which bears the name of his wife’s youngest brother along with more than 58,000 others, has spoken to veterans’ groups in almost every state and chafes at the suggestion that the United States lost the war in Vietnam.

“The American military,” he says, “was not defeated on the battlefield of Vietnam, I assure you that. When Saigon fell, we had no troops on the battlefield at all. And if after Tet we had unleashed our air power as we did in the Gulf, the enemy would have had no choice but to come to the conference table. He would have had nowhere else to turn, and we could have hammered out an agreement. But Lyndon Johnson was worried that China would get involved and just didn’t want to broaden the war.

“The enemy’s morale was down after Tet (the massive 1968 U.S. offensive). He was badly hurt. Frankly, the American public got the wrong impression. And I think (CBS anchorman) Walter Cronkite had a lot to do with that when he said we should just pack up and go home. That was our chance to bring the war to a close.”

Westmoreland was a frequent critic of the press during the Vietnam war, questioning whether its members were on the Viet Cong or the American side and later bringing a $120-million libel suit against CBS for a 1982 documentary that contended he conspired to deceive his superiors by holding down estimates of enemy forces in Vietnam.

He dropped the suit four months into the 1985 trial, saying, “I consider that I have won. I’m going to try to fade away.”

In the Persian Gulf War, Westmoreland says he thinks “the press handled itself very well. I didn’t take exception at all.”

Even Peter Arnett’s reporting for CNN from Baghdad--criticized by some as a forum for Iraqi propaganda--did not nettle him, and the pool coverage of the war seemed to him to strike a fair balance between the needs of the military and the media.

On the role of women in combat, Westmoreland withheld judgment. He said in 1975 that it was “silly” to permit women to enroll at the West Point military academy, of which he had been superintendent in the 1960s. The academy’s mission, he said, was to train future combat leaders, and “maybe you could find one woman in 10,000 who could lead in combat, but she would be a freak and we’re not running the military academy for freaks.”

“What we’ve heard so far from the Gulf has been very positive,” he says now. “From what I can determine, women did well, but I’d be hesitant to say that conclusively. I’m sure some negative factors will emerge, and I’ll be anxious to talk to friends at the Pentagon about it.”

Westmoreland--a three-war veteran who used to parachute ahead of his troops to test wind conditions after five men serving under him were killed in a practice jump--remains something of a local legend in this genteel Southern city.

His house, located in Charleston’s historic district, is the 36th residence that he and his wife, Kitsy, have had since being married 44 years ago.

He has seen only one Vietnam movie, “Platoon,” and thought it a shamefully unflattering and inaccurate portrait of the men who fought his last war.

He did, though, stay after the rest of the audience had left, and sitting alone in the darkened, empty theater, he watched the credits roll.

“Right at the end,” he said, “this disclaimer came up in little letters that said, ‘Any similarity with real characters is purely coincidental’ . . . just as I thought.”