Gen. Bruce Palmer Jr; Critiqued Vietnam War

Gen. Bruce Palmer Jr., whose book, “The 25-Year War,” raised important questions about top military leaders’ handling of the Vietnam War he helped wage, has died.

Palmer, a key aide to Gen. William Westmoreland in Vietnam and later the army’s vice chief of staff, died of a stroke in Virginia on Oct. 10. He was 87.

His critique of the U.S. military command, written after he retired and published in 1984, said the Joint Chiefs of Staff were unable to decide what the U.S. forces’ role in Vietnam should be. He said further that they “seemed unable to articulate an effective military strategy that they could persuade the commander-in-chief and the secretary of defense to adopt.”

Palmer also reflected on the military’s inability to question civilian decision-making as it related to the war.

“Not once,” Palmer wrote, “did the [Joint Chiefs of Staff] advise the commander-in-chief or the secretary of defense that the strategy being pursued most probably would fail and that the United States would be unable to achieve its objectives.”

“The only explanation of this failure,” Palmer added, “is that the chiefs were imbued with the ‘can do’ spirit and could not bring themselves to make such a negative statement or appear to be disloyal.”

Palmer’s book, fueled by huge word of mouth, became so popular that its publisher, the University Press of Kentucky, followed the initial printing of 4,000 with a second printing of the same size.

Army Col. Harry G. Summers Jr., the late military analyst who was then a professor at the Army War College, called Palmer’s book “especially valuable . . . because it stresses the need for intellectual honesty and moral courage on the part of the next generation of officers.”

A native of Austin, Texas, Palmer was born into a military family. His grandfather was awarded a Medal of Honor in the Civil War and his father was a brigadier general.

Palmer went to West Point, graduating sixth in his class, which also included Westmoreland and Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, both of whom would command U.S. forces in Vietnam.

After graduation, Palmer was assigned to a cavalry unit. He served in the operations division of the War Department in the early days of World War II and was later chief of staff of the 6th Infantry Division in southwest Pacific operations. In the late 1940s, he was a tactics instructor at the infantry school at Ft. Benning, Ga., and then attended the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., graduating in 1952.

He commanded the brief but successful U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and headed a corps in Vietnam before being named deputy commander of the U.S. Army, Vietnam, 1967-68, where he had administrative command of Army troops under Westmoreland. He was deputy chief of staff for operations and vice chief of staff in Washington in the final years of the war.

After retiring, Palmer served on the Defense Manpower Commission, which reviewed the transition to an all-volunteer military.

In his book, Palmer did not absolve Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon and other senior civilian leaders of responsibility for the Vietnam defeat.

“Like other so-called sciences,” he wrote, “the employment of military force--in peace, cold war, or actual conflict--is an art, not an exact science. It is supremely important that our national leaders, civilian and military, have a fundamental understanding of the capabilities and limitations of military power. Vietnam demonstrated how the lack of such understanding can lead to disastrous failure.”

Palmer is survived by a son, Bruce III of Valrico, Fla.; a daughter, Robin Palmer Sessler of Kettering, Ohio; eight grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.