Westmoreland's Attrition Strategy In The Vietnam War

Westmoreland’s Attrition Strategy General William Westmoreland had a responsibility to the people of the United States, the people of South Vietnam and the troops under his command, to lead them to an honorable victory. Instead, General Westmoreland failed to come up with an original strategy to fight the opposing forces and their effective guerrilla warfare. I will be analyzing General Westmoreland’s poor decision to use an ineffective attrition strategy in the Vietnam War and how some people consider him, “the General that lost Vietnam.”(Thompson 2011) In 1964, General Westmoreland was sent to Vietnam and placed in charge of the U.S. forces, replacing General Harkins. Right off the bat, General Westmoreland used a “search and destroy” combat plan to locate enemy troops and inflict as heavy losses as possible, in an attempt to break the spirit and the will of the North Vietnamese troops and National Liberation Front (NLF) forces. He counted on the heavy firepower of the United States arsenal to pound the enemy into
Continuing to use old tactics on an enemy fighting style that had been seldom seen prior, was either stubbornness or incompetence. Perhaps it is just the fact that we know the outcome of the war and saw the events that led up to it play out. Either way, once the fact that victory by attrition was not going to be achieved, a change in strategy should have been implemented. If General Westmoreland would have tried a different strategy, the outcome could have been much different and the other goals of pacification and a strong, self-standing South Vietnamese government and military, could have been achieved. Being able to turn the tide of the Vietnam War around would have most likely landed General Westmoreland the title of “the General that won Vietnam,” instead of how he is referred to now, “the General that lost