Westmoreland's Involvement In The Vietnam War

Conflict in focus
The war in Vietnam had been called the defining experience for the United States in the second half of the 20th century which was the longest and bloodiest world conflict in history. Vietnam war was the defining aspect of his life. He himself perceived that and was driven through the rest of his days to characterize, explain, rationalize and defend that role memoirs reflect the fixation in a long career totaling 36 years as an officer in a string of postings to increasingly important assignments. The four years he spent commanding American forces in Vietnam and aftermath constitutes virtually the entirety of his account all rest a mere tenth understanding Westmoreland is not easy. He turns out to be a surprisingly complex
man fueled by ambition driving himself relentlessly of impressive military mean energetic and effective at self-promotion and skillful at colleague cultivating influential sponsors from his earliest days of service. Westmoreland had an extraordinary capacity for polarizing the views of those who encountered him.
Westmoreland's belief was that if he could kill enough of the enemy they will lose hearts Easter aggression go back to North Vietnam and South would be saved.
Westmoreland unfortunately underestimated the enemy staying power instead of giving up where they suffered grievous casualties. They proved willing to absorb these and still keep fighting, making up the losses time after time and thus the progress Westmoreland unclaimed in racking up huge body counts did nothing to win the world. The enemy simply kept sending more and more replacement to make up his losses. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. Westmoreland also overestimated the American people's patience and tolerance of friendly
losses.
Westmoreland's home state of South Carolina was told by Westmoreland we're killing these people. The enemy at a ratio of ten to one. The American people don’t care about the ten they care about the one but Westmoreland never got it. Westmoreland's response to any problem was to request more troops. The result was build-up of the U.S. contingent of ground forces soldiers and marines that eventually reached well over half a million men but when the troop requests kept coming with no evident progress sin winning the war, Washington’s patience finally ran out in the spring of 1967. Westmoreland asked for two hundred thousand more troops but got only a fraction of that amount. At the time he stated publicly that he was delighted with the outcome but in his memoirs decided instead that he had been extremely disappointed
In September 1967, when North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces began a series of attacks on American garrisons (notably the Marine base at Khe Sanh).
Westmoreland saw this as a positive development, as the enemy was finally engaging in open combat. After U.S. and South Vietnamese forces inflicted heavy losses, including some 90,000 killed among NVA and NLF forces, Westmoreland reported to Johnson that the end of the war was in sight, as the Communists could not possibly replace the men they had lost. But the ambitious Tet Offensive, a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam that on January 31, 1968 (the lunar new year) disproved Westmoreland’s claims of progress. Though U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to repel the Tet attacks, it was clear the war was far from
over.
1968 Tet Offensive West Warren claimed a great victory and then asked for another two hundred thick 6,000 troops. A request he then spent years denying he had ever made. He got just token forces and was soon on his way home. It is very clear that Westmoreland thought he could take the war over from the South Vietnamese bring it to a successful conclusion then hand their country back to the South Vietnamese.
With antiwar sentiment growing on the home front, the Johnson administration lost confidence in Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition and its chances for victory in Vietnam. The beleaguered president turned down Westmoreland’s request for some 200,000 more troops and recalled him to Washington to serve as the U.S. Army’s chief of staff. General Creighton W. Adams, Westmoreland’s deputy commander, replaced him as head of the MACV.