The Top Sixteen Westmoreland Quotations

16. Motives: In an oral history interview: “I diligently tried to do a good job, not because I was bucking for anything higher, but because I was trying to do a job for the sake of doing a good job. That was my orientation. As a matter of fact, it was throughout my career. It was to do a job for the sake of doing a good job.”

15. Principles of War: To a conference of senior commanders at Nha Trang: “At the end of World War II I wrote down some principles of war. I have them still today—on a card I carry in my wallet, and I want to share them with you. Whenever possible, feed the troops a hot meal. Make sure they have dry socks, and check their feet. Stress getting the troops their mail.”

14. Travails: “As American commander in Vietnam I underwent many frustrations, endured much interference, lived with countless irritations, swallowed many disappointments, bore considerable criticism.”

13. Vietnam Strategy and Tactics: “The President never tried to tell me how to run the war. The tactics and battlefield strategy of running the war were mine. He did not interfere with this. He deferred to my judgment, and he let me run the war or pursue tactics and battlefield strategy as I saw fit.”

12. Marines: In a late January 1968 cable to General Wheeler: “The military professionalism of the Marines falls far short of the standards that should be demanded by our armed forces. Indeed, they are brave and proud, but their standards, tactics, and lack of command supervision throughout their ranks requires improvement in the national interest.” But, then and later, on his establishment of MACV Forward and placing it over the Marines in I Corps: That “had not a damned thing to do with my confidence in General Cushman or the Marines, not a damned thing.”

11. Order of Battle: On why he refused to forward to Washington intelligence (newly developed in his headquarters in Vietnam) showing substantially greater numbers of enemy forces than previously estimated: “Because people in Washington were not sophisticated enough to understand and evaluate this thing, and neither was the media.”

10. Pacification: In an oral history: “Pacification was oversold in the United States and oversold to the Johnson administration, where it was the ‘end all.’ It was never the end all with me, and I got pressure after pressure after pressure to put emphasis on pacification at the expense of allowing the main forces to have a free rein.”

9. Riding High: “My most memorable moment in my military career was the occasion of my address to a joint session of Congress in April 1967.”

8. Situation in Mid-1967: At a MACV Commanders Conference in May 1967: “The main force war is accelerating at a rapid, almost alarming, rate. The enemy is reinforcing his four main force fronts with people and weapons.” Then at a July 1967 press conference in Washington: “The statement that we are in a stalemate is complete fiction. It is completely unrealistic. During the past year tremendous progress has been made.”

7. Prospects in November 1967: Press conference in the U.S. just weeks before the enemy’s 1968 Tet Offensive: “Very, very encouraged. I’ve never been more encouraged during my entire almost four years in country.” And, at the National Press Club: “The enemy’s hopes are bankrupt.”

6. Nuclear Weapons and Vietnam: Spoken out of the blue to a young aide-de-camp: “You know, if we’d used nuclear weapons we could have won that war.”

5. Chief of Staff Duties: “I spoke in every state in the union. I considered myself the military spokesman of the Army, and that I should be exposed to the American public…. [That] was the primary mission that fell on my shoulders while I was Chief of Staff.”

4. Libel Suit Outcome: On withdrawal—after the trial had continued for some eighteen weeks and only days before the case would have gone to the jury—of the libel suit he had brought against CBS: “The effort to defame, dishonor and destroy me and those under my command had been exposed and defeated. I, therefore, withdrew from the battlefield, all flags flying.”

3. Vietnam Forever: To an interviewer, more than thirty years after retiring from the Army: “The Vietnam War is my number one priority.”

2. Vietnam Sometimes: In one of his last public declarations: “Vietnam is ancient history and I’ve kind of divorced myself from it over the years.”

1. Vietnam Never: And the #1 Westmoreland quotation, from remarks to a college audience in 1993: “In the scope of history, Vietnam is not going to be a big deal. It won’t float to the top as a major endeavor.

Lewis Sorley’s biography Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam is being published today by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.