William Westmoreland Quotes

I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy.

It became very clear that Hanoi was in effect strategically running the Viet Cong operation.

Militarily, we succeeded in Vietnam. We won every engagement we were involved in out there.

Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

We were succeeding. When you looked at specifics, this became a war of attrition. We were winning.

Television is an instrument which can paralyze this country.

They're asking women to do impossible things. I don't believe women can carry a pack, live in a foxhole, or go a week without a bath.

War is fear cloaked in courage.

I see battlefields that are under 24-hour real or near-real time surveillance of all types. I see battlefields on which we can destroy anything we can locate through instant communications and almost instantaneous application of highly lethal firepower.

This was a type of war that we'd had no experience with before. Some of our policies were kind of trial and error in character.

We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.

I've made this statement many times: If I would have to do it over again, I would have made known the forthcoming Tet Offensive.

We'll blast them back into the stone ages!

When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves.

As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion - and I worried about it.

My wife was my greatest asset. I didn't marry her until after World War II, but she has complemented me in every job I've ever had

I was participating in my own lynching, but the problem was I didn't know what I was being lynched for.

The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.

When I took command in Vietnam, I gave great emphasis to food and medical care - and to the mail

Anytime it was advertised that I was going to be at a particular place, the radicals would be there, the cameras with TV news.

The Vietnam memorial is a masterpiece. The names of the dead are listed there, chronologically. Just the names.

I don't take criticism lying down.

In the end, we lost IndoChina to the communists. But we did not lose Southeast Asia.

President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone.

I haven't yet figured out how I was made first captain, because I was not an outstanding student. I was an adequate student.

The last man in the world who should have been criticized was the American soldier. They should have criticized me.

The politicians in Washington just had no idea about the complexity of the situation in South Vietnam.

The military lead turbulent lives, but they are people like everybody else.

I don't think I have been loved by my troops, but I think I have been respected.

I have no apologies, no regrets. I gave my very best efforts.... I've been hung in effigy. I've been spat upon. You just have to let those things bounce off .

By the end of the summer of 1973 I thought it was virtually impossible for South Vietnam to survive. How in the heck could they?