William Westmoreland quotes

William Westmoreland was an American general best known for commanding U.S. military operations in the Vietnam War during its peak years. His strategies and leadership became highly controversial and sparked national debate. He later served as U.S. Army Chief of Staff and remained a significant figure in discussions about the war. Here are 55 of his quotes:

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

William Westmoreland

War is fear cloaked in courage.

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

William Westmoreland

Television is an instrument which can paralyze this country.

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

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?

William Westmoreland

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.

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

I don't take criticism lying down.

William Westmoreland

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.

William Westmoreland

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.

William Westmoreland

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

William Westmoreland

Returning home on leave following my second year at West Point, I called on a great-uncle who had joined the Confederate Army at the age of sixteen and had fought in a number of major Civil War battles, including Gettysburg, and had been with Robert E. Lee at Appamatox. My Uncle White was the younger brother of my grandfather. He hated Yankees and Republicans, not necessarily in that order, and talked derisively about both. When I visited, he was seated in a wheel chair, in grudging acquiescence to the infirmities of age. Tobacco juice decorated his shirt and stains around a spittoon on the floor testified to the inaccuracy of his aim. Flies buzzed through screenless windows. "What are you doing with yourself, son?" Uncle White asked. I answered the old veteran with trepidation. "I'm going to that same school that Grant and Sherman went to, the Military Academy at West Point, New York."

William Westmoreland

Several weeks before General Patton died in a command car accident in 1945, he visited my headquarters at Ingolstadt. Over lunch he remarked on a recent visit he had made to the United States where the press had castigated him for referring to the Nazis as a political party "like Republicans or Democrats". "Westy," he told me solemnly, "don't forget when you return to the States, be careful what you say. No matter what, they'll put it in the newspapers." It seemed remote advice at the time for a young, inauspicious colonel, but I was to have ample reason in later years to reflect on his counsel.

William Westmoreland