...an article is written by a revisionist historian about how the war in Vietnam was actually winnable. It usually focuses on the failure of will among the politicians and Americans back home. I imagine historians will be debating this for generations.
The Times has an obit of General Frederick Weyand today (all emphasis mine):
Frederick C. Weyand, who served as the commander of American forces in Vietnam in the final year of the war, a duty he carried out despite having become convinced as early as 1967 that the war was a hopeless venture, died on Wednesday at his home in Honolulu. He was 93.
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At a cocktail party in Saigon in 1967, General Weyand, speaking of [General William C. Westmoreland, the commander of American forces in Vietnam] had told Murray Fromson, a CBS news correspondent: “Westy just doesn’t get it. The war is unwinnable. We’ve reached a stalemate, and we should find a dignified way out.”
In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Fromson said: “He was very candid, and a very decent guy. A lot of the generals felt that way, but he was willing to sit down and talk about it.”
This was in 1967, a year before the Democratic convention in Chicago, two years before Woodstock, and three years before the shootings at Kent State, in which four students were killed.
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