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Westmoreland on the Tigris, cont.
On the News Hour tonight, as reported by a friend, several parents of servicemen killed in Iraq shared their thoughts. One of them was the father of a Marine who said his son, after arriving in Iraq, had felt positive about being there, but that his views changed over time. He told his father that they were sent out on these patrols, but didn’t secure the areas, and the enemy would return there, and it all seemed pointless. This young marine was later killed by a roadside bomb, in an area that had been previously cleared out by the U.S. forces.
The reference in the title is, of course, to William Westermoreland, commander in Vietnam during the Johnson administration, who sent American soldiers on meaningless, circular missions through the jungle amassing body counts, as discussed further in “Worse than Vietnam,” from June 2004, and “Worse than Vietnam, Part II” from December 2004. Email entry |