Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Vietnam Research Exercise by Travis Baum

My research topic was General William Westmoreland and the controversy of body counts. William Westmoreland was born on March 26th, 1914 in South Carolina and died on July 18th, 2005. Westmoreland impressively Graduated from west point in 1936 receiving the Pershing Sword for military proficiency. General Westmoreland was the highest profile American General of the Vietnam war and in 1965 was named Time man of the year. Due to conflict going on in Vietnam the decision to make him Times Man of the Year was very controversial. His military tactics were described as quickly demolishing the enemy troops before replacements could come in which caused the American public to second guess not only the Vietcong body count but also the increasingly concerning amount of American casualties. As the war became more and more gruesome Westmoreland would not accept defeat as he requested in 200,000 more American troops. President Lyndon B Johnson shoved aside his request. As time went on the public started viewing this as a unwinnable war. During his time in the Vietnam war, the number of U.S involved in the whole mess grew from 20,000 to about 500,000. The body count was used to decide who was winning the war. The Vietnam war was a extremely tragic battle whos costs seem to heavily out weight the benefits leaving people to think which leaves people to think, who really won the war?

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/vietnam/anderson.htm


2 comments:

  1. I like your final question, "who really won the war". It provides a very important outlook on the war and how gruesome and tragic it really was. And I agree that the costs heavily outweighed the benefits.

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  2. The Vietnam War was such a tragedy in every way possible. It is hard to imagine being a family member of one of these young soldiers who were unwillingly drafted and killed. The amount of men killed before and after the war is so sad. I believe that Americans learned a lot of "what not to dos" during this war.

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