s taying the c ourse 225the burden of fi ghting VC/NVA regular formations. His suggestions
received a favorable response from the president; indeed, Johnson at
the very least signaled to his general that he would be receptive to a call
to commit American ground forces. Westmoreland certainly did not
welcome the restrictions that civilian leadership imposed, but he
accepted them and never voiced public criticism of the kind that had
led to MacArthur’s firing in Korea. He asked repeatedly for more
troops than either the president or McNamara was prepared to approve.
Every time, he accepted without open protest the smaller increases he
was given, merely pointing out that the result would be to extend the
confl ict.
Westmoreland became the target of criticism during and after the
war, much of it justifi ed. Given the military constraints Washington
imposed, his military options were severely limited. Th at said, his oper-
ational approach to fi ghting the war through search-and-destroy oper-
ations was unimaginative and led to heavy American casualties. He
dismissed arguments that the emphasis should be shifted to providing
better security to the population and extending government control
over rural areas. He also was slow to appreciate the need to prepare the
South Vietnamese military to resume the lead in combat. In the period
before the Tet Off ensive in January 1968, moreover, he misinterpreted
the main focus of enemy plans, with the result that many U.S. and
ARVN units were poorly positioned, though in the end the troops
under his command repelled the enemy attacks. Sometimes, most
notably in the months before Tet, he declared that his forces had turned
the corner in the war and had defeated the enemy on the battlefi eld. ^
But he also faced enormous political pressures from Washington to
claim success, leading him to interpret ambiguous evidence in a way
that suggested dramatic gains. One lesson seems clear: in a situation
like the one confronting Westmoreland, no military commander could
have emerged untarnished.
Johnson might have replaced Westmoreland as signs of a military
stalemate became unmistakable, but the very criticism directed at the
MACV commander paradoxically made his position more secure. Th e
situation recalls the Lincoln-McClellan relationship: both the president
and his senior civilian aide (then Stanton, now McNamara) were frus-
trated with the lack of results achieved by the key military commander.