PUBLIC NUISANCES: Gen. William Westmoreland, RIP/Alive in London/Sunday in London
Tyrrell, R.Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRELL, JR. Gen. William Westmoreland, RIP WASHINGTON HEN GENERAL William Westmoreland died on July 18 in Charleston, South Carolina, the press erupted...
...I think I know what he means...
...The general felt vindicated, but I doubt he ever felt fully satisfied...
...On the BBC, officials asked people to stay off the streets so that ambulances and police cruisers could get around...
...I am...
...For years he served on the board of The American Spectator...
...But now it is dinnertime...
...He flew B-25s in 1944 and 1945...
...And I remember his smile in answering my question...
...I knew Westmoreland later in life, not as a general but as a private citizen...
...The British are slow to anger...
...I thought I heard her say, "British spirit for war...
...By noon the streets were uncommonly quiet...
...Nor did he talk much about military matters or his own illustrious military service...
...Our armies never lost in Vietnam, and Vietnam only fell after our armies had been withdrawn and our politicians reneged on their promise to resupply the South Vietnamese and bomb the North Vietnamese in the event of further aggression against the South...
...Even today after the American military's demonstration of its effectiveness in Afghanistan and Iraq, these bearers of the Kultursmog are revealing their defeatist nature...
...In military terms it was equivalent to General Andrew Jackson's victory over the British at New Orleans, but the journalists reported it as a defeat and so it was re-corded for years...
...The venerable vet's wife answered, "Brought out the British spirit...
...Two hundred or so of them carried the battle standards of their regiments at the end of a hot day, and they showed vigor to the utmost...
...He never learned that it was a war we could not win...
...Westmoreland instantly counterattacked, vanquishing the enemy and leaving 40,000 dead to the one thousand we lost...
...I turned to a bemedaled vet next to me and asked him the name of one of the World War II songs being played...
...William Westmoreland, RIP WASHINGTON HEN GENERAL William Westmoreland died on July 18 in Charleston, South Carolina, the press erupted with reminiscences, mostly about him and the Vietnam War, mostly permeated with the myths of the Kultursmog, the politically polluted culture of our elites, our liberal elites...
...I asked what he had done in the war...
...He went on to fight valiantly through World War II in Europe...
...He was a failure...
...Then they joined the throng out on the Mall for a flyby of World War II warplanes...
...When a CBS News documentary, "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception," claimed in 1982 that he, as the commanding officer in Vietnam, had engaged in a "conspiracy" to "suppress" unfavorable intelligence and dupe America into believing we were winning the war, Westmoreland sued...
...They recall how they dealt with a far more formidable enemy than the ragged demented Islamofascists...
...I laid down my thesis on him: it was not very shrewd of the hyenas to attack London just days before this stir-ring set of ceremonies...
...Wonderful aircraft," he added...
...One shopkeeper told me, "We have been too easy on them...
...I had breakfast at a cafe this morning, a mere 20 minutes from where the first bomb went off...
...Believe me, my friends on the pusillanimous American left, the terrorists do not only have Don Rumsfeld and George W. Bush to fear...
...Shoppers shopped...
...With regard to the Vietnam War he thought many of the journalists had gotten it wrong, but I could only get that judgment out of him when I brought the matter up...
...Nonetheless the liberals are increasingly calling for withdrawal before our interests are realized...
...The war was never a military defeat, he believed...
...The band had already played Glenn Miller's standard, "In the Mood," and were about to play our "This Is the Army, Mr...
...Far from being consumed by Vietnam he never mentioned it unless one of his fellow board members brought it up...
...Claptrap...
...In Vietnam they demanded that we negotiate with Hanoi...
...Somehow he could not accept that American journalists would get the facts so wrong and apply the paranoid scheme of a "conspiracy" to his generalship...
...What burned them most badly was the 1968 Tet Offensive, during which the North Vietnamese launched a massive assault that temporarily put them in control of critical parts of the country...
...No one in my neighborhood noticed anything amiss for almost three hours...
...SEPTEMBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 79 Lo...
...In Korea he commanded paratroopers and late in his career insisted on leaping out of airplanes...
...Those are three of the foul thoughts that pollute the liberals' culture and were repeated in many of his obituaries...
...Bless Them All," his wife replied...
...As the jaunty tune began the vet said, "That sounds American...
...Also, I would think more troops will be available to thwart terrorism at its source...
...The city hums along...
...There are massive screens showing a very moving religious ceremony in Westminster Abbey and broadcasting not only the majestic prayers but also the majestic hymns...
...An Islamofascist website howls that the bombs in London filled "the British with terror and fear and panic...
...It was time for lunch and for the Brits to do what Winston Churchill had urged them to do during the Blitz, return to normal life...
...Now we will get them...
...He had breezed through the Citadel and West Point, where in his last year he received the Pershing Sword for achieving the highest command position in the student body...
...They want to be sure I am all right...
...He was a thorough gentleman...
...Al Qaeda has achieved nothing but the murder of innocents...
...At the magazine we have always prided ourselves in developing younger generations of clear-headed journalists, and that seemed to be an interest of his...
...Vietnam was the last time the Communists mounted such an assault...
...44 Sunday in London London, July 10, 2005—IT IS A RESPLENDIDLY sunny Sun-day in London and I did not have to wait long before finding companions who share my thesis: the hyenas bombing London's commuters Thursday are cruel, evil, and stupid...
...The politicians did not have the stomach for victory...
...The Islamofascists are curiously like our earlier enemies the Nazis and the Communists...
...Then somehow word got out that the buses had stopped as had the sub-ways...
...Westmoreland's forces held off Communist designs on the Pacific rim, showed Moscow and Beijing that continued aggression would be costly, and demonstrated the superiority of American military hardware and tactics...
...Thursday was bad, but "it was nothing compared to what we saw in the war...
...It was a political defeat...
...Moreover British spirits are undaunted...
...In the end the Vietnam War was very useful to the defense of American interests...
...Jones...
...but when we are angered...
...He was interested in journalism...
...The restaurants are full...
...No one knew anything until around noon...
...The British are celebrating the 60th anniversary of VE and VJ Day...
...That probably means national identity cards here that will make it harder for terrorists to get around...
...He felt many American journalists did a pretty shabby job in covering the military...
...CBS, after four painful months, admitted to grievous error and settled out of court...
...In fact I was having breakfast as it went off...
...One wonders...
...He was a perfect gentleman, but he was also a can-do kind of guy and a fount of good sense...
...Soon more Islamofascists will be dead...
...Something after that she mumbled...
...Down on the Mall, that splendid boulevard ex-tending from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards Parade and Admiralty House and Number Ten, tens of thousands of British, and a mixed group of tourists am-bled all day—very few Germans by the way...
...Wellington said of the army he was about to unleash on Napoleon at Waterloo that he did not know how they looked to others but by God they scared the hell out of him...
...Today the PUBLIC NUISANCES Taliban and the insurgents in Iraq offer no such opportunities to negotiate...
...Actually now historians are noting that in military terms Tet was the Communists' defeat...
...There are also, amidst the sloppily dressed tourists and slightly better dressed Brits, some very dignified old men, venerable veterans of the war...
...Yet back home the liberal politicians and their intelligentsia were whipped...
...It is now evening time and not only have the Brits returned to normal life but the sun is out for the first time in a week...
...Half a dozen have already e-mailed to me knowing I am in London for the Spectator of London's annual party...
...Tourists toured...
...After Vietnam the general spent the rest of his life refighting the war...
...Their arch enemy Prime Minister Tony Blair's popularity is higher than ever...
...Then they sprang back to life...
...Maybe these venerable vets scared the hell out of their commanders and the Germans and the Japanese, but they grew into a very handsome collection of senior citizens...
...Can they screw things up as nicely as they screwed up Vietnam...
...And on this occasion the Brits are to cower at this cowardly act...
...He will get the security measures he has been asking for...
...Alive in London London, July 7, 2005—soy, ARE AMSPEC READERS LOYAL...
...If his young 78 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2005 troopers could do it, he told me, he wanted to also...
...There was a serene quality to him, and far from being preoccupied with anything from Vietnam to politics he always struck me as level-headed and sagacious...
...They picked the Thursday right before all England celebrated the realm's victory over Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini—the 60th commemoration of VE Day and VJ Day...
...PUBLIC NUISANCES R . E M M E T T T Y R R E L L, J R. Gen...
...They never again regained their resolve...
...I once asked him why as a relatively old man he attempted such derring-do...
...He flew 78 "raids" in daylight...
...Yank and Brit war-planes flew by...
...Almost every claim they make is a lie...
...The old general I knew at American Spectator board meetings and other events was as incapable of conspiracy as he was incapable of bad manners...
Vol. 38 • September 2005 • No. 7
