Now that I’ve read a little about Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, I don’t understand why he’s here at all. Wikipedia only credits him for one military campaign…and in that one he crossed difficult terrain with few resources and defeated a superior force. That qualifies him for a list of the worst ever? You guys are a tough crowd!
Yeah, I never heard of him before, but if the Wiki is at all accurate he most certainly doesn’t belong here.
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson - no evidence he’s actually bad - 2
Christian de Castries - he lost the battle, but was that his fault? - 1
William Westmoreland - more of a PR loser than a military one - 1
Ernest J. King - simply not bad enough - 1
Another round!
Benjamin Bulter: 2 Votes - get him out of there
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson -2 votes. Who the hell nominated a guy who saw one battle and won?
Gaius Terentius Varro -1 vote. I’ve said the reasons
OK, looking back at the original thread Spicer-SImons was nominated by willthekittensurvive? Apparently nominated for being a bit crazy after the battle. willthekittensurvive? also nominated Curtis Lamay. 
Influenced by this thread I will vote:
Ernest J. King - 2 votes
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson - 2 votes
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson - 2
Benjamin Butler - 2
Christian de Castries - 1
Absolutely false. Westmoreland did more to foul things up in Vietnam than any other. His two greatest sins were:
- A gluttonous appetite for men and materiel. Compare today, where we have a volunteer force whose overuse becomes a big political concern, to the Vietnam era, where young men face conscription because some general insists that he really, really needs more troops.
And they did need a lot of men to pull off the level of military-industrial waste that we’ve come to know and love today. Because it wasn’t enough just to defend S. Vietnam from the Communists. No, we had to spend billions to build them in our own image. Ancient villages had to be uprooted and rebuilt in a more “secure” manner. Ports had to be expanded to handle the logistics, which helped ensure that our men got plenty of steak and ice cream when they weren’t out on patrol. Officers needed commands to get promotions. The ARVN had to be outfitted with modern weaponry, weapons they often funneled to the Viet Cong. Top S. Vietnamese government officials and their girlfriends had to get kickbacks to ensure their support. This massive waste happened on Westmoreland’s watch and at his direction, and still he asked for more. For someone who was supposed to be fighting for the American people, he showed a remarkable disregard for the sacrifices he was asking them to make.
From the time Westmoreland took charge in 1964, until he was replaced in 1968 after the Tet Offensive, American troop strength increased from 16,000 to its peak of 535,000. Why so many troops to fight what was largely a guerrilla insurgency? Because…
- He employed an incomprehensible attrition strategy. The Vietnam War, at its heart, was a conflict for the loyalties of the South Vietnamese peasantry. What do you think is the better plan for gaining their loyalty?:
[ul]
[li]Providing humanitarian aid and credible security from the Viet Cong, or[/li][li]Uprooting them from their homes and indiscriminately shelling their villages whenever reports of enemy movement are made?[/li][/ul]
Both happened, but you can guess which response tends to leave a more lasting impression. But gaining the civilians’ loyalties was always secondary to the primary mission of finding and destroying the enemy, and they were quite effective at doing that; the qualitative advantages the US held over the NVA and Viet Cong were astounding. But they never stayed in the areas they pacified, and they never attempted to enter the enemy’s territory (except by air), and the whole time they’re killing and bombing and defoliating the countryside they’re alienating the very people they’re supposed to be helping.
Westy wasn’t the first general to employ the last war’s strategy in a new war, but his stubborn focus on increasing body counts and his lack of regard for civilians (Neil Sheehan, who wrote A Bright, Shining Lie, once asked Westmoreland about the civilian casualties, to which he replied “Yes, Neil, there’s a problem, but it does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn’t it?”) undermined any pacification and humanitarian efforts that may have actually helped.
I agree that Westmorland’s strategy in Vietnam was unsuccessful. In fact, no-one has yet enacted a strategy which will reliably work when confronted with a popular nationalist type insurgency already underway which has access to the resources of allied nation-states, without resorting to behaviours unacceptable to modern democracies (at least, unless the population doing the fighting against the insurgency is ‘sold’ that it an existential struggle). The “hearts and minds” type strategy isn’t likely to work once the battle has been joined (though it can fend off joining battle in the first place).
Vietnam was a halfway-house: attempting to win using elements of the old scortched-earth type strategies, without actually being willing to go whole hog and engage in true genocidal-total-war practices, such as invading or nuking the north. Like most halfway-houses, it didn’t succeed (not that I’m advocating genocide, mind - a war that can only be won by genocide is generally not one worth winning, and certainly not in this case).
The fact is that nothing Westmoreland or his successors could have done would have changed the fundamental situation - that, absent some serious change in strategy, the war was not “winnable” within the remit of what they were willing to do. Where he failed was in attempting to do so nonetheless and in lying about the alleged “success” of the strategy. The logical realization was that the war must either be expanded (which is what Westmoreland wanted, but which was of course politically impossible) or abandoned (which, eventually, is what happened).
A war of attrition cannot easily be won against a nationalist insurgency, unless the side attempting to win it seriously believes that winning it is an existential concern. It wasn’t Westmoreland’s fault that Vietnam became an unwinnable war or attrition, because that was not his decision. It is his fault to have claimed it was winnable - hence, he’s a PR loser - but that in itself isn’t enough I think to qualify him.
I disagree. There were plenty of people who understood that the war was mainly a political conflict, not a conventional conflict (unfortunately for us, most of those people were in North Vietnam). The Huk Rebellion in the Philippines provided the template for US involvement in a successful defense against a communist insurgency. It was Westmoreland’s biases (biases he shared with much of the military and political leadership of that period) that led him to an attrition strategy, to fight the type of war that the US military wanted to fight. His fondest wish was to draw the North Vietnamese into a decisive battle, where American firepower could destroy their ability to fight, but they rarely obliged us. That required the presence of large numbers of soldiers and equipment to flush-out and corner the enemy. The escalation of combat strength in Vietnam was not only expensive for us, but all the money and development flowing in, along with the accompanying graft, changed S. Vietnamese society for the worse.
And even as the casualties mounted while little progress was made, Westy kept asking for more. Whatever the will of the North Vietnamese to keep fighting, the results ultimately speak for themselves. Westmoreland was given pretty much everything he wanted, and yet in 4 years we had moved no closer to victory while incurring a tremendous cost in blood and treasure.
I think this passage from Neil Sheehan from an interview is apropos:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Sheehan/sheehan-con6.html
The Huk Rebellion lacked a nation next door supporting it. Ditto with the communist insurgency in malaysia. Neither had broad-based nationalist support - the malaysian communists were heavily ethnic-based (Chinese), and the Huk never escaped from its central Luzon-peasant base.
The obvious method of defeating the North Vietnamese was to invade and occupy North Vietnam, rather than waiting for the North Vietnamese to attack and then defeating them. This strategy could, however, not be undertaken. There is no evidence that the US could win a “political” fight against a nationalist insurgency, supplied from the outside. Has there ever been a nation whose populace was convinced to allow another nation to control it, because they won their “hearts and minds”, since the development of modern-style nationalism? The more usual result is for the nationalists to win out over the population - or be crushed.
Westy went for the “crushing”, but could not carry it through - given the limitations he operated under, that is hardly surprising. Even the Nazis had trouble crushing the Yugoslavs, and were ultimately unsuccessful (despite near-genocidal tactics). Crushing a true nationalist insurgency is hard, much more so when they are supplied by friendlies out of your effective reach.
But strictly speaking, we weren’t there to defeat North Vietnam, we were there to protect South Vietnam. And we weren’t going to win by killing the North Vietnamese and their collaborators; we had to create the conditions by which the people of South Vietnam could exist independent of a communist North Vietnam. We managed to do that in Korea by invading the north and achieving a conventional military stalemate. Since that wasn’t an option in Vietnam, it didn’t really make sense for us to fight the war in that manner, but we did anyway, and it was Westmoreland who led us there.
I think you assume that South Vietnam’s reunification with the north under a communist government was assured. After the Geneva Conference of 1954 divided the country in two, from 600k to 1 million people resettled in the south. There was significant support for a non-communist government.
I think it was assured once the matter became one of a strictly nationalist insurgency, backed by the North Vietnamese, against a government conceived of as basically little more than a tool for foreign powers.
Hence my position: we agree that the war of attrition wasn’t winnable. We agree that Westmoreland indefensibly fudged the situation to make it appear as if it was. Where we disagree, is in assigning blame for the situation that created the unwinnable war of attrition - to my mind, that’s a political one, and no general dropped into the same situation could have “won” it. The blame lies not on Westmoreland, but on his political masters. Perhaps had he been a better general, those masters would have realized this the sooner, and saved lives and treasure - but the indications are otherwise: the true blame lies on the widespread belief that communism must be “contained” at all costs (rather than realizing that, in a realpolitic sense, communist nationalists could be manipulated against each other - something that became obvious in time).
I still disagree. There were 16,000 American soldiers in Vietnam when Westy arrived, mainly in an advisory role. We were in no way doomed to escalate and fight a war of attrition. We may have been doomed to fight in some capacity, given our view of communism, but not the full-fledged war we ended up fighting on South Vietnam’s behalf. That was Westmoreland’s choice, because that was the only way he could conceive of tackling the problem, and never has someone who was given so much achieved so little.
It bears mentioning that implicit in my condemnation of Westmoreland is my rejection of the idea that the failures of the civilian leadership somehow excuse Westmoreland from his utter strategic failure. He was given a pretty clean slate to work with and should be held responsible for the way he decided to fight that war.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.
Still, it’s an encouraging sign to me - one the obvious duds have dropped out of the game (“duds” in this context meaning generals who are clearly just not that bad - so “non-duds”, if you will!), hopefully more and more debates will spring up over the remainders …
No! I will have your unconditional surrender!
I have a feeling there are more “duds” hanging out that nobody has noticed. I only noticed Spicer-Simson because I didn’t recognize the name and decided to look him up.
But I had to come strong on Westy. I’m pulling for him to “win,” so I have to try and quell these votes of confidence in him better than I did Giap in the last game.
I’ve noticed that as well. I find that putting in a single vote is useless except as an indicator that you are not pleased with said person being on the list. You really need to throw the two votes at somebody. I’ve used my remainder vote as an indicator of who I think I will vote for in the next round.
I think you’ll have an uphill battle there. Not that Westy was any prize but he never made any huge ‘let’s get an entire army wiped off the map’ mistakes.
True, but he did help create numerous “let’s wipe out this hamlet full of civilians” mistakes, as well as the big “let’s empty out America’s wallet and create a festering wound in America’s national psyche” mistake.
:eek:
Yeah, I’m sorta taking it on faith that those I’ve not actually heard of are, in fact, real losers. It may take some time to flush them all out, but such is the depth of military history knowledge on the board, I’m confident it will happen …
Westy, win? I doubt it. He is (or at least, was - it is hard for guys my age to admit that the Vietnam War is rapidly becomming ancient history, the equivalent of folks on the eve of WW1 arguing about the US Civil War 
) a divisive figure, but his only significance is that Vietnam was, for Americans, a very divisive conflict. In the grand scheme of things - that is, on the world stage - his failures simply weren’t all that remarkable. He’ll go down as a mediocre failure. To “win”, you have to be a spectacular failure, I think.
You might be interested to know that there’s a well-reviewed new bio of Marine Gen. Krulak just out: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/books/10book.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=krulak&st=cse
That is pretty bad, but let us remember that there is someone on the list who pretty much wiped out the male population of Paraguay, and he was their general!
Seriously. Uphill battle.