The American Spectator

p> HONOR AND DUTY br> Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Gen. William Westmoreland, RIP : /p>

I was privileged to serve under General Westmoreland as a paratrooper with the first brigade (Separate) of the 101st Airborne Division in 1967 and 1968. We all thought of him as a hard charger who cared deeply about the welfare of his soldiers. While I, as an NCO, never had the opportunity to get to know him, I did meet him once during the Tet Offensive for a brief time. He was, for that moment, concerned only with me. He directed his fierce gaze into my eyes and asked two questions: “Are your men in good shape?” and “Do you have what you need to carry this fight on?” I answered in the affirmative; he shook my hand and went on about his business. He did his job, and well.

In my opinion, he was vilified by the media because, like all who served there, he was the “old” America. It was about service to country; honor and duty to us. This, at a time when a new American morality (amorality?) was coming into vogue, which required nothing at all from the citizenry and hated the values we soldiers did then and still hold in our hearts. To the new America it was “what’s in it for me? Don’t ask me to suffer for anybody. Just send me off to college so I can practice free love. And by the way, pay my tuition, and don’t tie that to any grades.”

p>That attitude is amply demonstrated in Democrat rhetoric to this very day. They are anti-values; anti sacrifice; anti-American, and hopefully the last and sad vestiges of the selfish seventies. William Westmorland, like Dwight D. Eisenhower, would have made a hell of a President. br> — Jay W. Molyneaux br> Wellington, FL /p> p> Thanks, RET, for your defense and remembrance of William Westmoreland. A man not to achieve the fame and laurels of MacArthur, Ike, Patton, et al., but in their league nonetheless for having given his all in a worthy but unsupported cause. Moreover, he was the essence of grace and class for enduring endless calumny. History will be kinder — it wasn’t the man it was the effort. br> —