End of the Tour

"Unless it was beyond my control," General William Childs Westmoreland has said proudly, "I have never left any job that I hadn't finished." Last week, his task in Viet Nam far from finished, Westy got the word that he would be coming home to replace General Harold Johnson in July as Army Chief of Staff.

Westmoreland, 54, was long overdue for a new assignment. Though most fighting men are rotated home after a year's tour of duty, he has been on the job for more than four years, and since June 1964 has served as commander of all U.S. forces in Viet Nam. Still, the timing of the announcement, less than a week after Senator Robert Kennedy had entered the presidential race on an antiwar platform, lent more than a little credence to speculation that the President might be contemplating a change in Viet Nam policy--or else had taken the opportunity to disarm critics by giving the impression that he might. Westmoreland, the chief instrument of past policy, could hardly be expected to implement any broad changes.

Faint Praise. At an unscheduled press conference, Johnson made much of the fact that his decision had been endorsed by Robert McNamara. He pulled from his pocket a rumpled piece of paper bearing, he said, McNamara's handwritten "alternatives" and "recommendations" and dated Jan. 19--more than a week before the Viet Cong's murderous Tet offensive. Thus did the President bring back the commander of the third greatest overseas force in American history, faint-praising him as "a very talented and very able officer." Westmoreland, it was clear, was no longer an unalloyed political asset.

Until the Tet offensive, Westmoreland's judgment had never been seriously questioned. There was no lack of dissent about the bombing and the basic U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, but rarely had a commander in the field been so immune to technical criticism of his own performance. Justly, management-minded Westmoreland was given great credit for the herculean logistical feats of 1965 and 1966. Until last year, anyway, his basic strategy, a compromise between search-and-destroy and a holding operation in the populated areas, seemed to be successful.

It is still too early to say whether this strategy, given the situation, was right or wrong, but the big question is still why, with more than half a million well-trained troops, abundant supplies and the greatest concentration of firepower in history, Westmoreland was not able to achieve greater success. His generalship can ultimately be assessed only by the requests and equivocations that for now are sealed in Pentagon filing cabinets. Strategy aside, however, his clearest single failure was not to have built the South Vietnamese army into a respectable fighting force. His deputy and possible successor, General Creighton ("Abe") Abrams, 53, has made ARVN his principal concern for the past year.

Bitterness & Frustration. Westmoreland's friends are already saying that he was overdirected from Washington and forced to fight a war on the cheap. The general himself is known to be bitter about the flak from home and frustrated by what he thinks has been a letdown in support from the Administration. The timing of last week's announcement is not likely to mollify him. Not only did it occur at a juncture when the allies are on the defensive, but, coming so early, it may pull the commander's punch. "Why the hell did they announce it now?" asked one high-ranking officer in Saigon. "Do they want to lame-duck his next couple of months?"

His new appointment must be approved by the Senate, and some time before he enters his new Pentagon office in July, Westmoreland will be pressed to explain to congressional committees how and why the U.S. design for Viet Nam has fallen so far short of its original expectations--and what should be done next.

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