Deja Vu All Over Again

If you have the time, go read the LA Times story about General Westmoreland.

If you don’t have the time, here is a critical excerpt:

"Meanwhile, as more Americans were leaving for Vietnam in uniforms and returning in body bags, the antiwar movement in the United States gathered steam. The first demonstrators were students, but they soon were joined by clergymen, teachers, journalists and politicians.

"The antiwar movement was alien to Westmoreland, and so were the people in it," a former staff officer told Westmoreland biographer Samuel Zaffiri. "He wanted to be a hero. Instead, he found himself being vilified."

During a trip to the United States in the spring of 1967, Westmoreland told journalists that he and his men were "dismayed by recent unpatriotic acts here at home." He said these acts "inevitably will cost lives" of U.S. troops and were handing the enemy successes that "he cannot match on the battlefield."

Although some politicians and editorial writers defended Westmoreland's comments, far more condemned him as an opponent of free speech."

Sound familiar?