Debating William Westmoreland

[dweller]

Harvey Wasserman
July 21, 2005

My first view of General William Westmoreland was from coach class. He was in
first, sitting ramrod straight, impossible to miss.

We were headed to the University of Florida at Gainesville to debate the bomb. Why the man
who commanded the armies of the Crusade in Southeast Asia from 1964 to 1968 needed in
1984 to debate a lefty activist like me was a mystery. Maybe he needed the money. Maybe
he needed the challenge.

He looked like he'd live forever. Certainly into his nineties, which he did, passing away this
week at 91. He was tall, poised, flinty-eyed, with zero apparent body fat. Unbent, unbowed,
you'd've thought him a conquering hero.

The debate was about the Nuclear Freeze, a great campaign. Why it failed to bury all nuclear
weapons remains a great mystery of human nature. Today's world would be infinitely richer
and safer if only it had been wiser back then.

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2005/1171

dp