After Korea, he served in a succession of increasingly important posts in the U.S. Army, becoming the youngest major general in the Army at the age of 42. In 1960, he was appointed superintendent of West Point, where he came to the attention of President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who were very impressed with his abilities. After serving as the commander of XVIII Airborne Corps, he was selected by Johnson to replace General Paul D. Harkins as COMUSMACV in Saigon.

After serving six months as Harkins' deputy, Westmoreland assumed command in June 1964. He played a key role in the expanding U.S. commitment in Vietnam. When North Vietnamese regulars threatened to cut through South Vietnam in the Central Highlands, President Johnson, acting on the advice of Westmoreland and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, increased the level of U.S. combat forces in South Vietnam to more than 100,000.

From 1965 to 1967, Westmoreland was instrumental in raising the level of U.S. forces committed to South Vietnam and in developing the military strategy for the ground war. This strategy was threefold: first, halt the losing trend of the South Vietnamese forces by the end of 1965; second, conduct offensive operations to defeat major VC and NVA units and restore pacification programs; and third, secure and destroy enemy base areas. Implicit was cutting North Vietnamese support to the South, which Westmoreland intended to do when ground troops were available and permitted to operate against the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia.

Westmoreland's plan required steadily increasing commitments of U.S. manpower. By 1966, there were more than 450,000 American troops in Vietnam. Those troops were employed in an aggressive war of attrition characterized by large-scale search-and-destroy operations. Despite the mounting enemy body count that resulted, the number of Communists, whether North or South Vietnamese, continued to grow. Massive bombing failed to halt the flow of enemy supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam. Meanwhile, the American casualty toll began to soar. Nevertheless, Westmoreland assured the American people in 1967 that the United States and its South Vietnamese allies were winning in Vietnam.

In January 1968, North Vietnam launched the countrywide Tet Offensive. Westmoreland and his command, although taken by surprise, reacted quickly and inflicted a devastating tactical defeat on the attackers. But the Communists had shown that no part of South Vietnam was safe from their operations, salvaging a great psychological victory. The scope and violence of the Tet Offensive embarrassingly contradicted Westmoreland's assessments and added to the growing credibility gap that had developed between the Johnson administration and a large segment of the American people.

Still, Westmoreland interpreted the outcome of Tet on the battlefield as an opportunity and, supported by Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he proposed a new strategy that called for the commitment of an additional 200,000 troops to be used for operations outside South Vietnam to attack enemy sanctuaries. President Johnson denied Westmoreland's request (except for a small number of reinforcements) and recalled the general to be chief of staff of the U.S. Army.

As chief of staff, Westmoreland had to deal with the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, restoring the Army's readiness to function in other theaters of operation, mitigating the Army's racial tensions, bringing drug use in the Army under control, and making the transition to an all-volunteer Army. He had to do all this in a climate dominated by intense anti-military sentiments in U.S. politics and society. He was successful in restructuring the Army, but some of the other problems would have to be addressed by his successors.

Westmoreland retired in 1972, but remained a major figure in the postwar debate about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He vigorously defended his conduct of the war in his 1976 memoir, A Soldier Reports, suggesting that the war was not lost militarily, but due to civilian-imposed limitations. In 1983 Westmoreland sued CBS over a television program that alleged his participation in a conspiracy to manipulate the number of VC and North Vietnamese troops he faced. The suit was settled out of court and both sides claimed victory.

Westmoreland has been called the inevitable general, and his achievements before the Vietnam War were substantial. It was the conduct of the war in Vietnam, however, for which history will remember him, and his strategy remains the subject of heated debate. Some critics have charged that Westmoreland's strategy could never have prevailed in Vietnam without far higher troop levels than President Johnson was willing to provide. Various others fault Westmoreland for undue reliance on U.S. combat forces, excessive use of helicopters, lack of emphasis on improving the fighting capability of the ARVN, or lack of attention to counterinsurgency.

The most controversial aspect of Westmoreland's approach to the war, however, did and still does lie in his search-and-destroy strategy. Part of the controversy during the war arose from a flawed articulation of that strategy, whose operational concept was never explained clearly to the American people. Although Westmoreland envisioned operations that would search for enemy units, base camps and logistic support areas to destroy them, the emphasis on body counts and the images of U.S. troops burning Vietnamese villages gave the impression that American troops were destroying Vietnam itself in an ever-escalating spiral of violence and destruction. Westmoreland's initial press coverage was positive (he was named Time magazine Man of the Year in 1965), but it slipped badly following the Tet Offensive. In the end, he came to be closely identified with America's defeat in Vietnam.

Since retirement, General Westmoreland has been involved in a number of activities. He headed the Task Force for Economic Growth for the governor of South Carolina in 1972 and ran unsuccessfully for governor of that state himself in 1974. His other pursuits include serving on the boards of several corporations and organizations while traveling extensively as a lecturer and public speaker. Westmoreland died July 18, 2005 at age 91 of natural causes while residing at the Bishop Gadsden retirement home where he had lived with his wife, Katherine.

-James Willbanks