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General Westmoreland was commander of the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam. Meaning he oversaw US military forces in Vietnam War from 1964 until 1968. Under the Johnson administration, Westmoreland was given freedom in prosecuting the war in Vietnam as he saw fit. Westmoreland has been criticized for his management of the Vietnam War, pursuing failed tactics and a failing strategy, selectively disregarding data that undermined those tactics, squandering early American public support for the war, and being all too interested in personal prestige.

General Creighton Abrams succeeded him. However, Abrams prosecution was too little, too late. So much damage had been done to US moral and the war had outworn its welcome. I'm simply going to quote Wikipedia on this, as seen below. What if Abrams had been the general in command of the military in Vietnam rather than Westmoreland, and had overseen the war from the very beginning?

Abrams was promoted to general in 1964 and appointed Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army, but not before being seriously considered as a candidate for Chief of Staff. Due to concerns about the conduct of the Vietnam War, he was appointed as deputy to his West Point classmate, General William Westmoreland, commander of the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, in May 1967.

Abrams would succeed Westmoreland as commander on June 10, 1968, although his tenure of command was not marked by the public optimism of his predecessors, who were prone to press conferences and public statements. While Westmoreland had for years run the war using search-and-destroy tactics, these gave way to the clear-and-hold strategies that Abrams was keen to implement. Under his authority, American forces were broken up into small units that would live with and train the South Vietnamese civilians to defend their villages from guerrilla or conventional Northern incursions with heavy weapons. Abrams also devoted vastly more time than his predecessor had to expanding, training, and equipping the ARVN.

In contrast to Westmoreland, Abrams implemented counterinsurgency tactics that focused on winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese rural population. A joint military-civilian organization named CORDS under CIA official William Colby carried out the hearts and minds programs. According to one colonel cited in "Men's Journal", there was more continuity than change in Vietnam after Abrams succeeded Westmoreland.[a]

This hearts and minds strategy was successful in reducing the influence of the guerrilla forces in South Vietnam, but the Vietnam War increasingly became a conventional war between the military forces of South Vietnam and North Vietnam. Following the election of President Richard Nixon, Abrams began implementing the Nixon Doctrine referred to as Vietnamization. The doctrine aimed to decrease U.S. involvement in Vietnam. With this new goal, Abrams had decreased American troop strength from a peak of 543,000 in early 1969 to 49,000 in June 1972. The South Vietnamese forces with aerial support from the United States repelled a full-scale NVA Easter Offensive in 1972.

That same year, Abrams stepped down from the Military Assistance Command. However, while Abrams was changing the way the war was fought, the prolonged efforts and expense of the war had by then exhausted much of the American public and political support. Abrams disdained most of the politicians with whom he was forced to deal, in particular Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy, and had an even lower opinion of defense contractors whom he accused of war profiteering.

Abrams was also in charge of the Cambodian Incursion in 1970. President Nixon seemed to hold Abrams in high regard, and often relied on his advice. In a tape-recorded conversation between Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on December 9, 1970, Nixon told Kissinger about Abrams' thoughts on intervention in Cambodia that "If Abrams strongly recommends it we will do it."[5] Troop levels in Vietnam eventually reached 25,000 in January 1973, at the time of the four power Paris Peace Accords. Although it occurred before he assumed total command, he bore the brunt of fallout from the My Lai massacre in March 1968.
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