:17:05
**From my home ****
:17:11
We thought of ourselves, I think,
as trying to defeat communists.
:17:16
Defeat--Accepting a view of, uh--
the Walt Rostow kind of view--
:17:21
of covert aggression
of some kind.
:17:24
The kind of view that enabled you
to think of the conflict...
:17:27
in, really, World War II terms.
:17:29
That was an unquestioned assumption.
:17:31
It had an idealistic flavor to it,
:17:33
but it was the underpinning of
an imperial policy, basically.
:17:37
I shared the assumption,
very easily,
:17:40
and felt it as an idealistic one really.
:17:42
We were doing something for them.
:17:44
I recall that I was in the New York area
at the time,
:17:48
and I stopped by
to see General MacArthur,
:17:51
who I had known for several years.
:17:55
Uh, when he greeted me, he made, uh,
quite a prophetic statement.
:18:01
He said, "Westmoreland,
I-I see you have a new job.''
:18:07
He said, "I hope you appreciate
that this new assignment...
:18:13
is filled with opportunities,
but fraught with hazards.''
:18:17
And indeed, uh,
this was a prophetic statement.
:18:42
It can be described much like, uh...
:18:44
a-a-a singer doing an aria...
:18:49
that's totally into what he's doing,
you know, totally feeling it.
:18:52
He knows the aria,
and he's experiencing the aria.
:18:55
And he knows his limits, and he knows
whether he's doing it and doing it well.