"Dating from the days of the Geneva Accords of 1954, the refugees always flowed south, not north, and even those Americans who long maintained that the refugees were not fleeing the enemy but American shelling and bombing would have to admit that even after American shelling and bombing stopped, the flow was still always southward. So it was until the final deplorable end. How could anyone genuinely believe that the South Vietnamese people had no desire to forestall the march of totalitarianism, to maintain their freedom- however imperfect- when for years upon years they bore incredible hardships and their soldiers fought with courage and determination to do just that? They carried on the fight under a government that many Americans labeled unrepresentative, repressive, and corrupt. No people could have pursued such a grim defensive fight for so long without a deep underlying yearning for freedom."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
General William Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 409.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Vietnam War
236 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Vietnam War →
Related Quotes
"Intelligence on Vietcong positions and movements frequently arrived too late to be actionable, delayed in an informat…"
"The war is simply an obscenity, a depraved act by weak and miserable men, including all of us who have allowed it to …"
"You sense a strong sense of mission among the fighting men in Viet Nam, an enormous compassion for all victims of Com…"
"By Thanksgiving, 1967, we still had not made any really final decision about whether or not we'd return for another t…"
"The Vietnam war literally brought this country to its knees because, without going into the technicalities of what Co…"
"Now then, the question is, How can we move to begin to change what's going on in this country. I maintain, as we have…"
"We thought, We will go to Vietnam and be Audie Murphies. Kick in the door, run in the hooch, give it a good burst- ki…"
"And for the men in the audience, hands down, the worst PTSD in the war is in the women who served as surgical nurses …"
"The Road to Viet Nam, and to the other important places Mr. Hope visits at Christmas, had to end for Bob and me after…"
"There were only two types of people when I came home- those who were against what we did and those who said nothing. …"