SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: General William Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, said that Asians do not value human life the way Westerners do.

General William Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, said that Asians do not value human life the way Westerners do. He said this to explain why Vietnamese soldiers kept fighting despite losses that would have broken Western armies. He did not say: perhaps they are fighting for something worth dying for. He did not say: perhaps our intelligence about their will to fight was wrong. He did not say: perhaps we have fundamentally misunderstood this enemy. He said: they don't value life. This is what happens when an army built on the premise of its own civilizational superiority meets a people who simply refuse to accept that premise. The army cannot update its model. It cannot say "we were wrong about who these people are." So it invents a theory where the enemy's resistance is not a sign of strength but a sign of deficiency. They keep fighting because life is cheap to them. Not because their cause is just. Not because they are brave. Because they are less than us. Westmoreland ran the war for years on this theory. He lost. The Vietnamese people, who apparently did not value life, built a country that is alive and growing and free. Westmoreland died in 2005. The people he could not understand are still here. So is the theory.

9:43 PM · Mar 29, 2026