Westmoreland Dead at 91 -- Irrelevant

Now that Westy has shuffled off this mortal coil, has joined the choir invisible, has gone to meet his maker, has ceased to be, etc., I won't get a chance to ask the question I always wanted to ask him. Here's hoping that the Cosmic Muffin will ask it, when that inevitable F2F happens.

The question? Simply this: "What the fuck were you thinking????!!!!!"

My favorite Westmoreland anecdote: Years after the end of the Vietnam war, Westmoreland's nemesis, the famous North Vietnam general Vo Nguyen Giap, and Westmoreland finally met. Westmoreland, always the diplomat, testily said to his counterpart, in effect, "I don't get it. You should have lost that war. We never lost a battle, and you never won one."

General Giap replied simply, "This is true. It is also irrelevant."

Yet another lesson for our time from the pages of history.