H/T to Bill...

PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians: A Reappraisal

Historians have often used a 1966 Army report nicknamed PROVN
either to cast aspersions on the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam
between 1964 and 1968, General William C. Westmoreland, or to
praise his successor, General Creighton Abrams. This interpretation is
simplistic and inaccurate. Although the report criticized aspects of the
war under Westmoreland, its target was really the U.S. and Vietnamese
governments. Moreover, PROVN’s conclusions were less radical
and its remedies less novel than observers have tended to admit. A
fresh look at PROVN reveals significant continuities in thought between
Westmoreland, the report, and Abrams.
If the importance of security was well understood by the Army, so, too, was the notion that political and socioeconomic reforms were also necessary. The U.S. Army had a long tradition of making institutional reform a part of its counterinsurgency, nation-building, and constabulary activities, and it had readily accepted Walt W. Rostow's thesis that socioeconomic change was a key weapon in the fight against the spread of communism in the third world.21