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 Substitutes For Victory  

The Boston Globe surveys John McCain’s version of the Vietnam War, and lordy, “Bomb, Bomb Iran” isn’t the beginning of his breezy confidence in airpower and death from above.

McCain’s father was commander of Pacific forces for much of the Vietnam war. In McCain’s version, dad was unhappy Richard Nixon wouldn’t unleash the bombing campaign against North Vietnam. His father quit quietly, and McCain feels he should have gone noisily in protest.

In Happier Times   

What didn’t Nixon unleash?  Nixon escalated Lyndon Johnson’s bombing, and  flirted with using atomic weapons against the North, telling old softy Henry Kissinger:

“The only place where you and I disagree … is with regard to the bombing…You’re so god-damned concerned about the civilians and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.”

The notion the US might have won, that the military fought only a limited war, is an old false claim, and belied by the 8 million tons of bombs we dropped, and the millions we killed.

We were bombing the crap out of a peasant economy, and there wasn’t much to hit even after dumbing down target lists early on.

“When NVN was first targeted the JCS found only 8 industrial installations worth listing on a par with airfields, military supply dumps, barracks complexes, port facilities, bridges, and oil tanks. Even by the end of 1965, after the JCS had lowered the standards and more than doubled the number of important targets, the list included only 24 industrial installations, 18 of them power plants which were as important for such humble uses as lighting streets and pumping water as for operating any real factories.”