Nick Turse

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American forces bombed Communist positions to clear a road east of Skoun, Cambodia, in November 1970. Bettmann/Getty Images

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Forty years after the American military attacked them, the people of Tropeang Phlong village in Cambodia were still traumatized.

Beginning around 1969, U.S. helicopters regularly strafed the village, according to survivors. The American choppers used the wind off their blades to blow the thatch roofs off homes, turned their machine guns on those who fled and on men and women working in the rice paddies and fired incendiary rockets that set houses ablaze. Aircraft dropped bombs and gleaming napalm canisters that tumbled end over end and bloomed into fiery explosions.

“My nephew was killed — his stomach was blown out — and my older brother was wounded by an airstrike”, Oun Hean, the village chief, told me when I visited in 2010.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios

Obituaries of Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who helped drive the American military from his country, noted, as The New York Times put it, that “his critics said that his victories had been rooted in a profligate disregard for the lives of his soldiers.”

The implication is that the United States lost the war in Vietnam because General Giap thought nothing of sending unconscionable numbers of Vietnamese to their deaths.

Yet America’s defeat was probably ordained, just as much, by the Vietnamese casualties we caused, not just in military cross-fire, but as a direct result of our policy and tactics.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Recently, after Afghan militants unleashed sophisticated, synchronized attacks across Afghanistan, including in the capital, Kabul, the Pentagon was quick to emphasize what hadn't happened.

"I'm not minimizing the seriousness of this, but this was in no way akin to the Tet offensive," said George Little, the Pentagon's top spokesman. "We are looking at suicide bombers, RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], mortar fire, etc. This was not a large-scale offensive sweeping into Kabul or other parts of the country."

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta weighed in similarly.

"There were," he insisted, "no tactical gains here. These are isolated attacks that are done for symbolic purposes, and they have not regained any territory."…  Seguir leyendo »