Neoncon, I guess we're stuck with "no one knows and we shouldn't speculate" as an ending point. But the fact remains that almost every knowledgeable commentator on the war has the opinion that there were hundreds of thousands of S. Vietnamese civilians killed in the war. That Tet of 68, "fight[ing] it out neighborhood by neighborhood," was a one-time event that accounts for only a small percentage of those we killed. And that part of the reason why no one can say how many were killed is because, as in Iraq, we don't want those numbers collected.
When you overview the psychological pressures on our men, when you examine the nature of the warfare in Vietnam and the extent of the casualties in those units which were bearing the brunt of the fighting (80% of the casualties were borne by about 50 combat battalions, or 25,000 fighting men,) and the fact that it was impossible to sort out friend from enemy in many instances, I think you could safely say that we were "liberally targeting such villages and villagers?"
That's not a slam on our men who fought. It is, however, a grown up assessment of the circumstances, the circumstantial evidence and the truism that human nature and it's failings don't change at the time our men and women are sworn into the military. |
