|
Vietnam, 1964-1973
For ten years the U.S. assaulted Vietnam with all the deadly force the
Pentagon could muster, trying to preserve a corrupt South Vietnamese
regime, which had been inherited from the French colonial empire. The
U.S. may have used more firepower in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia) than had been used by all sides in all previous wars in human
history.
Sometimes you have to destroy a country to save it.
U.S. warplanes dropped seven million tons of bombs on Vietnam.
That's the equivalent of one 350-pound bomb per person!
Despite the ferocity of the assault on Vietnam, the U.S. was ultimately
defeated by a lightly armed but determined peasant army. [33]
400,000 tons of napalm were rained down on the tiny country. Agent
Orange and other toxic herbicides were used to destroy millions of acres
of farmland and forests. Villages were burned to the ground and their
residents massacred. Altogether, two million people died in the
Indochina War, most of them civilians killed by U.S. bombs and bullets.
Almost 60,000 U.S. soldiers were killed and 300,000 wounded.
Go to Next Page
|
