On 22 May 2004 13:05:19 -0700, (WaltBJ) wrote:

I was half-way through "on Yankee Station" when I realized my jaw was
aching. I discovered I'd been grinding my teeth in subconscious rage
seeing the Navy had gone through the same BS we had experienced at Da
Nang, the same ignorance that had killed several dozens of my squadron
mates (in 9 fighter squadrons). I raised my head and startled my wife
by blurting out "If that SOB MacNamara was here I'd punch him right in
the nose!" BTW, I still feel that way . . .
Walt BJ

Never forgive, never forget. The line for the McNamara shot starts
down the block there. There are a lot of folks already in the queue.


This from the last chapter of When Thunder Rolled:

"It's thirty-five years since that summer of '66 and the view of the
war today is only slightly clearer than it was then. We don't know yet
why we were there or what the objective was. We can't define a
national self-interest for involvement in Southeast Asia nor has
anyone told us what was worth squandering such a valuable treasure of
manpower and machines. We should know, but we don't. There have been
many attempts to explain it all, but they are either self-serving
excuses posing as the memoirs of the senior decision makers or
detailed rationale of their pacifism by professors who opposed the war
and taught their students how to think the same way. As with so much
of history, it depends upon the particular perspective of the observer
rather than the facts at hand.

Looking at the various levels of involvement in Rolling Thunder we can
see the lieutenants doing what was asked of them without question. We
trusted our leaders and our senior decision-makers to give us a
mission with a purpose. They had a moral obligation to not waste our
lives without meaning. They would decide when war was necessary and
what it took to win that war. In return for that, we would risk our
lives and do the job. We would fly and fight because, as the sign in
the Korat briefing room reminded us daily, that was the mission of the
United States Air Force. All we asked was that we be allowed to win.

The captains and majors had the benefit of experience. Some had been
in Korea and faced the challenge of overcoming their fears in that
earlier war, but all of them had the hours of flying time that helped
them to handle the tasks thrust upon them. They fought and died, doing
the job that they had been asked to do. They led the trusting
lieutenants, sometimes competently and sometimes reaching too far.
Occasionally they failed, but they did the best they could.

The colonels and the generals were the failures. They let us down by
failing to challenge the political leadership of the country. They had
an obligation to follow the orders of the duly elected administration,
but they needed to demand clear tasking and reasonable rules under
which to conduct the war. It's too easy to attribute the mismanagement
of the war to a timid foreign policy and a reluctance to risk
confrontation with the Soviets and Chinese. If one isn't willing to
win, then one shouldn't risk defeat. Fighting with no purpose is the
true immorality of war because it means you are asking your citizens
to die for no reason other than winning the next election or making
profits for a major international corporation. Dying for one's country
is no longer noble when your country doesn't care either way about the
outcome and it becomes a travesty when your war is being waged in
conjunction with the latest presidential campaign. Turn it on when
you're high in the polls and turn it off in response to the latest
protest gathering by your richest contributors. Several hundred
aircrew members languishing in North Vietnam prisons? No problem. They
won't be voting and the majority of people don't think they were doing
the right thing anyway."


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8