"Pacification also took a brutal face in unreceptive regions. Viet Cong villages often were simply obliterated as Doug Hostetter describes. Usually, this meant bombing and then bulldozing, a technique the Vietnamese called "ironing" a village. The idea was that if hearts and minds could not be won, better to drive the people off their lands then have them growing food for the guerrillas. Such territory was often sprayed with Agent Orange and declared a free-fire zone, where anything that moved was assumed to be an enemy." - Harry Maurer, Strange Ground
By the summer of 1967, "pacification" was well underway in Vietnam. The "war hero," Lieutenant Commander John Sidney McCain III had flown five bombing runs over North Vietnam by July 1967 dropping Napalm, and annihilating "targets", merely "following orders".
On July 29, 1967, catastrophe erupted aboard the USS Forrestal, the Navy Carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin, upon which McCain's aircraft was stationed. A rocket was accidentally propelled through McCain's plane while he was in the cockpit preparing for his 6th bombing raid. Fuel was dumped across the ships deck and two canisters of napalm were dropped from McCain's plane. McCain escaped the plane without any injury and ran past his comrades who tried to extinguish the flames. He sought refuge below deck where he watched from a distance as his comrades fought the flames trying to save the ship and each other. 134 men died.
Soon after, McCain admitted to a New York Times reporter that he had learned from the ordeal, and gained empathy for the Vietnamese that the U.S. had been dropping napalm on, after watching his comrades burn to death. McCain would then go on to complete 17 more bombing missions, dropping tons napalm, and destroying villages before he was shot down over Hanoi on October 26th, 1967.
As a prisoner of war in Hanoi, McCain undoubtedly suffered torment that no one should ever be subjected to under any circumstances. Later, as a United States Senator from Arizona, he would become known as a "maverick" for opposing torture. However, he reneged on that position when voted against a bill that would have banned waterboarding as an interrogation technique.
hero -
| 1. | a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities. |
| 2. | a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.
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