The apology Obama should have given.

On his recent Pacific trip, President Obama visited 2 countries of American atrocities: Vietnam and Japan. Many in the peace and nuclear free movements wanted to hear an Obama apology for the unnecessary A Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but that was never an option. The victors write the histories, and the US quickly created the false narrative that the A Bombs saved half a million GI's (or possibly even a million) in spite of overwhelming evidence, including the assessment of seven of eight 5 star WWII generals, that the bombings were unnecessary. That includes Ike and Mac.

But being the losers in Vietnam didn't prevent America from paper-overing the grotesque carnage we visited upon that sorrowful land that simply wanted freedom from colonial oppression. Our kids learn in school that over 58,000 Americans perished in our futile attempt to prevent Vietnamese reunification. But they don't get the full story of the devastation we unleashed upon Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia before we were mercifully thrown out in 1975.

What devastation you ask?

Seventy-five percent of South Viet Nam was considered a free-fire (genocide) zone

Over 4 million Southeast Asians killed

13,000 of 21,000 of Vietnamese villages were severely damaged or destroyed

Nearly 950 churches and pagodas destroyed by bombing

350 hospitals and 1,500 maternity wards destroyed by bombing

Nearly 3,000 high schools and universities destroyed by bombing

Over 15,000 bridges destroyed by bombing

10 million cubic meters of dikes destroyed by bombing

26 million bomb craters created courtesy of American B-52s

21 million gallons of extremely poisonous herbicides were dumped in 20,000 chemical spraying missions between 1961 and 1970; the most intensive use of chemical warfare in human history. As many as 4.8 million Vietnamese living in nearly 3,200 villages were directly sprayed by the chemicals. 24 percent, or 16,100 square miles, of South Viet Nam was sprayed, an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined, killing tropical forest, food crops, and inland forests

Over 500,000 Vietnamese have died from chronic conditions related to chemical spraying with an estimated 650,000 still suffering from such conditions; 500,000 children have been born with Agent Orange-induced birth defects, now including third generation offspring

Nearly 375,000 tons of fire-balling napalm was dropped on villages

Over 35,000,000 tons of ordnance was expended from aerial and naval bombing, artillery, and ground fire

150,000-300,000 tons of unexploded ordinance (UXO) remain scattered around Vietnam

Even more than the A Bombings, the president should have apologized for what his predecessors did to Vietnam half a century ago.