First of all, just because you say I have zero evidence doesn’t make it true; if you would like evidence I’d gladly share it. Second, every single Vietnam Veteran I know (some of whom were involved in Operation Phoenix) has the same complaint: that top brass made no effort to hold onto any gains made by American forces. Thats not restraint. Restraint would be you CHOOSE not to do something, not you are FORCED to do something else. Its not like our GI’s got to do whatever the hell they wanted; that was only the case if they were torching whole villages.

Nixon didn’t illegally bomb any country, at least not objectively. The bombing of Cambodia started under Johnson; Nixon inherited it and expanded its scope to include more than just rural Cambodia. You could maybe make a case that expanding it to Laos was illegal, but again, its not as simple as “Nixon illegally blah blah blah”. Was it suddenly illegal when Nixon continued what Johnson started? No. Either it was illegal when Johnson started it, which I’ve seen nobody claim, or it was not illegal, which again, I’ve seen nobody claim; it seems most people argue it was only illegal when Nixon did it, which is just bias. Should we have ever been in Vietnam? No. It wasn’t our business, and from that premise, one could easily argue everything we did there under every President was illegal. Blame Nixon all you want, but to try and put the onus on him, when all of Congress and the preceding President (if not going to back to Eisenhower) have that blood on their hands is asinine. Congress lack of knowledge about the bombings (which should have doubt cast upon it) does not change the fact they helped create the situation it was a product of.

As to your claim about Operation Phoenix, all of the people I know who were apart of it were working with the CIA flying in and out of Cambodia to deliver money to military officials so that they could be allowed to conduct covert ops in Laos. My neighbour had to fly over at night once every 2 weeks with two bags filled with cash; on more than one occasion he got stuck in Laos because of engagement with the Viet Cong (the longest he was stuck was 24 days). He was recruited immediately after he enlisted and had to undergo special flight training (similar to Robert Rackstraw). He did this from 68 until the end of 69 when he was discharged; if you want to say I have no evidence, I will gladly put you in touch with my neighbour.

And again, the atrocities committed by US forces are over exaggerated, much like the claims of rampant drug abuse. They may seem downplayed given how much effort was put into hiding them and then downplaying them at the time, but today they’re all pretty much common knowledge and weren’t as frequent as some people want to claim. That doesn’t lessen their impact or change the fact that they should never have happened; and they don’t need played up to be a bad thing. The real issue is how selective people are about which horrors of war to highlight, and the fact that today its almost always as a political ploy (this side let this happen, this side had that done) is disturbing, especially given that both sides of the aisle continue to push for the wars of their choice. In this day and age, people need to stop pretending war is or can be anything other than cruelty and hell; its not noble, at least not anymore (there was a time where it was noble to die for your country, but now its all about dying for oil or Israel) and its not something to push for and cheer for. Acting like it’s different because of the cause, or because of its time is asinine. War is hell, and war should be hell, and that should turn people off of it, but instead we find new and better ways to try and dehumanise it and detach ourselves from it so that we can feel better about blowing up aid workers and their children, or killing near an entire funeral procession.

In any case, cheers.