Bombing of Vietnam's dikes
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Late in the Vietnam War, the United States of America considered a policy of systematically bombing a system of dikes in Vietnam's Red River Delta that protected several hundred thousand people from having their land overrun by water.
The threat of the bombing was used as a leveraging tool against the North Vietnamese to encourage them to accept a proposed truce. The Red River Delta provided the majority of the food to North Vietnam, and the destruction of the farmland and the people within could have starved the nation's population and army. Under this threat, in September, 1972, North Vietnam agreed to drop their demand that President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu of South Vietnam be overthrown. Thiệu rejected the treaty, not wanting to leave North Vietnamese troops in the south.
Many have referred to the bombing of the dikes as a war crime, although little was accomplished in the bombing before it ceased. Actress Jane Fonda is often credited with helping publicize the bombing, for which then U.N. Ambassador George H. W. Bush accused her of lying. (The North Vietnamese also installed anti-aircraft guns and surface to air missiles on these dikes making them legitimate targets in the eyes of many military planners.)
President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger discussed bombing dikes in a 1972 conversation, later published by journalist Daniel Ellsberg:
Nixon: We've got to quit thinking in terms of a three-day strike [in the Hanoi-Haiphong area]. We've got to be thinking in terms of an all-out bombing attack - which will continue until they - Now by all-out bombing attack, I am thinking about things that go far beyond. I'm thinking of the dikes, I'm thinking of the railroad, I'm thinking, of course, the docks.
Kissinger: I agree with you.
President Nixon: We've got to use massive force.
Two hours later at noon, H. R. Haldeman and Ron Ziegler joined Kissinger and Nixon:
President: How many did we kill in Laos?
Ziegler: Maybe ten thousand - fifteen?
Kissinger: In the Laotian thing, we killed about ten, fifteen.
President: See, the attack in the North that we have in mind, power plants, whatever's left - POL [petroleum], the docks. And, I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.
President: No, no, no, I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
President: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?...I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes. (Ellsberg p. 418, ellipses original)
