Lesson the US military eventually learned in Vietnam after camera and television technology had matured to the point the general public got to witness weapons of mass destruction in use. Until that point there was no real backlash whenever the US military fire bombed entire cities. In the WW2 Pacific theater the US killed over a hundred thousand civilians at a time fire bombing Japanese cities and no one gave a fk but when the public watched on their living room televisions the same tactics being used in Vietnam there was backlash.
I guess the lesson learned was that after the advent of video mass media you gotta only kill hundreds of civilians at a time and if you do shit like depoy a weapon that kills tens to hundreds of thousands at a time the public starts getting squeamish.
It does probably help that japan were on the side of fascists and (north) vietnam were decidedly not. But yeah, widespread video and color photos of atrocities probably is a bigger factor
Lesson the US military eventually learned in Vietnam after camera and television technology had matured to the point the general public got to witness weapons of mass destruction in use. Until that point there was no real backlash whenever the US military fire bombed entire cities. In the WW2 Pacific theater the US killed over a hundred thousand civilians at a time fire bombing Japanese cities and no one gave a fk but when the public watched on their living room televisions the same tactics being used in Vietnam there was backlash.
I guess the lesson learned was that after the advent of video mass media you gotta only kill hundreds of civilians at a time and if you do shit like depoy a weapon that kills tens to hundreds of thousands at a time the public starts getting squeamish.
The major lesson the Pentagon learned was to co-opt the media. See The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
I should re-read this. it was fascinating the first time and I'd probably get more out of it a second time
It does probably help that japan were on the side of fascists and (north) vietnam were decidedly not. But yeah, widespread video and color photos of atrocities probably is a bigger factor