As Americans head into the holiday season, we also approach a significant historical milestone from the U.S. war in Vietnam: the 50th anniversary of the final U.S. air offensive on North Vietnam, an 11-day campaign that began on the night of Dec. 18, 1972, and has gone down in history as the "Christmas bombing."
What has also gone down in history, however, at least in many retellings, is a provably untrue representation of the nature and meaning of that event, and its consequences. That widespread narrative claims that the bombing forced the North Vietnamese to negotiate the peace agreement they signed in Paris the following month, and thus that U.S. air power was a decisive factor in ending the American war.
