Mac Bundy had shown a member of his staff some of the planning for the escalation, particularly the bombing, and the aide had been impressed by how thorough it all was, lots of details. Bundy asked the aide what he thought, and he answered that though he didn’t know anything about the military calculations, “the thing that bothers me is that no matter what we do to them, they live there and we don’t, and they know that someday we’ll go away and thus they know they can outlast us.” Bundy considered the answer for a moment. “That’s a good point,” he said.)
