Mass destruction, with a pedigree

I wanted to post a comment in response to this but they don't allow comments so I post it here:

Podhoretz's pussyfooting-with-mass-slaughter comes with a fine pedigree, as cf. this December 20, 1969 column from William F. Buckley, Jr. re Vietnam:

"...More bad news. Although the enemy, as we shall see, is reeling from successive disasters, he retains the technical capacity to regenerate himself at about the rate at which we have been killing him. An estimated 100,000 healthy males not designated for specialized training turn 18 every year. That is about how many soldiers, on an average, have been killed per year over the course of the war. The bright side of it, in the macabre figuring of the military statisticians, is that something like an entire generation of North Vietnamese males has been killed in the past seven or eight years. The sobering side is that they grow 'em as fast as we can kill 'em..."

Hmmm. Sobering perhaps, macabre definitely...