Morally perverted

Senator John McCain wrote an obituary for Vo Nguyen Giap (Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2013).  The sub-header (unclear if written by McCain or a Wall Street Journal editor) read:

To defeat any adversary, the late North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap permitted immense casualties and the near total destruction of his country.

This is the most morally perverted statement I have seen in a long time.  What sort of twisted logic and self-delusion could possibly lead one to conclude it must be a (negative) reflection on the character of a general on the other side that he "permitted" the killing and destruction that one has wrought upon the other side?  That killing and destroying itself is not worthy of moral judgment, but "permitting" it (I guess by not immediately giving into violent coercion) is?

We are treated to more moral pervertedness here, where McCain suggests that Americans are morally superior:

The U.S. never lost a battle against North Vietnam, but it lost the war.  Countries, not their armies, win wars.  Giap understood that.  We didn't.  Americans tired of the dying and the killing before the Vietnamese did.  It's hard to defned the morality of the strategy.  But you can't deny its success.

That's right, focus on the "indefensible morality" of resisting attack by Americans, who "tired of the dying and the killing before the Vietnamese did." So the far greater casualties suffered by the Vietnamese is evidence of - not the ruthlessness of the mighty imperial power that inflicted them - but the ruthlessness of General Giap.

Ooookay.

May Giap rest in peace and may McCain find a conscience.