Kill Anything That Moves

Nothing has haunted US Foreign Policy more than Vietnam, destroying a generation, handing down a legacy of napalm, defeat, nightmares, suicides and denials, repatriating genetic damage caused by Agent Orange courtesy of Monsanto, among other issues.

The heroism of Seymour Hersh ushered the truth about My Lai, provoking denial, criticism and condemnation.

Before we blindly follow the NeoCon Chicken Hawks into another war, let's take the time to reflect on the disaster that was Vietnam. Maybe it's time to Wage Peace instead of promoting war.

Below, are recent articles and comments by Nick Turse. If you didn't live through the horror  of Vietnam, this stuff is enlightening.   

'Anything That Moves': Civilians And The Vietnam War

January 28, 2013

 

Anything that Moves

 

Tomgram: Nick Turse, Chuck Hagel and Murder in Vietnam

Posted by Nick Turse at 8:00am, January 31, 2013.

 

 

Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnamby Nick Turse

 

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were "isolated incidents" in the Vietnam War, carried out by a few "bad apples." However, as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this pioneering investigation, violence against Vietnamese civilians was not at all exceptional. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves." Drawing on a decade of research into secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals the policies and actions that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. He lays out in shocking detail the workings of a military machine that made crimes in nearly every American unit all but inevitable. "Kill Anything That Moves" takes us from archives filled with Washington's long-suppressed war crime investigations to the rural Vietnamese hamlets that bore the brunt of the war; from boot camps where young American soldiers learned to hate all Vietnamese to bloodthirsty campaigns like Operation Speedy Express, in which a general obsessed with body counts led his troops to commit what one participant called "a My Lai a month."