Sunday, February 17, 2013

The Only Good South Vietnamese Farmer is a Dead South Vietnamese Farmer

“Kill Anything That Moves – the Real War in Vietnam,” by Nick Turse, 2013

This book recounts a tragedy so horrible, an experience so destructive, that a simple book review does not suffice. This is a book that shows the American War in Vietnam to be what it was – a high tech slaughter of millions of South Vietnamese civilians. For the generations of clueless Americans who vaguely know Vietnam was ‘bad’ – you don’t know how ‘bad.’  It will cure anyone of the Democratic or Republican parties.  It will cure anyone of praising the military machine.  It will cure anyone of simplistic thoughts about the innocence of good ‘ol U.S. boys.  It was free-fire, unadulterated mass murder, organized from the top.  The title of this book is not a ‘leftist’ generalization – it is a quote, a thought, a practice, repeated time and time again.

Body Count
Free-Fire Zones
Protected Hamlets – mass removal to squalid huts
Overkill; kill over and over
Kill prisoners – can’t take them along
War Criminals:  Westmoreland, McNamara, LBJ, Nixon, Kissinger, Singlaub, Laird, etc.
‘Scientific’ warfare methods
Industrial slaughter
Random murder
Orders from on High
Democrats and Republicans
Holocaust of Vietnamese

3 times more dead than the so-called ‘killing fields’ in Cambodia
Statistics:
58,000 dead Americans
304,000 wounded Americans
254,00 ARVN killed
783,000 wounded
1.7M Viet Cong / NLF dead
? VC / NLF wounded?
65,000 North Vietnamese civilians dead
2M South Vietnamese civilians dead – Harvard Medical School
7.3M Vietnamese casualties overall – Dead, KIA and wounded, Levy, Govt. of Vietnam
South Vietnam’s Population:  19M

Cluster bombs
White phosphorus
B-52 strikes
F-4 Phantoms
Napalm
Huey’s spitting bullets
Agent Orange defoliant
Friendly fire

South Vietnam is the most bombed place in history.
Orders
Destroy all buildings
Burn the ville
Fire the hooch
Level the rice, the fruit trees, the cane
Sink the sampan
Kill anything that moves, including the animals
Every bomb shelter hole in the ground is a VC bunker – grenades for all
Bomb craters in the paddies
Search & Destroy
Black pajamas are VC
Anyone who runs is VC
Little kids grow up to be VC
Water buffalo are VC
The “mere gook rule.”
Random shelling – use up your ammo
Ecocide
Pacification
The real Wasteland

Destroying the country to ‘save it’
They are not called Vietnamese, they are called ‘gooks’
Get the South Koreans to do it
Get the South Vietnamese Army to do it
CIA Operation Phoenix
Tiny 'Tiger' cages for humans; Tiger Force killers
Ewell:  Butcher of the Delta
A My Lai every week
What Geneva Convention?

Highway accidents; no speed limit
Leveled neighborhoods
Records of atrocities destroyed
West Point Protection Association
No one prosecuted
Cover-ups standard
Plant a Chi-Com grenade
Rape SOP
Torture normal – 93%
Trophy strings of ears around necks

War Pigs
The U.S. government and military - war criminals
Where is a Nuremburg when you need one?
Loser’s injustice wins.

(Other books about the Vietnam War, reviewed below:  "Into the Crossfire:  Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary," and "Peoples' History of the Vietnam War.")
And I bought it at Mayday Books – and you should too.
Red Frog
February 17, 2013
The February Revolution in Russia has started, 1917

No comments:

Post a Comment