Kill Anything That Moves - New Book
New Book: "Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam"
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From: Mark Ashwill <markashwill@hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 1:05 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Here's a quote from one of the many interviews that Nick Turse has conducted with Vietnamese survivors of US military attacks, excerpted from a recent article entitled 'So Many People Died.' The American System of Suffering, 1965-2014:
As I was wrapping up my interview, Pham Thang asked me about the purpose of the last hour and a half of questions I’d asked him. Through my interpreter, I explained that most Americans knew next to nothing about Vietnamese suffering during the war and that most books written in my country on the war years ignored it. I wanted, I told him, to offer Americans the chance to hear about the experiences of ordinary Vietnamese for the first time.
“If the American people know about these incidents, if they learn about the wartime suffering of people in Vietnam, do you think they will sympathize?” he asked me.
Soon enough, I should finally know the answer to his question.
Nick is, of course, referring to the reaction to his book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (KATM), which will be released next Tuesday.
When I speak to US Americans about the magnitude of human loss and suffering during the American War, I sometimes ask those who have been to the "Vietnam Veterans Memorial" in DC to close their eyes and imagine, just for a moment, The Wall X 50 with the inscription of 3 million Vietnamese names on it, lost generations who died at the hands of the US military and its client state, which turned large swathes of Vietnam into a charnel house.
What do you think the answer(s) to Mr. Thang’s question will be?
Thanks to Nick Turse for telling the stories of those who perished and those who survived, and to Henry Holt - under its Metropolitan Books imprint - for publishing KATM. While I would very much like to see it translated into Vietnamese, I won't hold my breath given the political sensitivities involved and less than favorable "market conditions."
MAA
Hanoi
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From: Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
Date: Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 1:53 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thank you, Mark, for informing VSGers about the forthcoming book by Nick Turse.
As for what might be US citizens' reactions to the book's discussion and data about Vietnamese suffering during the US Vietnam war, I would be surprised if more than the usual suspects will read the book, and from those few readers, I'd be even more surprised if their public reactions, whatever direction they might take, provoke get much notice in the US media or even in educational institutions.
Hope I'm wrong.
Ben Kerkvliet
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From: Carl Robinson <robinsoncarl88@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 3:14 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sorry to say, but this book sounds terribly one-sided. In fact, a real polemic. What about those Vietnamese who suffered from the attacks and strategies of the northerners and their southern allies? (They are the ones who wanted to have a war almost as a historical imperative to legitimate their one-party rule.) Any thought to those on the southern side who suffered losses in terrorist attacks such as the My Canh floating restaurant? Villages and hamlets attacked? Buses blown up? How about the northerners boys conscripted and sent south on what was effectively a suicide mission? What about those hundreds of civilians fleeing Quang Tri in 1972 who were slaughtered by long-range North Vietnamese artillery? How about those who suffered after 1975 when the victors promised everything would be nice & sweet but were then forced to flee with thousands dead at sea?
Of course, all war is suffering but I just don't see the point here beyond the usual making Americans feel guilty and bad all over again.
My apologies for a bit of a Sunday Morning Rant here, folks, but I really can't help myself when I see something that -- on the surface anyway -- looks very unbalanced indeed.
Best regards,
Carl Robinson
AP Saigon, 1968-75
Convenor, https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!forum/vietnam-old-hacks.
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From: Dutton, George <dutton@humnet.ucla.edu>
Date: Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 4:14 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I'm afraid I cannot agree with Carl on this. This book is apparently (I have not yet read it) about a particular part of the war. Thus, it is NOT about the attacks by other parties that killed or injured Vietnamese because that is not what the author is focusing on. It strikes me as unfair to criticize the book on this basis. Just because the author does not address those particular actions does not make them any less awful, but he has a particular objective here, to open American eyes to what was done in their name in these wars in Vietnam. Americans should continue to feel guilty about what was perpetrated in Vietnam, because so many of these actions were criminal and inhuman. Part of what historians and witnesses do is to testify to the crimes of the past to act as a kind of conscience of our society. This may make people feel uncomfortable and it should. I believe that the hope, however, is not to instill guilt, necessarily, but that such an accounting can wake people up to the injustice of war conducted by their own governments, and in so doing somehow prevent their recurrence. If the writing of history, however uncomfortable, cannot do this, then maybe there is not much point in what a lot of us do . . .
George Dutton
UCLA
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From: Carl Robinson <robinsoncarl88@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 4:36 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
So, let's not even pretend to be objective then, George, but just continue with our self-loathing and self-recriminations ad infinitum. It's not hard at all making Americans look bad but who else has the luxury of an open society to do so? Still, I don't see where this ends.
If we can borrow from the Vietnamese, life is about forgiving and moving on. It's too bloody painful -- and even pointless -- to constantly remember and be bitter & resentful. So they don't and get on with life.
Best,
Carl
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From: David Brown <nworbd@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 7:09 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I'm with Turse to the extent he exposes (presumably) the tragic misconception of the time -- not shared by us in the pacification business -- that firepower and more firepower was the way to win the war or, at least, to extract the US from Vietnam. As long as the Joint Chiefs have learned that lesson (as they seem to have), I'm with Carl that it's high time to move on. Rant on, Carl -- there is some serious moral equivalence here. Don't forget the 3000+ who were arrested and murdered when the VC overran Hue in 1968 or the many tens of thousands (at least) who perished or suffered grievously while being 're-educated' after 30 April 1975.
Readers of Turse: in a few more months, you'll also be able to read the English translation of Dieu Cay's 'Ben Thanh Cuoc', an eloquent, trail-breaking and heart-breaking account of the suffering that Vietnamese inflicted on other Vietnamese once their war was 'won.'
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From: Melanie Beresford <melanie.beresford@mq.edu.au>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 1:21 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Carl, Germans do have that "luxury" and they've done much better than the Americans in coming to terms with the evil they did. And don't give me the red herring about the scale of atrocity. The point is about the ability to admit something was wrong.
As for objectivity, the question is whether any of it would have happened without the US intervention and whether that was a 'good' or 'bad' thing. Basically that is a political question. We can say that by such and such a standard the US caused the Vietnamese suffering on both sides or that by another standard the DRV/Soviet Union/China was the guilty party. We've had such discussions on here before and they don't seem particularly fruitful.
From one point of view, the question of Vietnamese suffering due to US intervention might include Vietnamese from both sides. Perhaps it doesn't in this case, but all the same it remains a legitimate research topic as long as the essentially political questions are acknowledged.
Either way, knee-jerk patriotism is not a way forward.
cheers,
Melanie
--
Melanie Beresford
Associate Professor in Economics
Faculty of Business & Economics
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
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From: Pierre Asselin <passelin@hpu.edu>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 6:22 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Melanie:
You state that "the question" of "whether any of it [i.e., the VN War, I presume] would have happened without the US intervention and whether that was a 'good' or 'bad' thing" is in fact "a political question." But then you open with a statement to the effect that Americans have failed to come to terms with the "evil" they did during said war. Clearly, you feel the question has been answered.
The issue has nothing to do with "knee-jerk patriotism"; it is one of agency. The Vietnamese played a role in the events that unfolded in their country between 1954 and 1975. They played a role in precipitating and then prolonging hostilities there. To be honest, I'm kind of sick and tired of people perpetuating the notion that the Vietnamese were the innocent victims of "evil" American warmongers after WWII. That was the communist narrative during the war, and it makes no sense to embrace it today. I understand that it's fashionable for academics and liberals more generally to feel strongly about the VN War, to feel guilty about what the US did to "this poor little country" and "that poor, beautiful people." But we do ourselves and our students no service by being so emotional in our assessments of that conflict, by being so invested in it. Why can't we look at the VN War as we look upon other American wars? The US did things it shouldn't have done in other wars as well (as did other parties in those wars), and yet we don't keep talking about the "evils" of the Mexican-American War, of the War of 1812, etc.... As people, we can feel however we want about the VN War or any other war and express exactly what's on our mind. But as serious students of this and other wars, we need to be more "scientific" in our evaluations. And words like "good" and "evil" should never figure in any serious evaluation of any historical development.
And to compare the Germans of WWII with the American in VN?! Come on!! The Vietnamese were NEVER the kinds of victims Jews were in the 1930s/40s. Where's the sense in that parallel?
This [VSG] list has praised, with good reason, the recent work by Lien-Hang Nguyen. If its members had read it closely, we wouldn't be having this discussion, or else we'd be having a much more constructive one.
Peace,
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Associate Professor of History
Hawai'i Pacific University
1188 Fort St., Suite MP 409
Honolulu, HI 96813
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From: Melanie Beresford <melanie.beresford@mq.edu.au>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 1:41 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Pierre, "To be honest, I'm kind of sick and tired of people perpetuating the notion that the Vietnamese were the innocent victims of "evil" American warmongers after WWII."
I neither said nor implied anything about innocence. I responded to Carl's suggestion that the book was a "one-sided... polemic". Well neither of us have read it, so I'm not sure how he came to that conclusion other than by assuming that it deals only with what the US inflicted on the communist side. Even if true, that remains a legitimate research project, so I think it remains fair comment to suggest that his accusation smacks of a political position and, further, he thinks a book like this intends Americans to "just continue with our self-loathing and self-recriminations ad infinitum."
In addition, he asked "who else has the luxury of an open society"? I pointed out that the Germans do. And if you read my email you will see that I only used the word 'evil' in the context of Germany. With regard to Vietnam, however, I did use the word 'wrong' - but in the context of the need when necessary to admit to it.
cheers,
Melanie
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From: Carl Robinson <robinsoncarl88@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 2:01 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I am not going to get into a public slanging match with the overly-defensive Melanie Beresford and I thank Pierre for his support. Agreed no one's read this book but from the information provided those those were my impressions -- freely given and even described as a rant. I particularly resented Melanie's use of the expression "knee-jerk patriotism" to slap down my point of view.
End of subject as far as I'm concerned.
Best,
Carl
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From: Sophie Quinn-Judge <sophie.quinnjudge@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 3:11 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear List,
I appreciate the airing of views on Kill Anything that Moves, and
believe it is the sort of discussion this collection of scholars
should engage in. I concur with George and Melanie's view that the
book appears to raise problems (has anyone read it yet?) that
Americans in particular should deal with. I am under the impression,
like David Brown, that our leaders have learned a lot about the issue
of civilian casualties since the Vietnam War, and it may be precisely
because of the scholarly attempts to document these casualties since
1975 that we as a nation pay more attention.
Unlike Pierre, I do not feel that recent attempts to recast the
Vietnam War as "Hanoi's War" or Le Duan's war are the final word on
the topic. In fact, I believe that there is still a need for a more
serious scholarly examination of issues covered in Lien-Hang's very
valuable book. The H-Diplo list-serve provides a good forum for
roundtables on new books, and I am hoping to see something along those
lines on Hanoi's War before too long.
Best to All,
Sophie Quinn-Judge
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From: Nick Turse <nat9@columbia.edu>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 3:32 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I'm glad that my book has sparked discussion, even if only a few on this list may have actually read it. I'm not writing to defend Kill Anything that Moves. The book will stand or fall on its own merit. People can read the book (or, if not, the blurbs or reviews) and judge for themselves.
I do, however, want to speak up on behalf of the people I interviewed. One of the comments thus far included the following: "I'm kind of sick and tired of people perpetuating the notion that the Vietnamese were the innocent victims... This [VSG] list has praised, with good reason, the recent work by Lien-Hang Nguyen. If its members had read it closely, we wouldn't be having this discussion, or else we'd be having a much more constructive one."
Since Kill Anything that Moves is about the suffering of ordinary South Vietnamese civilians as a result of the war waged by the United States (nothing more, nothing less), I interviewed many rural Vietnamese. Many of them were young people during the war. Some were just children or teenagers who saw their parents or grandparents killed before their eyes. Some of their families were connected with the revolution, others were not. Regardless, I can't help but wonder -- on reflection -- who would truly claim they weren't "innocent victims." I don't recall anything in Lien-Hang Nguyen's recent and justly praised book that would suggest otherwise.
My apologies if I've misconstrued the point being made...
Regards,
Nick
Nick Turse, PhD, MPH
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From: Jérémy Mousset <mousset_jeremy@hotmail.fr>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 5:21 PM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Dear list,
I am not aware that this conversation was closed down, but I may be mistaking.
But if a book about the US military's atrocities in Vietnam can be judged to be, even before being read, "one-sided" and "a real polemic", then how one-sided and polemical should the following be judged ?
"As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn reverence upon the valor of a generation that served with honor. We pay tribute to the more than 3 million servicemen and women who left their families to serve bravely, a world away from everything they knew and everyone they loved. From Ia Drang to Khe Sanh, from Hue to Saigon and countless villages in between, they pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans. Through more than a decade of combat, over air, land, and sea, these proud Americans upheld the highest traditions of our Armed Forces."
When I read this apologetic and deeply militaristic speech from Barack Obama, I do see a point in publishing an investigation on the US military's crimes in Vietnam. It seems, to me, very much needed.
I, for one, am welcoming Nick Turse's new book. I will definitely read it with great attention.
By the way, I would be interested in reading an historical investigation on France's crimes in Vietnam. If anyone on this list knows of researches dealing seriously with the subject, please let me know.
Cheers,
Jérémy
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From: Pierre Asselin <passelin@hpu.edu>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 9:43 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Jeremy:
What of RVN, DRVN, NFL/PRG crimes against the Vietnamese? What of French, Japanese, Chinese crimes in Indochina? Crimes happen in wartime, and that is certainly tragic, and they should be investigated. But there is nothing exceptional about American crimes during the Vietnam War.
And while Obama's proclamation may be "celebratory," it certainly is not apologetic. Besides, aren't such things to be expected of politicians? Hasn't Hanoi been characterizing its own policies and the actions of its armed forces in the same ways since the wartime?
It's much more problematic to account for why academics would be so emotionally invested in what happened in Vietnam. I really am at a loss to explain how serious students of the VN War can still be arguing about and even raising the kinds of issues that have made the object of this discussion.
Why can't the Vietnam War not simply be a subject of study? Why does it have to be a cause?
And why close this discussion? It's illuminating!
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Associate Professor of History
Hawai'i Pacific University
1188 Fort St., Suite MP 409
Honolulu, HI 96813
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From: Pierre Asselin <passelin@hpu.edu>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 10:00 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Melanie and Sophie:
Your points are sensible and well-taken.
Sophie, you are right that Hang's book is only one interpretation of the nature of the war. But it is a very legitimate one, and one which I believe can serve as a useful foundation for a discussion of the type we have been having. You and others (including myself) have also contributed in meaningful ways, I think, to advancing the understanding of "Hanoi's war." But the scope, the comprehensiveness, and the persuasiveness of Hang's work are unprecedented.
Also, H-Diplo will be coming out shortly with a roundtable on HANOI'S WAR. It should have come out already, but they were waiting for my very late review.......
To you both and to the list, I mean to offend no one with the tone or substance of my messages. I'm really enjoying this discussion, learning much from it, and grateful for all input. It'd be a great discussion to have over beer. Actually, if anyone else is in Hanoi at the moment, I'm here (as is Hue-Tam, I just found out) until the 20th!
Aloha,
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Associate Professor of History
Hawai'i Pacific University
1188 Fort St., Suite MP 409
Honolulu, HI 96813
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From: phuxuan700@gmail.com <phuxuan700@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 10:03 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear List,
Eventhough the Vietnam War ended almost 40 years ago, in Vietnam, people are still forbidden, harassed or even imprisoned in their search for the truth on different aspects of that war.
I however am surprised to find out similar discussions can generate a lot of heat or become unwelcome in the academic world outside of Vietnam.
How much longer should we wait ?
Calvin Thai
Independent Researcher
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From: Melanie Beresford <melanie.beresford@mq.edu.au>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 10:25 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Nick,
Thanks for clarifying the contents of your book. At least now we know what we're talking about!
cheers,
Melanie
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From: F O'Dwyer <anthrobfd@hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 11:43 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Its a valid point Nick makes. One of the hardest subjects to talk about with anyone is the war and death. People have lost close family
and generations of family members killed and it is hard for those who experienced the death of family members to talk - even now.
I was warned by families members and officials alike to tread cautiously when discussing/interviewing about the war.
As one all man said to me, it is long ago now but still everywhere.
My sense was that the warnings given to me had more to do with sensibility and respect rather than some political machination.
Nick I look forward to reading your book because I know
how hard it is to get at these stories.
But I understand Carl's point too. I guess that the 'American presence' in Vietnam, although fleeting, as well as the well being of Americans needs ongoing attention,
but sometimes it feels as though it is only the sensibilities of Americans that matter - what can Americans learn; how can Americans not commit the same atrocities again and so on; how do Americans assuage guilt.
The Vietnamese rarely get a look in
Brett
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From: Balazs Szalontai <aoverl@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 12:27 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Pierre & All,
let me approach the question from another perspective. As Pierre asked, "Why can't we look at the VN War as we look upon other American wars? The US did things it shouldn't have done in other wars as well (as did other parties in those wars), and yet we don't keep talking about the "evils" of the Mexican-American War, of the War of 1812, etc." Well, the American public's increasing disillusionment of the government's Vietnam policy did provide much inspiration to the critical re-examination of earlier periods of American history, including the United States' expansionist policies in Latin America, the Indian wars, and other events. To some extent, the Vietnam model was even applied to the Korean War, which did lead to misinterpretations, but also illuminated the massive destruction caused by the US air raids on North Korea. In my personal opinion, this kind of intellectual shake-up was more beneficial than harmful, even if it led to new simplications and exaggerations. Having spent some time in China, and currently witnessing the ongoing historical polemics over Japanese war responsibility from a Korean perspective, I became more aware than ever of the fact that if a great power adopts the attitude that "throughout our history, we have been frequently the victims but never the aggressors," it is likely to send a chill up the back of smaller neighbors, and emasculates domestic intellectual discourse. Just as US war crimes do not absolve other participants of the Vietnam wars (including North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, Cambodians, and the most lecherous aggressors of all, the French:)) of their own specific responsibility, the latter's crimes do not cancel out what the U.S. government did. Having said that, I would like to remind list members of their patriotic duty to join forces to support the global movement for the liberation of Vietnam's endangered saola population, from whose perspective it is largely indifferent if the individual who voraciously devours their meat is an enthusiastic supporter or a militant critic of America's pre-1975 Vietnam policy.:)
All the best,
Balázs Szalontai
Kwangwoon University, Department of Saola Studies
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From: Mark Ashwill <markashwill@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 7:26 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
KATM is in part about speaking up on behalf of civilian victims - both the living and the dead - of US military attacks. To say that their stories have been neglected is a gross understatement. In response to Pierre's question about "why academics would be so emotionally invested in what happened in Vietnam," how could it be otherwise? The war crimes that Nick documents in his dissertation, articles and book, unknown to most people, especially US Americans, in whose name those crimes were committed, are so utterly outrageous and such an affront to humanity. For those of us who care deeply about getting at the truth, and just as deeply about justice and victims of state-sponsored violence, I think it's pretty obvious why the war is much more than a "subject of study."
MAA
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From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Date: Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 8:46 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
May I suggest that if one has not read the Nick Turse book, which is highly likely (it comes out tomorrow), one not comment on it? That would be in line with the statement by the VSG to terminate the discussion.
That being said, there is a larger issue at stake here, far beyond the Turse book, that should be open for more debate. That is how we evaluate the actions of different sides in the wars for Vietnam when it comes to civilian deaths. If we were to total up the civilian deaths attributable to the US armed forces, CIA, and ARVN, the numbers would certainly be greater than those attributable to PAVN/ NLF. We don't know what this number is, as the statistics for the war dead are still in dispute. I once came up with an informed guesstimate that at least 400,000 civilians died in the conflict, but now I think that is too low. That's a horrible death toll. Most of those dead would have been victims of the US military or ARVN. (A small number were victims of South Korean forces).
But that is no excuse for overlooking such events as the Hu? masacres, the targeted killings of South Vietnamese government workers, and the like. Targeted killing (of governmental employees, police, etc.) was PAVN and NLF practice. The Hu? massacres in particular, however, show that "targeting" could spiral out of control.
Shawn
--
Shawn McHale
Associate Professor of History
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
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From: <dieuhien@uw.edu>
Date: Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 10:49 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I was an ordinary Vietnamese child during the war (now an ordinary hyphenated-American). I had family in all (Vietnamese) sides of the war, including and not limited to the three official ones (Republic of Viet Nam, Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, and National Liberation Front).
In 1985, when news about the war in Viet Nam and its consequences on Americans hit the American media again after a long hiatus, my housemate, who was a few years my junior, and born and raised in Northern California, looked me straight in the eye, with an indignant voice, asked, "So, Hien, do Vietnamese veterans suffer nigh mares and flashbacks as much as our vets do?" I struggled a moment to recover my balance. "Bev, I [with emphasis] have flashback and night mares about the war. I attended the funeral of my cousin who was my age, whose windpipe was pierced by a strayed shrapnel because he was a tic tac too late closing the strap door to the bomb shelter, and whose family listened helplessly to his dying gurgling and rasping for an eternity in that bomb shelter because a battle raged outside their door and a health care facility was out of reach. I was in second grade. So was my cousin. I don't know about those who actually fought in the battle fields, but I freeze and am terrified whenever I see a military convoy on the highway or an unexpected object laying in the middle of the road right here in peace time Northern California. I don't know how those Vietnamese who experienced more of the war and were in the battle fields cope, Bev. I was a mere sheltered city girl." Bev gave me the most disbelieving look. She spoke no more of the topic nor asked any more question.
I do not know what Bev is thinking today of that topic, or what the millions other Americans our age and older think today. American college students I teach today speak of Viet Nam as a tourist destination, and Vietnamese as their boyfriend or girlfriend, or in-laws of some kind. I am very curious indeed to American reactions to Nick Turse's new book.
----
Hoang t. Dieu-Hien
University of Washington
School of Nursing
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From: John Kleinen <J.G.G.M.Kleinen@uva.nl>
Date: Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 11:01 AM
To: mchale@gwu.edu, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
It is interesting to note that 595 pages book of Bernd Greiner's Krieg ohne Fronten. Die USA in Vietnam, published in 2007 (and in English in 2010: War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam, Random House), did not arouse such comments as Nick Turse's book. Greiner is a German historian and political scientist.He based his research mainly upon army documents. And he did not overlook the events Shawn mentions. I wonder where the differences are here.
John
John Kleinen Ph.D
Associate Professor
University of Amsterdam
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
O.Z.Achterburgwal 185
1012 DK Amsterdam
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From: Tim Gorman <tmg56@cornell.edu>
Date: Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 11:55 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I thought it might interest the list to know that Mr. Turse's PhD dissertation, completed at Columbia in 2005, is available to view on the UMI Proquest dissertation database (http://search.proquest.com/docview/305011575).
The dissertation is titled "Kill anything that moves": United States war crimes and atrocities in Vietnam, 1965--1973 and the abstract is as follows:
This dissertation offers a history of U.S. war crimes and atrocities during the American War in Vietnam from 1965-1973. During the conflict, U.S. military policy was, to use historian Christian Appy's formulation, a "doctrine of atrocity" (DoA) in which the strategy of attrition; the indiscriminant use of firepower; an over-riding command emphasis on killing as the measure of success (the "body count"); the fact that the American military's stated rules of engagement (ROE) were largely ignored, broken or circumvented; and standard operating procedures that exhorted soldiers to "kill anything that moves"; dehumanized the Vietnamese as "mere gooks"; and cast civilians as enemies; ensured that millions of Vietnamese noncombatants were killed and wounded. Throughout the entirety of the conflict, the U.S. military regularly flouted the laws of war. Yet, despite a contemporary literature that shed light on American atrocities, most of the mainstream histories of the Vietnam War, ignore, marginalize or deny the pervasiveness of U.S. atrocities and reduce discussions of American war crimes to the U.S. massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.
This dissertation uses formerly classified military criminal investigations documents, once confidential Department of Defense analyses, veterans' testimonies, military court records and secondary source materials from a now largely marginalized and out of print literature, among other sources, to reveal the existence of the American doctrine of atrocity and the pervasiveness of U.S. war crimes during the conflict. This dissertation also attempts to properly contextualize the doctrine of atrocity by demonstrating that the DoA did not originate during the Vietnam War, but instead was part of a long legacy of the U.S. military's conduct during wars against racial Others over the prior 100 years. As such, this dissertation is meant to contribute to a greater understanding of the American War in Vietnam and ongoing discussions, across a variety of disciplines, of atrocities, humanitarian law and American military policy, past, present and future.
--
Tim Gorman
Ph.D. Student
Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University
Email: tmg56@cornell.edu | Tel: (607) 216-9845
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From: Carl Robinson <robinsoncarl88@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 3:58 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Many-U-S-My-Lai-Type-Mass-by-Sherwood-Ross-130114-150.html.
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From: Susan Hammond <shammond@warlegacies.org>
Date: Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 4:23 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
FYI Leonard Lopate of WNYC radio will be interviewing Nick Turse about the book tomorrow http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2013/jan/15/
The link to the left on the Lopate show page will enable you to listen on-line.
Susan
Susan Hammond
Director
War Legacies Project
144 Lower Bartonsville Rd
Chester, VT 05143
----------
From: Michael Karadjis <mkaradjis@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 10:21 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Interview with Nick Turse on Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/15/kill_anything_that_moves_new_book.
Michael Karadjis
----------
From: Jo <ugg-5@spro.net>
Date: Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 11:02 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Then, there is the President’s “kill list,” created for the drone operations. We are still doing that, too. The names of people on this list is online.
Joanna Kirkpatrick
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nhu Miller <trantnhu@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 10:43 AM
Subject: [Vsg] Kill Anything That Moves review by Jonathan Schell
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Jonathan Schell author of The Village of Ben Suc and well suited to
write about the destruction of Vietnamese reviews Kill Anything That Moves.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175639/
T.T Nhu
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
Date: Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 6:16 PM
Subject: [Vsg] review of Kill Anything that Moves
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Here's a link to a review by Jonathan Schell of Nick Turse's book, Kill Anything that Moves : http://truth-out.org/news/item/13990-how-did-the-gates-of-hell-open-in-vietnam
Ben Kerkvliet
--
Ben Kerkvliet
Emeritus Professor
The Australian National University
Canberra, A.C.T. AUSTRALIA
and
Affiliate Graduate Faculty member
University of Hawai'i
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822
------------------------
From: Carl Robinson <robinsoncarl88@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 1:06 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Fyi, the Google Group of former Vietnam War correspondents (and others, plus a few academics) which I manage entitled "Vietnam Old Hacks" has been running quite a fascinating Discussion on Nick Turse's just-released book Kill Anything that Moves.
This has been one of the most interesting Discussions we've ever had in the nearly four years we've been running the site and has included some quite powerful reminiscences from those who covered the war. (Ex-AP's Peter Arnett, for one, but do read Drew Pearson's long document and also what Don North have to say. There are also contributions from ex-military later journalists and an ex-diplomat type or two.) As usual, I'm what they call the "Cat Herder" here and -- as you all know -- aren't shy about stirring things up a bit to get a conversation going.
So, my thanks to Nick Turse -- and Vsg -- for getting this rolling.
Here's the link, but the Discussion itself -- as often happens with these cats -- has strayed into about three strings. (The first one is further down and then come upwards.) As this is members-only, you are not allowed to comment.
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!forum/vietnam-old-hacks.
Best regards to all,
Carl Robinson
Ex-USAID '64-68; AP/Saigon '68-75.
Convenor of Vietnam Old Hacks.
Brisbane, Australia.
----------
From: Dan Duffy <vietnamlit@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 8:00 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Very neat. I have been staying off this since I find the topic too
upsetting, and too time-consuming for me to be academic about.
The way I look at it, you either know the guys or you don't. Others
may carry on the social process of certifying and civilizing the
longstanding liberal insight that men are scoundrels.
But diacritics asked me to write up the book for their readership. So
I will read it and if I think he is an honest man I will write up a
manual of how a younger person who does not automatically identify
with poor whites, elite whites, and their black alter egos as I do may
process his work.
Something that popped out from his wikipedia bio is that he is way
establishment and like me sort of a medical anthropologist. I hope
his working on the common ground of public health may advance his
reporting beyond previous testimony.
Does anyone know exactly what year he was born?
As I say, I can't be much of a correspondent on this one. I very much
appreciate the discussion and will alert you all if I write something
for diacritics.
Best,
Dan
--
Dan Duffy
Editor, Viet Nam Literature Project
Chair, Books & Authors: Viet Nam, Inc.
108 East Hammond Street
Durham, NC 27704
----------
From: Mark Ashwill <markashwill@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 3:44 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Hagel Hearings & The Vietnam War/Kill Anything That Moves (KATM)
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
I was about to hit send when Christina's excellent review and analysis arrived in my inbox. I believe that she addresses most of the criticisms leveled against Nick Turse and KATM by some VSGers, including Ben. Some comments about his post:
Nothing New to Whom?
You've read enough of Turse's book "to conclude that he tells us nothing new"? Who is "us"? What Nick Turse tells his fellow Americans and the rest of the world is breaking news to most of them. Most are not VN scholars who have "read hundreds of books and thousands of primary documents..." Most don't have the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience that you and some others on this list have.
The Fallacy of Generalizing from Personal Experience
Turse does NOT claim that every US combat soldier was a war criminal who was out raping, torturing and killing civilians. I know many veterans like your father who, if they didn't know before, quickly realized after they arrived that the war was a huge mistake. From that point on their goal was to stay alive and not go home in a body bag. There were many others, however, who were involved in the wholesale murder and abuse of civilians.
Groundless Criticism
About what he supposedly left out: Why don't you reread the description on Amazon, the reviews, or whatever part(s) of the book you read? It's about war crimes committed by US soldiers in VN as a frequent occurrence and the policies/conditions that led to those war crimes being committed. Turse proves it using USG documents and stories from US veterans and survivors here. It was widespread and officially sanctioned. Therefore, you really have no basis on which to criticize him for not including everything you wanted him to include. Why don't you write a book that includes everything Nick Turse left out, in your opinion, that "contradicts his theory/hypothesis/argument"? It wouldn't be the first.
The True Place the American War Holds in the Memory of South Vietnamese vs. North Vietnamese? It Ain't that Simple...
Finally, regarding your point about the "true place the American War holds in the memory of the South Vietnamese" and how it is "quite often much different than that in the memory of the Hanoian?" - To which South Vietnamese are you referring? The ones who hitched their cart to the American (war) horse? The ones who benefited financially and in other ways from the US occupation and the influx of billions of dollars? The ones who left in the nick of time with the assistance of their American benefactors? Or the ones Nick Turse writes about - the targets of bombs, bullets, torture and other forms of abuse, the ghosts and the survivors?
MAA
Hanoi
------------------------
From: Christina Firpo <christina.firpo@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 12:08 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
This is turning out to be an exciting year for Vietnam War history with Lien Hang Nguyen’s (absolutely outstanding!) book Hanoi’s War and Nick Turse’s Kill Anything that Moves. Ed Miller’s book will come out in April with Harvard UP and I expect that it, too, will be a big hit. The VSG discussion of Turse’s book is very interesting and list-members raised some good questions. Most important among those points raised were questions about Turse’s methodology (Was it a string of anecdotes?) and the significance of his argument (Does Kill Anything That Moves says anything new?).
If you’ll permit, I’d like to respond to some comments about Turse’s argument and methodology. I hope my comments are not too long-winded. I am working with the Kindle edition so I apologize for using percentages in lieu of page numbers, but that is the only option that’s available to me while in VN. As for one VSG member’s comment about Turse’s diacritics, the Kindle edition never includes diacritic marks. Were they left out of the print edition? Perhaps that was the editor’s choice? If Turse did use diacritics, and some were wrong, well…he wouldn’t be the first. I’d be interested to see if any misused diacritic marks affected Turse’s argument. Please post or send me examples if you have any diacritic mistakes that affect his argument.
On Turse’s argument: Turse opens the book with a discussion of the infamous My Lai massacre. This book argues “But the stunning scale of civilian suffering in Vietnam is far beyond anything that can be explained as merely the work of some ‘bad apples,’ however numerous. Murder, torture, rape, abuse, forced displacement, home burnings, specious arrests, imprisonment without due process---such occurrences were virtually a daily fact of life throughout the years of the American presence in Vietnam. And as Ridenhour put it, they were no aberration. Rather, they were the inevitable outcome of deliberate policies, dictated at the highest levels of the military.” (1%) (My underlines)
Turse explains that the scale of suffering was the result of a culture created by various military policies. Because the VN War was an unconventional war and success could not be measured by the amount of enemy territory gained, McNamara and his colleagues measured military success by the number of enemy combatants that were killed, also known as the “body count” (see discussion of McNamara in ch 2, 8%). Turse investigates the consequences of the body count strategy and finds that it created a trend within the military that incentivized enemy deaths.
Turse points out that the unconventional nature of the war “From the US perspective the enemy was composed of two distinct groups: members of the North VN army and indigenous SVN fighters loyal to the National Liberation Front” (2%), and did not account for varying degrees of opinion, meaning nationalists or those who did not take a side in the war. Because the enemies marked by their political beliefs, not by uniforms as was the case in conventional war, American soldiers had a hard time sorting out who was who and killed many unarmed civilians (5%).
Turse does not claim that all veterans of the VN War committed these acts. Instead, Turse is careful to point out many examples of vets who blew whistles (most notably, Jamie Henry) or did not participate. After recounting a bunch of atrocities, Turse writes: “The parallels between atrocities that took place in the Mekong Delta and the northern provinces, between the massacres carried out by members of the army and those perpetuated by marines, make it abundantly clear that individual soldiers and their immediate commanders were not the only ones to blame. There is, of course, no excusing the acts carried out by the American troops on the ground at Trieu Ai, but these actions did not occur in a vacuum. Rather they were the unmistakable consequence of deliberate decisions made long before , at the highest level of the military.” (8%) (my underlining)
At the beginning of this VSG discussion, a few members correctly argued that the NLF and DRV also committed atrocities, but this point does not render Turse's argument invalid. Turse does not deny that the NLF or the DRV committed massacres, and his investigation of massacres committed by the US military does not negate any massacres committed by those fighting against the Americans/ARVN. Likewise, atrocities committed by the NLF or the DRV do not cancel out crimes on the side of the US.
Yes, Turse does consider opposing arguments. I will list some at the end of this email.
Yes, Turse does use the term North and South Vietnam, but he does so carefully, and only after explaining how the DRV and RoVN came about. Nonetheless, I defer to diplomatic historians.
On Turse’s Methodology: How can an historian prove an argument about a military culture that incentivized body counts and measure the scope? This difficult task is further complicated by the military cover-up of war crimes (see the chapter “Where have all the war crimes gone”). To prove his argument, Turse must provide evidence that a) the military incentivized body counts and b) atrocities were committed. (Please note, the term “culture” is acceptable for historians to use to describe political ideas that express themselves in multiple—and often subversive—ways, and because this is an historical analysis, I will continue to use it. I believe ‘culture’ may have been my term, not Turse’s.)
Turse proves the first part of his argument that the military incentivized body counts by quoting from military documents that employ the body count strategy and by giving evidence that shows how the body count culture was expressed through some soldiers’ actions and language. To prove that atrocities were committed, Turse draws from the military files on the investigation of war crimes, soldiers’ memoirs, and oral histories, all of which are acceptable primary source material in our profession. Turse includes the following examples of incentivized body counts (please note: I limited myself to two so as not to bog down the email):
? (9%) Quoting an officer from the 9th infantry division, “If I went in without a body count or at least a prisoner I’d be on the shit -list, so I kept the patrol out”
? (9%) "While officers sought to please superiors and chased promotions, the ‘grunts’ in the field also had a plethora of incentives to produce dead bodies. These ranged from “R&R” (rest and recreation) passes…, medals, badges, extra food, extra beer, permission to wear non regulation gear, and light duty at the base camp” …quotes a vet saying that “the body system led to ‘a real incentivizing of death’"
Turse proves the second part of the argument that there was a wide scope of atrocities and they were influenced by the body count culture by analyzing countless individual stories. The numbers of stories provided in this book is well beyond what one list-member characterized as “anecdotal.” Of course, we also do not know how many stories were left out for the sake of publishing space or how many stories that Turse did not uncover in his research. (Yes, Turse acknowledges that many troupes did not commit atrocities, but that point does not contradict his argument that some did).
In Kill Anything that Moves, Turse employed socio-cultural historical methodology, a classic strategy by historians to reconstruct marginalized histories that have been covered up (again, see the chapter titled “where have all the war crimes gone”). This methodology uses oral and written histories that are personal accounts from those who experienced the event, language analysis (see the title of Turse’s book), and other cultural actions (see the discussion of body parts as jewelry in Turse’s book).
The same methodology was used by Peter Read and Coral Edwards to prove the scope of Australia’s child removal policy (The Stolen Generation); by Margaret Jacobs to show the scope of indigenous child removals in the US and Australia; by historians of Cambodia to show the scope of both the Khmer Rouge; and by historians of the Holocaust. All of these histories have been denied by governments and nay-sayers (when I was at UCLA in the early 2000s, a group regularly protested against the UCLA history department for being biased against Holocaust deniers. Yes, you read that right.) [NOTE: I am comparing historical methodologies, notatrocities.] In these cases of these marginalized histories, all of which were covered up by states, historians must use individual experiences to prove that such atrocities did indeed happen. Therefore, Turse had a professional obligation to use these stories, they were not mere anecdotes.
Did Turse have a activist agenda, as one list-member asked? In the end, this question is rendered irrelevant if Turse proves his argument. Besides, do we ask the same question of historians who study other atrocities--or even historians who study art or culture? We could get into a philosophical discussion about whether or not any histories are truly unbiased. If we do approach that discussion, then I suggest that we analyze all types and sides of history.
Signficance of Kill Anything That Moves: While I will not make any claims to have read anywhere near all of the secondary literature on the VN War, I have not seen any studies that use the files that Turse used to prove an argument that McNamara’s body count strategy created a culture of killings. Coming from the perspective of an historian who studies atrocities [I am writing about the forcible removal of thousands of mixed-race (métis) children by the French government and civilian organizations, 1870-1980s], I think that Turse does an excellent job of not only suggesting the scope of these atrocities, but also analyzing what may have been the underlying factor (incentivized body count) that led to such a frequency of killings.
Critiques: Turse could have strengthened his argument by organizing his chapters differently. I would suggest foregrounding it all in the history, which appeared in Chapter 2. This, however, is a stylistic concern.
My assessment: Turse proved his argument using sound historical methodology. Congratuations to Dr. Nick Turse on a finely researched historical analysis of the body count culture that existed during the Vietnam War. Special kudos for your analysis of the often ignored gendered crimes and for the excellent chapter titled “Where have all the war crimes gone.”
Chúc m?ng nam m?i! Saigon's beautiful this time of year!
Best,
Christina Firpo
As mentioned above, the following are some examples of Turse acknowledging opposing arguments:
? (5%) Regarding missing men “to many Americans, the reason was obvious: the ‘missing’ men, all the village’s sons and husbands, were Viet Cong guerillas.”
o Turse explains the different reasons that could account for male absences, including conscription to the RVN army and draft dodging.
? (5%) “Many US soldiers were also suspicious because South Vietnamese villagers always seemed to know where to walk to avoid VC booby traps.”
o Turse writes that civilians were also injured or killed.
? (5%) “It was illegal to order the killing of unarmed villagers, no atter whom they supported in war”
o Turse writes illegal orders were not uncommon… And the psychiatrist of war crimes expert Robert Lifton notes, there was (Turse quotes directly) ‘a striking contrast between the formal instruction (given rotely if at all) to kill only military advisors, and the informal message (loud and clear) to kill just about everyone”
o “what’s more, basic training emphasized that obiedence to commanders was paramount.” … (citing an instructional outline of the amry’s field manual, a chaplain would often put forward an Orwellian-sounding concept ‘the freest soldier is the soldier who willingly submits to authority”
? (7-8%) regarding an incident at Trieu Ai, “years later, the unit’s battalion commander said that he had been aquitted because the company was fired upon and it was impossible to distinguish civilians from combatants.”
o “Yet none of the marines had reported enemy fire or the presence of enemy forces; no weapons were found in the village; and the marines’ command chronology for October 1967 states that “no significant contact” was made at any point during the operation”
--
Christina Firpo, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Southeast Asian History
CalPoly University
San Luis Obispo, California
----------
From: Tom Miller <milltom@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 7:22 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
The U.S. policy of blind belief in (or perhaps, more accurately,
cynical reliance upon) false statistics so well illustrated by Nick
Turse is further illustrated by the computer analysis of the "weekly
level of loyalty" to the South Vietnamese Government of each village
in South Vietnam. It was shown to me after the Tet Offensive by
Ambassador Bunker's "public relations" assistant, Robert Komar, who
with a straight face said it proved support for the South Vietnamese
Government was steadily growing in most villages. I asked the source
of the information, and he said local ARVN commanders. Need I say
more.
Tom Miller
----------
From: Mark Ashwill <markashwill@hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 8:41 PM
Subject: [Vsg] Kill Anything That Moves: 35th on the 2/17 NYT Best Seller List
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Happy to see that KATM is getting the attention it deserves: http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2013-02-17/hardcover-nonfiction/list.html. It is my sincere hope that it can make a modest contribution to America's desperately needed and long overdue Vergangenheitsbewältigung, if not collectively, then at least individually.
Congratulations and thanks to Nick Turse for bringing the stories of the survivors and the dead to the attention of a mass US and global audience, and for shedding more light on the conditions and policies that led to the war crimes he documents and describes in such excruciating detail.
Whenever I think of research, I think of a question in an old Matt Groening cartoon about graduate school: Will your research make the world a better place? Instead of Yeah, sure, the answer in this case is a resounding and unequivocal YES.
MAA
Hanoi
----------
From: Dan Duffy <vietnamlit@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 12:36 PM
Subject: [Vsg] Bill Moyers and Nick Turse
To: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Greg Lockhart passed on this interview. The new info in it is that
Nick was born in 1975.
But hey, last year I took delivery from a truck driver his age who was
under the impression that the US was still fighting over there, where
his brother died. Which is a working-class, rural view of what I
gather is Nick's impression of our foreign policy.
Best,
Dan
--
Dan Duffy
Editor, Viet Nam Literature Project
Chair, Books & Authors: Viet Nam, Inc.
108 East Hammond Street
Durham, NC 27704
USA
BILL MOYERS: Of the more than 30,000 nonfiction books that have been
published since the end of the war, this is one of the toughest. How
did you come to write it? You weren’t even born until the year the war
ended in 1975.
NICK TURSE: I really stumbled upon this project. I was a graduate
student when I began it. I was working on a project on post-traumatic
stress disorder among U.S. Vietnam veterans. And I would go down to
the National Archives. Just outside of D.C. I was looking for hard
data to match up with, you know, self-report material, what veterans
told us about their service. And on one of these trips, I was down
there for about two weeks. And about every research avenue that I had
pursued was a dead end. And I finally went to an archivist that I
worked with there.
And I said to him, "I can't go back to my boss empty-handed. I need
something, at least a lead." And he, you know, said a few words to me
that really changed my life. He said, "Do you think that witnessing
war crimes could cause post-traumatic stress?" And I said, "You know,
that's an excellent hypothesis. What do you have on war crimes?"
And within an hour, I was going through a collection of boxes,
thousands and thousands of pages of documents. To call it, you know,
an information treasure trove is the wrong phrase. It was a horror
trove. These were reports of massacres, murders, mutilation, torture.
And these were investigations that were carried out by the U.S.
military during the war. A collection of documents called The Vietnam
War Crimes Working Group Collection. And this was a taskforce that was
set up in the Pentagon. And it was designed to track war crimes cases
in the wake of the exposure of the My Lai Massacre.
BILL MOYERS: Where 500 men, women, and children were murdered by American G.I.s.
NICK TURSE: That's right. The military basically, what they wanted to
do was make sure they were never caught flatfooted again by an
atrocity scandal. So in the Army Chief of Staff's Office, there were a
number of Army colonels who worked to track all war crimes allegations
that bubbled up into the media that GIs and recently returned veterans
were making public. And they tracked all these. And whenever they
could, they tried to tamp down these allegations.
BILL MOYERS: The book, your book is very important to me. I was there
at the White House in the 1960s, when President Johnson escalated the
war. My own great regret is that I didn't see the truth of the war in
time didn't see what was happening there. And yet, as I said, you
didn't even come to the experience until after it was all over. And
yet you have become obsessed with telling this story. You had no
money. You had no advance. You didn't, you had no means of support
when you left graduate school to do this.
NICK TURSE: That's right. But I thought that this story was, I really
thought it was just too important. And one Vietnam War historian that
I, you know, really respected recommended that I pursue it. And once I
did, once I got involved with it, you know, I could never get those
records out of my head. And, you know, then I went you know, I
traveled the country. I spoke to a lot of American witnesses and
perpetrators.
BILL MOYERS: There are 80 pages of notes in here, tiny little notes.
You seem almost determined that nobody would accuse you of not having
sourced the information.
NICK TURSE: Well, I know that this it's not a popular narrative of the
war. And you know, it's they're hard truths. And I know it's you know,
there are a lot of people who are predisposed to disbelieve this. It
is in many cases, it's shocking. And it's hard to believe. This isn't
the type of warfare that most Americans think that their fellow
Americans pursue.
So I wanted to make sure that it was documented as meticulously as I
could. And this is the story of Vietnam veterans told by Vietnam
veterans. I used you know, hundreds of sworn statements, sworn
testimony that active-duty GIs and recently-returned veterans gave to
army criminal investigators. So it's the veterans in their own words.
BILL MOYERS: But let me play for you what John Kerry said back in
1971, when he returned from Vietnam and he joined with other Vietnam
veterans to talk about the kind of war they had experienced. Here's
what he said.
JOHN KERRY TALKING BEFORE THE SENATE: Not isolated incidents, but
crimes committed on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of
officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to the feelings of
the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived
the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told stories that, at times, they had personally raped, cut off
ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human
genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies,
randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of
Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and
generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.
BILL MOYERS: All these years later, this book you've been working on
for ten years, based upon these documents buried at the National
Archives, confirmed what John Kerry was saying then.
NICK TURSE: All the atrocities that Kerry mentions by name there I
found evidence of all of those types of crimes represented in the
records of this Vietnam War Crimes Working Group in the government’s
own files. So at the same time that-- you know, that Kerry and the
veterans that he was referring to there were being smeared as fake
veterans or as liars, the military had all these records that proved
that these were just the very crimes that were going on in Vietnam.
BILL MOYERS: And the military had these records in 2004, when John
Kerry was being swiftboated.
NICK TURSE: That's right. You know, these records existed then. There
was proof at the time that the military they knew about it and they
didn’t disclose it to the public. And it was still, you know, under
wraps when he was running. The military definitely didn't want these
records out there. I talked to several members of this Vietnam War
Crimes Working Group, this Pentagon taskforce.
And I asked one of the colonels, who he ended up retiring as a
general. And he says that, at the time, he thought it was right that
these records need to be kept secret. It was for the good of the
country, for the good of the war effort, but in the years since, he
recognized that he thought it was the wrong thing to do.
I talked to him during the Iraq War. And he said, you know, "Perhaps
if these things had been aired at the time, if we had been honest with
the American people and open with these records, then maybe we
wouldn't have had Abu Ghraib-- you know, the torture scandal there."
He came to see it as a real failing on his part.
BILL MOYERS: What kind of reception did you get when you went out to
call on these veterans who had been there, whose testimony was
included in these secret files and who must have been disturbed when
this young reporter calls and said, "I'd like to talk to the two of
you about war crimes in Vietnam"?
NICK TURSE: There were times when I had a door slammed shut in my face
or the phone slammed down on the receiver. But most of the time
veterans were willing to talk.
And a lot of them told me that they were-- they were happy to talk
about it, in some ways. Even if we were talking about, you know,
horrific events-- you know? A lot of them said that they couldn't tell
their families about this. You know? It's not something they were able
to talk about. But I knew something of their experience. And they were
willing to walk that road with me.
BILL MOYERS: There was a medic, Jamie Henry, who seems to epitomize
the stories of everyone else with whom you've talked. Tell me about
Jamie Henry.
NICK TURSE: Yeah, Jamie had a tremendous impact on my life. And-- you
know, I found him through this collection of records to begin with.
And then I sought him out. And Jamie was a self-described hippy living
in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury District before the war. But he was
drafted. And became a medic and a very good one.
The men who served with him said that he was among the best soldiers
that they had served with. He saved a lot of American lives. And they
really lauded his performance in the field. But Jamie saw things in
Vietnam that really disturbed him. He told me that on his first day in
the field, he watched as the point man, the lead man of his patrol
stopped a young girl on a trail and molested her right there. And, you
know, Jamie said to himself, you know, "My God, what's going on here?"
And over the next-- several months, he just saw a litany of atrocities
take place.
He watched a young boy who was just-- you know, detained and beaten
and shot dead for no reason-- an old man who was used for target
practice, a prisoner who was beaten up and then thrown off a cliff--
another man who was taken and held down to be run over by an armored
personnel carrier, basically a small tank.
And Jamie saw these things. And when he first spoke up about brutality
his life was threatened by fellow unit members. And even his friends
came to him and said, "Look, you have to keep your mouth shut or
you're going to get shot in the back during a firefight and no one's
going to be the wiser." So Jamie did keep his mouth shut, but he kept
his eyes open. And he kept cataloguing everything he saw.
And this culminated in-- it was February 8th, 1968. And his unit moved
into a small hamlet. And his commanding officer, a West Point trained
captain-- ordered all the civilians there rounded up. It was about 19
civilians, women and children. And Jamie was taking a break, smoking a
cigarette. And over the radio he heard this captain give an order. And
it was to kill anything that moves.
And Jamie heard this. And he jumped up. And he went to go try and
intervene. But he was just seconds late. He showed up just as five men
arrayed around these civilians, opened up on full automatic with their
M-16 rifles, and shot them all dead. And Jamie told me that 30 seconds
after this took place, he vowed that he would make this public.
And he made it, you know, his duty to do so. As soon as he got home
from Vietnam, he sought out an Army lawyer. And he told them
everything that he saw. And this Army lawyer told him that he needed
to keep quiet, because there were a million ways that the Army could
make him disappear. He went to spoke to an Army criminal investigator.
But that man threatened him. He went and sought out a civilian lawyer
who told him to get some political backing.
He wrote to two congressman. Neither of them returned his letters.
Then he started speaking out. He went on the radio. He went to public
forums. And even the winter soldier investigation He spoke out there.
But he could never get any traction. And finally, you know, it was
years later that Jamie just gave up. And you know, he decided that he
just had to move on with his life.
BILL MOYERS: Until you tracked him down.
NICK TURSE: He was. I showed up on his doorstep with several phone
books, stacks of documents. And this was the first time that Jamie
knew the Army had investigated his allegations, had corroborated
everything he said. And, in fact the documents even painted a grimmer
picture than Jamie had told. Because other members of his unit finally
spoke up. And they talked about things that Jamie hadn't seen-- you
know? Additional atrocities.
BILL MOYERS: So this is where you got the title for your book, “Kill
Anything that Moves”? That's what he overheard?
NICK TURSE: Yes, this was-- this was the order that his commanding
officer, the West Point trained captain gave. And this was the first
time that I really took note of the phrase. But then as I continued,
you know, working on this topic, I noticed it coming up again and
again. I realized that this was the order that was given out by
Captain Medina, the commanding officer, to the troops who carried out
the My Lai Massacre, that was his order to them to kill anything the
moves.
And I found it listed in court-martial documents from a Marine Corps
massacre that took place in 1967. And it seemed that everywhere I
looked, there were variations on it. "Shoot anything that moves. Kill
anything that breathes." And I came to see it as really a shorthand
for the war.
BILL MOYERS: Do you think this will strike some people as old news?
NICK TURSE: Well, I think that in some ways the story of atrocities in
Vietnam is kind of a half-known history. People have, you know, maybe
some inkling of it. They know a little bit about My Lai. Or they've
seen glimpses of civilians suffering in “Apocalypse Now” or “Platoon”
or “Casualties of War”, these movies.
But I think that, you know, this society and the American culture has
never fully come to grips with Vietnam. It's this half-known history
there. These hidden and forbidden histories that just haven't been
fully engaged. So while I think people might know a little bit of it,
I doubt that they know the full story as I came to know it.
BILL MOYERS: It's not just a litany of atrocities, you reach some very
significant conclusions about the way the war was fought, how it was
not just some bad apples that were conducting these brutal acts, but
that it was a pattern which was inevitable given the pressures from
the top.
NICK TURSE: I talk about individual micro-level atrocities, things
like murders and massacres. And they do punctuate the book. But really
I'm telling the story of civilian suffering. And the sheer number of
Vietnamese who were killed or wounded in Vietnam or became refugees--
this wasn't due to simply bad apples, simply-- troops on the ground.
It was command-level policies, things like the use of unrestrained
bombing and artillery shelling on heavily-populated areas of the
countryside, policies that were promulgated at the highest levels of
the U.S. military. This is what made it inevitable that there would be
this much civilian suffering, that there would be, you know, an
estimated two million Vietnamese civilians killed.
I mean, the Vietnam War in Vietnam took such a tremendous toll. It's
almost as I came to understand, it was almost unfathomable suffering
on the part of the Vietnamese people. You know, the best estimates
that we have are 3.8 million Vietnamese deaths overall, combatants and
noncombatants, two million of them civilians. 5.3 million civilians
wounded using a very conservative method of estimation.
NICK TURSE: The U.S. government came up with a number of 11 million
Vietnamese who were made refugees during the war. And the latest
studies show that up to four million Vietnamese were exposed to toxic
defoliants like Agent Orange. So this is-- it's suffering on a scale
that I don't think that most Americans can fully wrap their head
around.
BILL MOYERS: I was struck by your writing that by the mid-'60s, the
American military-- the American military had turned war making into
"a thoroughly"-- I'm quoting you, "thoroughly corporatized,
quantitatively-oriented system known as techno war." And you say that
became, in Vietnam, the American way of war. And this led to what you
call the indiscriminate death of civilians, as well as the atrocities
that occurred against individuals.
NICK TURSE: That's right. You know, the military fought this war with
an attrition strategy. The U.S. was fighting a guerilla war. And they
were looking for a metric to show that they were winning. And the
attrition strategy provided that by making body count the way that you
could tell. Basically, you would kill your way to victory. You would
pile up Vietnamese bodies. You would kill more enemy guerillas than
the enemy could put into the field.
BILL MOYERS: That was the crossover point?
NICK TURSE: That was the famed "crossover point?
BILL MOYERS: So this crossover point that-- that we were supposed to
reach when we were killing more Vietnamese than could be replaced led,
as you point out here, step by step, to the whole notion focus the
body count as the measure of success in Vietnam?
NICK TURSE: That's right. Sometimes I found that-- you know, American
troops would take prisoners in the field. And they'd call in, you
know, "I have a prisoner." And the commander would call back, "Well, I
want a body count." And then the prisoner would be killed and then
called in as an enemy who was shot while fleeing or shot during a
firefight.
BILL MOYERS: You say, "So entire units would be pitted against each
other in body count competitions with prizes at stake."
NICK TURSE: Yes. You know, one veteran that I talked to, he said there
was a great-- he called it an "incentivization of death". And I talked
to many veterans who talked about this. They said that that this
really messed with their value system, that they were told to-- you
know, if they brought in a dead Vietnamese, that they proved a body
count, they would get three days of R&R at a beach resort-- in Vietnam
or they would get extra beer or light duty when they were back at
basecamp or medals, badges.
So there were all these incentives that were pushing them to produce
bodies. And then there were disincentives. There were-- along with
those carrots, there were sticks. They knew if they didn't produce
bodies that they'd be that they'd have it tougher. They'd be kept out
in the field longer. They wouldn't-- they'd have to march out instead
of getting an airlift and a helicopter. So there were real reasons to
produce bodies.
BILL MOYERS: And you describe, you know, almost a sporting event,
sport statistics, box scores-- and those scores being padded by
including civilians?
NICK TURSE: Yeah, there were-- you know, everywhere in Vietnam, there
were kill boards, they were called, up that showed each unit's number
of kills. Some men talk about it-- you know, the being like box scores
up in the mess hall in military publications. This idea of body count
was just drilled into them at every turn. And they really couldn't get
away from it. I mean, this was the way the war was fought. And it
turned out to be disastrous for Vietnamese civilians.
BILL MOYERS: And so that led, as you say, to the body count as the
measure of success. Nick, you make it clear that this pressure that
led to this kind of killing came down from the top in Washington, as
well, from Secretary of Defense McNamara at the Pentagon and clearly
from the White House.
NICK TURSE I think it did. And there was rarely any distinction made
between enemies and the civilian population. They were-- you know, and
I should make the point that these are very young men, 18, 19, 20
years old. So they get to boot camp as mere boys. And they're really
told that all the Vietnamese are dangerous. And they learn pretty
quickly that it was okay to shoot first, because no one was going to
ask questions later.
BILL MOYERS: How were you affected when you went to Vietnam for the first time?
NICK TURSE: Well, I was. It really changed-- you know, the project
that I was working on. And I think it changed me in profound ways. I
went to--
BILL MOYERS: How so--
NICK TURSE: I went to Vietnam-- you know, with these stacks of
documents. And I was looking for witnesses and survivors to individual
atrocities, the cases that I had read about. And I went to these
villages. And I talked to Vietnamese. And I was asking them about one
specific spasm of violence.
But what I'm-- what they kept telling me, the stories that I kept
hearing, what it was like to live for 10 years under bombs and shells
and helicopter gunships and how they had to negotiate their live
around the American war, what it was like to have your home burned
down five, six, seven times, and to finally give up rebuilding it and
start to live a subterranean or semi-subterranean existence in a bomb
shelter and have to-- you know, to make all these calculations about
how to survive, when to leave the bomb shelter to forage for food or
to find water or to relieve yourself, when to farm.
And all these decisions could have a profound affect that your life
depended on it and the life of your family. You had to know-- to get
into the bomb shelter in time, when artillery started raining down.
But you had to get out of there before the American troops came
through and started grenading the bunkers because Americans didn't see
these as bomb shelters, they saw them as enemy bunkers that could be
hiding guerillas. And the Vietnamese lived with this war for 10 years
straight. And as they told me these stories again and again, I
realized that this was really the story that I needed to tell, the one
of Vietnamese civilian suffering, the one of--
BILL MOYERS: You called it a system of suffering.
NICK TURSE: Yeah, I-- you know, with the way that the American war was
engineered, I think it turned it into a veritable system of suffering.
BILL MOYERS: Did you encounter animosity, an anger towards you as an American?
NICK TURSE: I didn't. And it was one of the most shocking things to me
that-- you know, I would go into a village. And I would often be the
first American they had seen since the war. And-- you know, I'd ask
them to dredge up the most-- you know, horrific events imaginable, the
most horrible days of their lives. And then I'd ask these people to do
it again and again, to make sure that I got the stories exactly right.
And afterwards I would be shocked to find them thanking me. That they
would-- they expressed a great gratitude. They were amazed that an
American knew something of the story of what they lived through, the
story of their hamlet. And they couldn't believe that someone had
traveled halfway around the world to listen to this.
BILL MOYERS: Why are we talking about this? Do you we think any good
is going to come out of resurrecting the skeletons in the closet and
bringing them out and exposing them in your book or in a conversation
like this?
NICK TURSE: Well, I'm hoping that it will have some bearing on the
present. You know, the U.S. is, of course, involved has been involved
in constant warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen,
Somalia. There's you know military interventions taking place all over
the world, over the last decade plus.
But I don't think that Americans really have a clear picture of those
wars. And what they've meant for people overseas, what they've meant
to civilians around the world. So I hope that my book might be able
to, you know, to add to that conversation, to open America's eyes to
what wars mean for people overseas. And if we're asked to send our
brothers and sisters and sons and daughters to war, I think we should
have some idea of what it means for the sons and daughters of people
overseas.
BILL MOYERS: The book is “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American
War in Vietnam.” Nick Turse, thank you for joining me.
NICK TURSE: Thanks so much for having me.
------------------------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 6:02 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
An excerpt from "Kill Anything that moves" that lays out the case for the book:
"Kill Anything That Moves" Military Doctrine Began in Vietnam
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14538-kill-anything-that-moves-military-doctrine-began-in-vietnam
Quote:
“Looking back, it's clear that the real aberration was the unprecedented
and unparalleled investigation and exposure of My Lai. No
other American atrocity committed during the war— and there were
so many— was ever afforded anything approaching the same attention.
Most, of course, weren't photographed, and many were not
documented in any way. The great majority were never known outside
the offending unit, and most investigations that did result were
closed, quashed, or abandoned. Even on the rare occasions when the
allegations were seriously investigated within the military, the reports
were soon buried in classified files without ever seeing the light of
day. Whistle-blowers within the ranks or recently out of the army
were threatened, intimidated, smeared, or— if they were lucky—
simply marginalized and ignored.
Until the My Lai revelations became front-page news, atrocity
stories were routinely disregarded by American journalists or excised
by stateside editors. The fate of civilians in rural South Vietnam did
not merit much examination; even the articles that did mention the
killing of noncombatants generally did so merely in passing, without
any indication that the acts described might be war crimes. Vietnamese revolutionary sources, for their part, detailed hundreds of massacres and large-scale operations that resulted in thousands of civilian deaths, but those reports were dismissed out of hand as communist propaganda.”
Chung Nguyen
UMASS Boston
----------
From: Tom Miller <milltom@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 6:23 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
While Nick Turse has uncovered the "smoking gun" with respect to U.S.
Vietnam war policy, let us not forget the 1971 "Winter Soldier
Investigation" where veteran after veteran testified with respect to
the atrocities they participated in or witnessed. It was a terrifying
four days of moving testimony one is unable to forget.
Tom Miller