Apr 21 2014
Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam
US government officials attended a ceremony in Da Nang, Vietnam this weekend along with Vietnamese officials to mark the next stage in a process to clean up the toxic legacy of Agent Orange. Agent Orange was a major weapon of chemical warfare used by the US during the Vietnam war.
Although the war officially ended in 1975, it was only 2 years ago that the $84 million cleanup project was launched. Indeed the US has taken a long time to face the true legacy of the Vietnam war which marked one of the most tumultuous eras in recent US history.
To most Americans who see the Vietnam war as an ugly mistake, the war is reduced to the horrific My Lai massacre of hundreds of mostly women and children by US soldiers.
But in a book that became a New York Times bestseller and earned its author Nick Turse numerous awards, the Vietnam war consisted of one My Lai massacre after another. Indeed, according to Turse’s meticulous research, based on extensive and mostly forgotten documents from the war and first person interviews with US vets and Vietnamese survivors, the modus operandi in the war was to “Kill Anything That Moves,” which is the title of his book.
GUEST: Nick Turse, historian, journalist, essayist and the associate editor and research director of the Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch.com, author of Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam
One Response to “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam”
I am a Vietnam Veteran and a long time listener to KPFK. I am a graduate student in counseling. I want to counsel veterans coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq. I would appreciate any information regarding the genocide, because I believe that the current veterans are having the same emotional dysfunctions. Where does PTSD come from ?My extensive research have validated that fighting exploitive wars have caused numerous psychological disorders. Reading Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky have helped to verify. Since I will be counseling these veterans in the near future. Any input would be appreciated. By the way I know Tran Chau a good friend of Daniel Ellsberg and former governor of a Vietnamese province. He was ignored by the U.S. military and had to spend over ten years in confinement after the U.S.backed regime lost the war.