American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity

by Appy, Christian G.

  Roger Donlon: Appy, Patriots, pp. 12–15.

  “Who’s Fighting in Viet Nam”: Time, April 23, 1965.

  “South Vietnam: A New Kind of War”: Time, October 22, 1965.

  “Today’s American soldier”: Cited in Andrew J. Huebner, The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), p. 178.

  “almost to a man”: Time, October 22, 1965.

  “I was fool enough to join”: See Charles Moskos, The American Enlisted Man: The Rank and File in Today’s Military (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1970), pp. 149–50; Christian G. Appy, Working-Class War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), pp. 206–49.

  A 1964 survey: Appy, Working-Class War, pp. 23–24.

  Lowered admission standards and Project 100,000: Ibid., pp. 30–33.

  Fewer than 8 percent . . . had completed college: John Helmer, Bringing the War Home: The American Soldier in Vietnam and After (New York: Free Press, 1974), p. 303; Arthur Egendorf et al., Legacies of Vietnam: Comparative Adjustments of Veterans and Their Peers (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1981), p. 13.

  medical exemptions: Lawrence M. Baskir and William A. Strauss, Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation (New York: Knopf, 1978), pp. 36–48.

  Selective Service memo: Peter Henig, “On the Manpower Channelers,” New Left Notes, January 20, 1967. It was later published in Ramparts (December 1967) and excerpted in countless underground newspapers and other antiwar publications of the era.

  many draft-age Americans: Paul Lauter and Florence Howe, The Conspiracy of the Young (New York: World, 1970), p. 198.

  the Free Speech Movement: Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik, eds., The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). The phrase “knowledge factory” is just a slight revision of “knowledge industry,” a phrase used by UC Berkeley president Clark Kerr, who openly celebrated the role of universities in serving the interests of the government, the military, and corporate America.

  “a shy do-gooder”: Jo Freeman, “The Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission,” Left History, vol. 8, no. 2, Spring 2003, pp. 135–44.

  “We’re human beings!”: See Mark Kitchell’s 1990 documentary film Berkeley in the Sixties.

  “Democracy in the Foxhole”: Time, May 26, 1967.

  In a superficial way, the major African American: Lawrence Allen Elbridge, Chronicles of a Two-Front War: Civil Rights and Vietnam in the African American Press (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2012); Paul Dickson, War Slang: American Fighting Words and Phrases Since the Civil War (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2011), p. 260.

  “greatest degree of functional democracy”: Thomas A. Johnson, “Negroes in ‘the Nam,’” Ebony, August 1968; Ebony, August 1966, p. 23. The 1966 issue also includes an article on black nurses in Vietnam.

  percentage of black officers: William L. Hauser, America’s Army in Crisis: A Study in Civil-Military Relations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 77.

  percentage of black casualties: “How Negro Americans Perform in Vietnam,” U.S. News and World Report, August 15, 1966, p. 62; James E. Westheider, The African American Experience in Vietnam: Brothers in Arms (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), pp. 47–49.

  Camp Pendleton . . . “gripe session”: New York Times, March 7, 1969, p. 11.

  enormous urban uprising: Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution (Boston: South End Press, 1999); Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004); Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Race Riot of 1967 (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1989).

  George Daniels did most of the talking: Shirley Jolls and Walter Aponte, “Kangaroo Court-Martial: George Daniels and William Harvey, Two Black Marines Who Got 6 and 10 Years for Opposing the Vietnam War,” Committee for GI Rights, March 10, 1969. This committee formed in July 1967 to support antiwar soldiers at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then became the core group that formed the American Servicemen’s Union. A copy of this pamphlet can be found online at: http://www.aavw.org/served/racetensions_danielsandharvey_abstract02.html. Details also drawn from author’s personal correspondence with George Daniels.

  McGeorge Bundy: Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster, p. 204.

  Conviction and sentencing of Daniels and Harvey: A fascinating article on the case was written by Edward Sherman, an attorney who handled the appeal for the two men. Edward F. Sherman, “The Military Courts and Servicemen’s First Amendment Rights,” Hastings Law Journal, vol. 22 (1970–71), pp. 325–73.

  “I couldn’t kid myself”: Donald Duncan, “I Quit!,” Ramparts, February 1966.

  told by the captain in charge: Donald Duncan, The New Legions (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 152.

  tortured, murdered, and then mutilated: Ibid., pp. 131–33. Duncan confirmed these and other claims as a witness before the 1967 International War Crimes Tribunal organized by British philosopher Bertrand Russell in Stockholm. The tribunal was almost completely ignored or derided by the U.S. mass media, but received substantial attention in antiwar circles, especially with the publication of its proceedings. J. Duffett, ed., Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Russell International War Crimes Tribunal (New York: O’Hare Books, 1968).

  the once critical journalist: Wills, John Wayne’s America, p. 232.

  screening of The Green Berets: Gustav Hasford, The Short-Timers (New York: Bantam, 1979), p. 38. On the film’s reception, see Randy Roberts and James S. Olson, John Wayne: American (New York: Free Press, 1995), pp. 547–51.

  “I gave my dead dick”: Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), p. 98.

  “Don’t try to be John Wayne”: Appy, Working-Class War, p. 140. But dispensing with an old and beloved model wasn’t easy. The very language of the grunts reflected the degree to which their lives had been shaped by the shoot-’em-up pop culture of the 1950s and John Wayne in particular. From their C-rations they ate “John Wayne cookies” and “John Wayne crackers,” and called their P-38 can openers “John Waynes.” A .45-caliber pistol was a “John Wayne rifle.” Jan E. Dizard, Robert M. Muth, Stephen P. Andrews, eds., Guns in America: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1999), p. 100.

  The massacre remained hidden: Seymour M. Hersh, Cover-up (New York: Random House, 1972); New York Times, May 17, 1968; Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai (New York: Viking, 1992), pp. 163–213.

  “let sleeping dogs lie”: Ron Ridenhour, “My Lai and Why It Matters,” lecture given at Tulane University on the thirtieth anniversary of the My Lai massacre. A VHS videotape of the lecture was produced by Fertel Communications, New Orleans, LA. The Fertel Foundation and the Nation Institute award four annual Ridenhour Prizes to “recognize acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society.”

  Soldier’s Medal: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/national/07thompson.html?_r=0.

  “When we leave, nothing will be living”: Seymour Hersh, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 39–41.

  “honor the flag as ‘Rusty’ had done”: Bilton and Sim, Four Hours in My Lai, p. 340.

  “The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley”: John Stauffer and Benjamin Soskis, The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 279–80, 300–301.

  put under house arrest: Bilton and Sim, Four Hours in My Lai, pp. 341, 355.

  “no nation has a mon
opoly on goodness”: Time, December 19, 1969.

  “take care of them”: Bilton and Sim, Four Hours in My Lai, p. 120.

  “This is God’s punishment”: Ibid., p. 165.

  “I raised him up to be a good boy”: James S. Olson and Randy Roberts, My Lai: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998), pp. 181–87; Bilton and Sim, Four Hours in My Lai, p. 263.

  CHAPTER SIX: THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR

  estimated death toll: Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets, pp. 58–59.

  impotent (or sexually confused): Blaire Pingeton, “Dr. Strangelove’s Nervous Tics,” http://www.nyu.edu/cas/ewp/pingetonthanks07.pdf.

  “simple farmers”: Lyndon Johnson, “Peace Without Conquest,” April 7, 1965, http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/650407.asp.

  B-52 . . . “milk runs” . . . Air Force Base in Guam: Robert M. Kipp, “Counterinsurgency From 30,000 Feet: The B-52 in Vietnam,” Air University Review, January–February 1968; James D. Hooppaw, Where the Buf Fellows Roamed (Gig Harbor, WA: Red Apple, 2002), p. 127; “Vietnam ‘Milk Run’ Keeps B-52’s Roaring Out of Bustling Guam,” New York Times, October 25, 1965.

  60,000 pounds of bombs: Walter J. Boyne, Boeing B-52: A Documentary History (New York: Jane’s, 1981), pp. 89–102.

  cluster bombs: Spencer Tucker, The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 125. For a fuller treatment, see Eric Prokosch, The Technology of Killing: A Military and Political History of Antipersonnel Weapons (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1995).

  Bomblets that failed to explode: Daysha Eaton, “In Vietnam, Cluster Bombs Still Plague Countryside,” Globalpost, June 6, 2010, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/vietnam/100602/cluster-bombs-landmines-demining-quang-tri?page=full. For efforts to remove explosives in Vietnam, see Project Renew: http://www.landmines.org.vn/who_we_are/our_mission.html; in Laos, see Legacies of War: http://legaciesofwar.org/about/; in Cambodia, see Cambodian Mine Action Centre: http://cmac.gov.kh/.

  “When everything was very calm”: Appy, Patriots, p. 248.

  “the drapes were fluttering”: George W. Allen, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam (New York: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), p. 196.

  enough turbulence to make clothing slap: Appy, Patriots, p. 71.

  suspected Viet Cong targets: See, for example, New York Times, September 17, 1965.

  essential simply to forestall defeat: Mark Philip Bradley, Vietnam at War, p. 111.

  the worst way to fight: Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988), pp. 6, 269–386.

  “Mr. B-52”: Ibid., p. 782.

  anxiety of people living under daily bombing: Gloria Emerson, Winners and Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses, and Ruins from a Long War (New York: Random House, 1976).

  “bombs are dropping night and day”: Time, September 11, 1972.

  “unforgettable outburst of raw power”: Life, February 4, 1972.

  “Streaking out of low cloud cover”: Time, November 12, 1966; for other rescue narratives, see Life, August 6, 1965, and Time, July 29, 1966.

  “the air briefing was a bore”: Zalin Grant, Over the Beach: The Air War in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), p. 107.

  routinely missed their targets: Kenneth P. Werrell, “Did USAF Technology Fail in Vietnam? Three Case Studies,” Airpower Journal, Spring 1998, p. 96; http://www .airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj98/spr98/werrell.pdf.

  the Thanh Hoa Bridge: James William Gibson, The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), pp. 363–365.

  “I could see with my own eyes”: Harrison E. Salisbury, Behind Enemy Lines—Hanoi (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 87–88.

  the more the United States bombed, the more troops went south: Gary R. Hess, Vietnam and the United States: Origins and Legacy of War (New York: Twayne, 1990), pp. 91–94.

  “going about its business”: New York Times, December 25 and 27, 1966. Salisbury also observed many people going to Catholic mass on Christmas Day, a stark contrast to the lurid reports of anti-Catholic persecution that characterized Tom Dooley’s Deliver Us From Evil (1956).

  “The bombed areas of Nam Dinh”: New York Times, December 31, 1966.

  “distorted picture”: Time, January 6, 1967.

  “most restrained in modern warfare”: McGeorge Bundy, “The End of Either/Or,” Foreign Affairs, January 1967.

  many pro-war hawks railed: See Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989), pp. 73–146.

  why not simply firebomb: John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), pp. 175–96; Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2010), pp. 149–61.

  “the smallest outhouse”: Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (New York: New American Library, 1966), p. 539.

  “seduction, not rape”: Young, The Vietnam Wars, p. 141; Emerson, Winners and Losers, p. 377.

  senseless, if not insane: See, for example, H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York: Harper, 1997), pp. 300–22.

  killed about 55,000 North Vietnamese civilians: Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power, pp. 136, 195. Another source puts the figure at 65,000. See Micheal Clodfelter, Vietnam in Military Statistics: A History of the Indochina Wars, 1772–1991 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995), p. 257.

  Bernard Fall: See Dorothy Fall, Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2007).

  “pounding the place to bits”: Bernard Fall, “Blitz in Vietnam,” New Republic, October 9, 1965.

  dropped napalm to set the homes: Bernard Fall, Last Reflections on a War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 228–29. This article was originally published in Ramparts as “This Isn’t Munich, It’s Spain,” December 1965.

  “the worst is yet to come”: Fall, Last Reflections on a War, p. 234.

  Fall did not live long enough: Fall, “The Last Tape,” ibid., pp. 270–71.

  “The fire and smoke was pouring up to the heavens”: Appy, Patriots, pp. 202–9.

  The U.S. rules of engagement: Jonathan Schell, The Military Half (New York: Knopf, 1968), pp. 14–15. Schell’s two books of war reportage are republished as Schell, The Real War: The Classic Reporting on the Vietnam War (Boston: Da Capo, 2007); on rules of engagement, see also Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 188–96.

  “Dear citizens”: Cited in Schell, The Military Half, pp. 17–18.

  “Do not run from them!”: Ibid., pp. 20–21.

  “The solution in Vietnam”: Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, p. 619.

  The body count was the paramount measure: Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013), pp. 42–51.

  “If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s Viet Cong”: Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977), p. xix.

  “incentivizing of death”: Appy, Patriots, p. 365.

  exhausted, frustrated, and angry: Appy, Working-Class War, pp. 174–80.

  the enemy determined the time, place, and duration: Pentagon Papers, vol. 4, p. 462; Appy, Working-Class War, pp. 162–64.

  “Dangling the Bait”: James Webb, Fields of Fire (New York: Bantam, 1978), p. 155.

  Many grunts wanted revenge: Appy, Working-Class War, pp. 213–16, 228–29.

  nine rules of conduct: William Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 299.

  “Murder, torture, rape, abuse”: Turse, Kill Anything That Moves, p. 6.
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br />   Wayne Smith: Appy, Patriots, p. 365.

  “We’re here to kill gooks”: Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York: Vintage, 1991), p. 20.

  public relations campaign: Young, The Vietnam Wars, p. 215; Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, p. 636; Larry Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), pp. 84–88.

  Westmoreland . . . addressed both houses of Congress: New York Times, April 29, 1967, p. 10 for transcript and response.

  “The enemy’s hopes are bankrupt”: New York Times, November 22, 1967.

  “monument to deceit”: C. Michael Hiam, A Monument to Deceit: Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars (Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge, 2014). Originally published as Who the Hell Are We Fighting? The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2006), pp. 124, 259; Harold P. Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes (Military Bookshop, 2011), p. 100.

  All of these uncounted people: Sam Adams, War of Numbers: An Intelligence Memoir (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 1995).

  “Can you believe it?”: Hiam, Who the Hell Are We Fighting?, pp. 87–88.

  Earle Wheeler cabled Westmoreland: Young, The Vietnam Wars, p. 214; Hiam, Who the Hell Are We Fighting?, p. 99.

  an astonishing military victory: See, for example, James S. Robbins, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive (New York: Encounter Books, 2012).

  brutal and indiscriminate counteroffensive: Turse, Kill Anything That Moves, pp. 102–5.

  “Now that the enemy had the town, the town was the enemy”: Tobias Wolff, In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War (New York: Knopf, 1994), p. 138.

  “Hundreds of corpses and the count kept rising”: Ibid., p. 139.

  “uncontrolled violence”: Appy, Patriots, p. 361.

  “Get a hundred a day”: Emerson, Winners and Losers, p. 154.

  “If it moves, shoot it”: David Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), pp. 647, 668.

  “I don’t give a shit”: Turse, Kill Anything That Moves, p. 216.