quotations about the Vietnam War
The Americans won't win. They're not fighting for their homeland. They just want to be good. In order to be good, they just have to fight awhile and then leave.
DENIS JOHNSON
Tree of Smoke
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
speech at Riverside Church in New York City, "A Time to Break Silence", April 4, 1967
We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it. I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come.
GEORGE MCGOVERN
speech on the Senate floor, April 25, 1967
Some scholars estimate that as many as 3.8 million Vietnamese died during the war. Up to 800,000 perished in Cambodia and another one million in Laos, neighboring countries into which the U.S. expanded the war. The U.S. death toll was 58,000, about half of them people of color. It was a racist war both home and abroad.
ERIC A. GORDON
"Today in history: The Vietnam War is over!", People's World, April 30, 2015
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
speech at Riverside Church in New York City, "A Time to Break Silence", April 4, 1967
Vietnam: The war the soldiers tried to stop.
JOHN KERRY
statement at antiwar demonstration, The Evening Star, April 26, 1971
We flew over to Vung Tau, then from there we went to Nui Dat. We were clearing it, putting barbed wire around, digging all the trenches, plus out patrolling around Nui Dat. In those days it was a southern stronghold. We got fired upon going through the jungle and through the rubber trees and then we followed them up and ran into a heap of Vietcong. We more or less just fought it out there with artillery.... You think of all the blokes that were with you that were killed and other people killed in other wars.
DOUG FABIAN
"A time to reflect and remember their service", Courier Mail, April 22, 2017
The systemic malady that produced the Vietnam War is a close cousin to the one that has now given us President Trump.
IRA CHERNUS
"Meet the malady within the American spirit: Donald Trump is Martin Luther King, Jr's greatest warning", Salon, April 19, 2017
The difference between the Vietnam War and the Second World War for instance, was that there was no set lines, there wasn't us here and them over there. They were all around us. Individuals in the street would be going about their business during the day, and during the night time those individuals would put on the classic black pajamas Viet Cong sort of thing, and they would do all sorts of things, blow things up, kill people. It was very difficult, we were always on edge and could never relax at all, because you did not know who was your enemy.
NORM OGDEN
"Angaston's Vietnam veteran reflects on war", Barossa & Light Herald, April 24, 2017
Involvement in Vietnam was not--as the critics were later to assert--a conspiracy of the best and brightest brought into government by Kennedy and inherited by Johnson but the application of principles pursued for a decade by two presidents of both parties. Like his predecessors, Kennedy considered Vietnam a crucial link in America's overall geopolitical position. He believed, as had Truman and Eisenhower, that preventing a Communist victory in Vietnam was a vital American interest. Like his predecessors, he viewed the Communist leadership in Hanoi and Beijing as a surrogate of global Kremlin designs.
HENRY KISSINGER
Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War