What One Veteran Said
Vietnam veteran Wayne Smith: We were broken. I had so much anger and pain. I was crushed. I left like I had blood on my hands. I resisted calling the Vietnamese gooks and dinks, but…
Category: Vietnam
Touching a Nerve
According to my FBI documents, [President Richard] Nixon was more obsessed with me than with the president of Russia. He was obsessed with this movie star that was working with the GIs. –Jane Fonda, from…
American Ingenuity
[Daisy Cutters were] so named because they were designed to explode just above the ground so the main force of the explosion was horizontal in order to cause the maximum destruction at ground level. The…
McNamara and Co./2
I’d chain all of the politicians to that haunting Vietnam memorial and have them read—slowly—every name aloud. Then the war would end for me. Take all of them, all of them who gave us the…
McNamara and Co./1
In his 1995 book, In Retrospect Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara [translation: former Secretary of Aggression) Made an apology to the American public For the harms brought to the country Because of his unwillingness…
What Some Americans Say (1970)
The Vietnamese and we have indelibly stamped each other with our marks. We have destroyed beyond hope of remaking parts of their ancient culture; they have destroyed our innocence and belief in our own goodness….
What More Is There To Be Said?
“My eight-year-old daughter was killed. My three-year-old son. Nixon, murderer of civilians. What have I done to Nixon that he should come here to bomb my country? My daughter died right here. She was feeding…
War Isn’t Over
Dear Laura Last night I was reading Frances Fitzgerald’s Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam This afternoon I listened to a playlist I made Of songs from the Vietnam War…
Who We Were, Who We Are
“I don’t know that any reasonable, sensible person thinks the Vietnam War was a good and righteous undertaking, but it is crucial that we come to understand the war as an event and expression of…
Brave and Bereaved (Photo Meditation/46)
A Dear Layla chapter entitled Solidarity/2 begins Dear Carla One of my temporary partners in Gaza is Noreen McCarty (We all come and go) Who declared to us newcomers one day “There are no women…