Reddit reviews Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (American Empire Project)

Nick Turse wrote a book on war crimes that were confirmed by the Pentagon, in the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group.

From Wikipedia:"The records were declassified in 1994, after 20 years as required by the Freedom of Information Act, and relocated to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, where they went largely unnoticed. Nick Turse, a freelance journalist, discovered the archive while researching his doctoral dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University. He managed to examine most of the files, and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages — representing roughly a third of the total — before government officials removed them from the public shelves in 2002, stating they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act."

I think the fact of denial of systematic war crimes committed by the US government at this point is a hard case to make.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_Crimes_Working_Group

http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/0805086919

I agree, but understand the context; there was the equivalent of a My Lei massacre every week of the war and even conscripts were heavily involved in murdering of civilians there:
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/vietnam_was_even_more_horrific_than_we_thought/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_Crimes_Working_Group_Files
http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/0805086919

The American people were more aware of what atrocities American forces were committing during the war and unfairly took that out on the veterans wholesale, but there was a reason why they did it other than just being dicks. Most of the vets weren't to blame for what was going on, but the litany of horrors and atrocities that were going on were horrifying and were in the same category of what the German army was doing in Russia in WW2 (not the Holocaust part, but the massacres of civilians suspecting of supporting guerrilas and the torture and murder of prisoners).

Anyone downvoting Kropotki seriously needs to read Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse.

The US military had a policy of "punishing" units that had a low kill ratio (including sending them on land mine clearing duty considered the most dangerous work) and rewarding units with high kill ratios with things like crates of beer and extra R&R time.

The policy led to soldiers killing civilians to boost up there kill ratios. Why the US lost the war it was against the "Winning hearts and minds" counter insurgency strategy.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805086919/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20

I haven't read this yet (it's on my list) but it seems like one of the few books on the vietnam war that actually outlines the atrocities. I'm definitely curious to hear from anyone who has read it and their thoughts.

It's a phase he's going through. Trying to separate himelf from the other "slopes" and "gooks" by trying to identify as just "murican".

He will learn that no matter how much red, white and blue he bleeds, when veneer is scratched most muricans will view him as a slant eyed perpetual foreigner/perpetual outsider.

And murica is #1 bc they have/had the military tech to rape farming based countries back around the world and steal their resources for pennies on the dollar.

I'd recommend u suggest he reads up "Kill anything that moves" https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/0805086919

and articles/books about the pheonix program https://theinternationalreporter.org/2016/02/08/the-cias-phoenix-program-in-vietnam-and-the-war-on-terror-review-of-doug-valentines-book/

I'd also try to point him to the fact that the murican invasion of vietnam was a continuation of the viet vinh freedom fighters trying to liberate themselves from the white french colonizing them.

I'd hint to him that vietnam was invaded/occupied/colonized by white french and that Ho Chi Minh was a freedom fighter who idolized murica and her "Bill of Rights" until the US president at the time used him to fight the japanese and threw him away like garbage after WW2.

Also the French tried to get murica to drop a nuclear bomb on Hanoi to help their colonial occupier asses out.

And how after murica "liberated" France from the big bad Nazis, Murica then helped/armed/funded the French to reinvade/occupy Vietnam.

I'd try to say , "you know, one of the reasons the richest most influential ethnic group in murica got to where they are because they live by a motto:NEVER FORGET.

They remember their history and teach their kids their history. And from that history they draw an unrivaled strength & drive to succeed in murica".

Nick Turse has written a book called Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805086919?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

It is based on archival records and makes the point that the My Lai massacre was not an aberration at all.

I just finished [Kill Anything That Moves by Nick Turse] (http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/0805086919) and it was fantastic. It's graphic but it explains the policy of The US and the training of the soldiers through documents and first person interviews.

I recommend the book Kill Anything That Moves. It documents the systematic way the US has covered up atrocities on civilians and portrayed any leaks as singular events (for example, My Lai massacre). Little's changed since Vietnam. The US doesn't focus on prosecuting or preventing war crimes, it focuses on covering them up. There's no policies in place to prevent soldiers from cracking down mentally or forming a shared revenge-mentality.

In Vietnam, the Vietnamese weren't considered human and the same attitude prevails in the Middle-Eastern conflicts. There's no empathy toward "snackbars", which leads to soldiers pissing on dead corpses etc. Everyone is presumed guilty (to be the enemy) by association, and thus there's care little for civilian life. Although /u/SerPuissance got downvoted, there are couple of well-publicized instances of a soldier going on a killing spree (e.g Robert Bales). And these are cases where civilians are intentionally targeted. There a lot more cases where soldiers / the commanding officers simply do not care whether civilians get killed or hurt as collateral damage. It's a gradient scale.

The above is obviously not meant to imply that inhuman behaviour during war is exclusively an American trait. See for exampe what the Japanese did in China.