American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (53 page)

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 monopoly 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.

C
HAPTER
S
IX
: T
HE
A
MERICAN
W
AY
OF
W
AR

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.