The Depths of American Brutality in Vietnam

[Keith Millea]

For the life of me,I don't really know how to respond to this article by Nick Turse.It's not that he is wrong by talking about war atrocities.We all know they happened in Vietnam.But,Turse like so many others that have written about these things,frames them in ways that are,for the most part as negative as they can get away with.And,ultimately the finger gets pointed towards all of us soldiers.
Let me start by making this quote:

During my tour of duty in Vietnam I NEVER witnessed a single atrocity,act of cruelty or abuse,upon either a Vietnamese civilian or combatant,NEVER!

Turse talks about widespresd rape,as if we were all sexual perverts.Let me tell you a story.One day on a dismounted patrol,we caught a pretty VC woman hiding all alone in some bushes.Well,someone had to pat her down for a search.So,here is a squad of hardened fighters,and nobody wanted to search her.We all just looked sheepishly at each other,like a bunch of 10 year olds.Did you get that folks?We were embarrassed to have to touch this woman,although someone finally did search her.So,fuck you Nick Turse!

Many soldiers mistreated corpses in other waysdressing them up, clowning around with them, or mutilating them, often taking photos of their handiwork and filling scrapbooks with the results. The correspondent Michael Herr recalled:

There were hundreds of these albums in Vietnam, thousands, and they all seemed to contain the same pictures . . . the severed head shot, the head often resting on the chest of the dead man or being held up by a smiling Marine, or a lot of heads, arranged in a row, with a burning cigarette in each of the mouths, the eyes open . . . the VC suspect being dragged over the dust by a half-track or being hung by his heels in some jungle clearing; the very young dead . . . a picture of a Marine holding an ear or maybe two ears or, in the case of a guy I knew near Pleiku, a whole necklace made of ears . . . the dead Viet Cong girl with her pajamas stripped off and her legs raised stiffly in the air. . . . Half the combat troops in Vietnam had these things in their packs, snapshots were the least of what they took after a fight, at least the pictures didn't rot.

Now,I've read his book,and Michael Herr is a professional correspondent.But,how in the hell can someone who is highly respected write a bullshit paragraph like that?How can he know there are hundreds,indeed thousands of these picture albums?He's seen them all I'm sure.And,holy fuckin' shit man,do you really believe that at least half of us carried things like that in our packs?Why do people always lie about us?So,fuck you Michael Herr!

I'll try to add some more thoughts later.......