We’re going in there and we’re killing South Vietnamese, we’re killing children, we’re killing women, we’re killing innocent people because we don’t want to have the war fought on American soil. Or because they are 12,000 miles away and they might get to be 11,000 miles away. I very seriously question whether we have that right. Those of us who stay here in the United States we must feel it when we use napalm and villages are destroyed and civilians are killed – this is also our responsibility. Robert Kennedy
Do we have the right here in the United States to say that we’re going to kill tens of thousands, make millions of people as we have refugees? Robert Kennedy, Face the Nation, 1967
We dropped more bombs on North Vietnam and South Vietnam than we dropped on Germany during the whole Second World War. What else can you bomb? Who else can you kill? Robert Kennedy
But still they’re a bloody good bunch of killers. Colonel George S Patton III
I am heartily in favour of America’s involvement in Vietnam. I’ve said so time and time again. Robert Gordon Menzies, former Australian PM
70,000,000 litres of chemical weapons of mass destruction were sprayed over the Vietnamese people, their water and their countryside. The most lethal was Agent Orange which defoliated, killed and contaminated everything in its path like a radioactive atomic bomb. To this day survivors suffer related cancers, genetic deformities and permanent environmental damage. Ring of Power, 2008
Korea and Vietnam were torn up like rags into half-communist half-capitalist countries. And became the playing field for phoney war games between the bankster super-powers. The lives of 4,000,000 Korean civilians and 33,000 American soldiers were sacrificed in the Korean war. ibid.
If you asked an American student, ‘How many people died in Vietnam?’ you’d get fifty-eight thousand Because they’ve dismissed the two, three, maybe four million Vietnamese who were killed by the United States and its allies in that war. Denis Halliday, UN Assistant Secretary General
I have never gotten even the courtesy of a reply or a return phone call. Total absolute silence. Bob Muller, Vietnam Veterans of America Association, interview John Pilger
When we used to petition for health care under GI Bill for Employment Programs they would cry poverty. They’d say it was fiscally irresponsible. Bob Muller
I’ve been through the anger, I’ve been through the rage and the sorrow and the depression and the alienation and everything – I’m just bitter right now. Vietnam veteran, interview John Pilger
Hello, Mum. Well the shit has really started here. I’ve been in combat two months now, almost since the day I got here. I’m so confused about it; all I think some days is I’m going crazy. These people – the Gooks – hate me; hate all us. So why am I almost dying for them? All the guys who are putting themselves on the line are Grunts like me. We don’t think this war is worth dying for. We don’t think the Lifers who won’t fight are worth dying for. We’ve talked this out and we’ve decided to tell the company commander we’re not walking into that bush again. At least we’ll go to jail where it’s safe. Kenneth (Grunt), letter to mother, shortly before being killed in action
There was no brass band waiting on you. Nothing. You weren’t a hero. You lost the war. Sergeant Mike Troyer
The Americans will not win the war in the South by bombing the North. They will never win this war. We will never submit. Ho Chi Minh, president North Vietnam, interview French television
We snuck back to examine the battlefield. I thought, Holy Fuck! Did we kill them all? What we saw made us shudder. Because we saw how small we were compared to them. As small as one of their thighs. I never understood why the Americans came to our country. Nguyen Van Lem
Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes. Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that. Richard Nixon, 1969
Throughout the war in Vietnam the United States has exercised a degree of restraint unprecedented in the annals of war. Richard Nixon
No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then and it is misreported now. Richard Nixon
As a result of what we have done in South Vietnam, not only has the psychology changed there, but also it has had a most beneficial effect in my opinion among other free nation countries who look to South Vietnam as a test. Richard Nixon
Throughout the years of negotiations we have insisted on peace with honor. Let us be proud of the young Americans who served with honor and distinction. Richard Nixon
As this long and difficult war ends I would like to address a few special words to the American people. Your steadfastness is supporting our insistence of peace with honor had made peace with honor possible. Richard Nixon
For once we’ve got to use the maximum power of this country against this shit-ass little country. To Win. The War. Richard Nixon, the Nixon tapes
Henry, you don’t have any idea ... You’re so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care. Richard Nixon, the Nixon tapes
Nixon: I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: That would drown about 200,000 people.
Nixon: Well no no no I’d rather use the nuclear bomb.
Kissinger: That I think would just be too much.
Nixon: The nuclear bomb? Does that bother you? Nixon tapes 25th April 1972
South Vietnam probably can never survive anyway. Nixon by Nixon: In His Own Words, Sky Atlantic 2018
The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn’t make it. Henry Kissinger
No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none. Henry Kissinger
We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape – to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance. Henry Kissinger, Foreign Affairs 48:2 1969
In public Nixon renewed his campaign pledge to bring an honourable end to the war. In private the President shared Kissinger’s view that the best peace would be achieved by force. The Trials of Henry Kissinger, 2002
Madman tactics failed to end the war as Nixon hoped. In fact his saturation bombing provoked a backlash at home fuelling mounting public protest and criticism. David Reynolds, Nixon in the Den, BBC 2015
The President was exhausted and drinking heavily. In May 1970 four students were shot dead on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio protesting for peace. The following weekend thousands of anti-war demonstrators converged on Washington. Nixon felt besieged. ibid.
Nixon suddenly flipped. Desperate to break out of the Den he summoned his driver. He drove down to the Lincoln Memorial. There in the early light he confronted some of the protesters. They were utterly astonished to encounter the President. And to hear rambling recollections of his own idealism at their age. ibid.
Nixon had extricated America from the mess, and got the boys home. ibid.
On a campus in Wisconsin an antiwar demonstration spiralled out of control, marking the first time that a student protest had turned violent. Storyville: How Vietnam Was Lost, BBC 2005; viz also David Maraniss, They Marched into Sunlight
[William H] Sewell [Chancellor of the Faculty] was an opponent of the Vietnam War. He voted against allowing Dow to recruit on campus but he was outvoted. ibid. [Dow manufactured Napalm; Sewell later summoned rozzers]
I had a dream, Ronnie. The other night. And you were speaking to a large crowd just like him [Kennedy]. Just like him. And you were saying great things. Born on the Fourth of July 1989 starring Tom Cruise & Willem Dafoe & Kyra Sedgwick & Raymond J Barry & Jerry Levine & Frank Whaley & Caroline Kava & Cordelia Gonzalez & Ed Lauter & John Getz & Michael Wincott & Edith Diaz & Bob Gunton et al, director Oliver Stone, mother