Summary of Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 In 1967, members of Company B, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, were sent into the village of Trieu Ai in Quang Tri, northernmost South Vietnam. They were told to kill everyone in the village and burn it down.
#2 The U. S. military was designed to strip recruits of their previous learning and experiences, and replace them with a military mindset. This was done through frequent punishments, which were crucial to the process.
#3 The American government’s official stance was that all Vietnamese were to be distrusted, but many soldiers were taught that the enemy was anything with slant eyes who lived in a village.
#4 The laws of war are very complicated, and many soldiers, especially those who were not given specialized training regarding the added responsibilities and moral complexities of fighting a guerrilla war in villages filled with civilians, had little understanding of them.

Sujets

• Military
• Vietnam War

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 27 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669393993
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 1967, members of Company B, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, were sent into the village of Trieu Ai in Quang Tri, northernmost South Vietnam. They were told to kill everyone in the village and burn it down.

#2

The U. S. military was designed to strip recruits of their previous learning and experiences, and replace them with a military mindset. This was done through frequent punishments, which were crucial to the process.

#3

The American government’s official stance was that all Vietnamese were to be distrusted, but many soldiers were taught that the enemy was anything with slant eyes who lived in a village.

#4

The laws of war are very complicated, and many soldiers, especially those who were not given specialized training regarding the added responsibilities and moral complexities of fighting a guerrilla war in villages filled with civilians, had little understanding of them.

#5

The American military had a history of using torture and the threat of it to get information out of prisoners. In 1971, a reporter visited a class filled with second lieutenants at Fort Benning, and watched as the instructor spelled out a scenario in which an enemy machine gunner causes six U. S. casualties, but then stops firing and surrenders, unarmed.

#6

During the Vietnam War, life was measured by the distance from the rice paddy to the bunker. Every second mattered immensely, and people had to make risk assessments every time they left the confines of a shelter to get water or relieve themselves.

#7

The Americans lived in a different reality. They were not able to distinguish a civilian bomb shelter from an enemy fighting position, and they never knew who might be inside. They would often throw grenades into the shelters to force whoever was sheltering below to come out.

#8

The Americans were generally ignorant of a melodic language of six subtle tones in which a one-syllable, two-letter word could have six different meanings. They shouted commands in incomprehensible, monotonal, ersatz Vietnamese.

#9

The massacre of Trieu Ai was carried out by Saigon’s allies, the American marines. The survivors never complained to their government about the massacre, even though it had been carried out by Saigon’s allies.

#10

The killing of a dozen civilians in October 1967, several months before the My Lai massacre, is barely a footnote in the bloodstained history of the Vietnam War. However, in the story of Trieu Ai, one can see virtually the entire war written small.

#11

The American military planners divided the map of South Vietnam into five sectors: a capital zone for Saigon and four tactical zones, numbered from I Corps in the north just below the DMZ to IV Corps in the south.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The American military had turned war making into a quantitatively oriented system by the mid-1960s. The philosophy behind it was simple: by combining American technological and economic prowess with sophisticated managerial capacities, the Pentagon meant to guarantee ultimate success on the battlefield.

#2

The American military was based on the body count as its primary indicator of success, and it was used to measure the success of each and every South Vietnamese community.

#3

The body count system was everywhere in Vietnam, from the delta to the DMZ. It was extremely common for soldiers to be pressured to meet body count expectations, and for low-level officers to keep their troops in the field longer if they hadn’t met those expectations.

#4

The body-count mind-set led to the inflation of kill counts, and the inclusion of civilian dead in those counts. Units were often pitted against each other in body-count competitions, and prisoners or detainees were sometimes murdered if they were short on kills.

#5

The practice of counting all dead Vietnamese as enemy kills became so widespread that one of the most common phrases of the war was: If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s VC.

#6

The American military had a deep-seated contempt for the Vietnamese people and their culture, and would often kill them without any hesitation.