Tag: Viet Nam War

Quotes June 04, 2021

North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.
RICHARD NIXON
 
 
 
 
We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
 
 
 
 
The Vietnam War was a historical turning point for the U.S., a moment when political leaders plunged the military into an unwinnable colonial struggle that killed millions and bred distrust of Washington’s word.
FRED DONNER
 
 
 
 
The Vietnam War was arguably the most traumatic experience for the United States in the twentieth century. That is indeed a grim distinction in a span that included two world wars, the assassinations of two presidents and the resignation of another, the Great Depression, the Cold War, racial unrest, and the drug and crime waves.
DONALD M. GOLDSTEIN
 
 
 
 
Although both popular imagination and academic research on the Vietnam War continue to flourish, there is no consensus in sight. Only the U.S. Civil War rivals the power of the Vietnam War to divide and inflame generations upon generations of Americans.
ANDREAS W. DAUM
 
 
 
 
I have to keep my mouth shut about Nam though. All of these guys want to believe they were fighting an honorable war, and that their conduct deserves respect. They want the public to treat them like they’re heroes–like the WWII vets were. Instead, smart ass, pampered kids call them names and throw dog shit at them.
BUD RUDESILL
 
 
 
 
Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.
DALTON TRUMBO
 
 
 
 
In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After ‘Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.
JAN KARON
 
 
 
 
We fought in a very terrible war. We were subjected to Agent Orange…. I was blinded in one eye and have heart, lung and breathing problems. I know I have all these problems from Vietnam, plus loss of hearing…. I just think all of us vets need more help than what we get.
LESLIE ELLER
 
 
 
 
Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.
MICHAEL HERR
 
 
 
 
For many Americans, the enduring memory of the Vietnam War is of the protests that defined a generation and shattered the illusion of America’s purity on the world stage. But for the 3 million men and women who served in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and early 1970s, the memories are more visceral: the fog of combat, the stench of death, the sting of returning to a seemingly ungrateful nation.
EDITOR
 
 
 
 
Combat is fast, unfair, cruel, and dirty. It is meant to be that way so that the terrible experience is branded into the memory of those who are fortunate enough to survive. It is up to those survivors to ensure that the experience is recorded and passed along to those who just might want to try it.
BRUCE H. NORTON

Viet Nam War: Pabst Blue Ribbon Presents: The Greatest Beer Run Ever

At a time when the Vietnam War was at its height, one man, John “Chickie” Donohue, snuck back into the war zone to find his 3 closest friends and buy them a beer.

Skip to 4:53 to get to the story

Quotes December 15, 2017

The Vietnam War in Forty Quotes
Blog Post by James M. Lindsay
Rachael Kauss and Alex Laplaza assisted in the preparation of this post.

Excerpts:
“We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” President Lyndon Johnson in a speech at Akron University on October 21, 1964, two weeks before the presidential election.
 
 
 
 
“We do this [escalating U.S. military involvement in Vietnam] in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam—and all who seek to share their conquest—of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.”
President Lyndon Johnson, speaking to the nation on April 7, 1965 explaining his decision to send U.S. combat troops to Vietnam.
 
 
 
 
“I think we have all underestimated the seriousness of this situation. Like giving cobalt treatment to a terminal cancer case. I think a long protracted war will disclose our weakness, not our strength.”
Deputy Secretary of State George W. Ball answering President Lyndon Johnson’s questionat a White House meeting on July 21, 1965 about whether the United States could win a war in the “jungle rice-paddies” of Vietnam.
 
 
 
 
“And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support.”
President Richard Nixon in his address to the nation on the war in Vietnam on November 3, 1969.
 
 
 
 
“Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”
President Richard Nixon in his address to the nation on the war in Vietnam on November 3, 1969.
 
 
 
 
“If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”
President Richard Nixon in a nationwide address on April 30, 1970 explaining his decision to invade Cambodia.
 
 
 
 
“This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart.”
Senator Frank Church (D-ID) speaking on the Senate floor on May 13, 1970.

Quotes November 03, 2017


I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost – and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.
Walter Cronkite
 
 
 
 
I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.
Maya Lin
 
 
 
 
What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam war is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not.
John Gregory Dunne

 
 
 
 
When I first got back from the war, I said, ‘I’m gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.’ So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.
Karl Marlantes
 
 
 
 
I don’t have any respect at all for the scum-bags who went to Canada to avoid the draft or to avoid doing their fair share.
R. Lee Ermey

 
 
 
 


The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is more than just a tourist attraction, standing as a stark reminder of the lives lost during the war.
Here are six quotes from veterans on what the Vietnam Memorial means to them.

 
 
 
 
“It chokes me up every time. It brings back a lot of memories because there are a lot of guys on the wall that I remember, and when I look at their names I remember them just like it was yesterday.”
Frank Stroble, who served as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam
 
 
 
 
“The Wall is actually more than just 58,000-plus names. These are individuals. These are people who have given their lives. These are, many of them, my friends.”
Richard Schroepfer, Vietnam War veteran, 1st Infantry Div – 1st of the 18th Infantry “Swamp Rats”
 
 
 
 
“Before the Wall, all the monuments were big, giant statues and stuff like that. It’s like a shrine. To me, it’s still like the first time I’d seen it. My feelings there will always be the same.”
Larry Carter, a sergeant during the war, told The Patriot-News
 
 
 
 
“The immensity of that wall and all the names, it’s just incredible. I think that the Wall is meant to make people in general, the population, remember what the costs of war are.”
Tom Freedman, an Army combat veteran, told The Patriot-News
 
 
 
 

“I try not to think of them as being on The Wall, but how I knew them before they got there.”
Gene Harris, who served multiple tours in Vietnam, told CBS DC.
 
 
 
 
“I don’t know what it is. You have to touch it. There’s something about touching it.”
Kenneth Young, a Vietnam veteran visiting the wall in 1982, told The New York Times
 
 
 
 
https://youtu.be/pIv4tYcxeGA