Melanie
Manuel
ASA 150E
001
18 January
2020
The
chapters of Nick Turse’s Kill Anything that Moves were eye-opening and
shocking, as for example the My Lai massacre was something I had never heard of
up until this point. These chapters serve the purpose in showcasing the truth
behind technical jargon like “body count” and the ways that “enemy” bodies were
perceived during the Vietnam War. There seems to some kind of forced amnesia
with the soldiers that were there, whether they participated in the murders, rape,
or simply witnessing, these were events of the war that had gotten swept under
the rug. It is both appalling and unsurprising that this is how the United
States has chosen to deal with its own mistakes, but Turse seeks to highlight
the truth that lies beneath the hegemonic discourses. He uses conversations he
has shared with officers to parse out the truth behind what happened overseas
and highlights the inconsistencies within certain reports, and even has a
chapter as to how this need to rack up such a large body count comes to be. Horrifically
enough, this need for a large body count comes from conditioned training of combat
training; it instills a need to kill as many as possible, even if it means killing
children… as the title suggests, combat training suggested killing anything and
everything that moved, no matter the cost.
The image
I’ve attached is of women and children in fear for their lives—these were a
large number of the victims at the hands of American soldiers. It’s uncomfortable,
but a harsh reality we all needed to hear when thinking of this war.
Works
Cited
Turse,
Nick. Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. 2013.
New York: Metropolitan Books.
Image Used
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/09/24/there-no-rehabilitating-vietnam-war
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