In one of its most serious omissions, the series gives short shrift to the destruction wreaked by the US military’s spraying of deadly chemical herbicides containing the poison dioxin over much of Vietnam, the most common of which was Agent Orange. This is one of the most tragic legacies of the war […] Read more ›
The new series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick is mesmerizing. But it doesn’t answer the questions about the Vietnam War that many are still seeking […] Read more ›
Rape of Vietnamese women by US troops “took place on such a large scale that many veterans considered it standard operating procedure.” It was “systematic and collective”; an “unofficial military policy”. One soldier termed it a “mass military policy.” Indeed, rape followed by murder of Vietnamese women was “so common that American soldiers had a special term for the soldiers who committed the acts in conjunction: a double veteran” […] Read more ›
In the early 1970s, I went to Quang Ngai province, where in the village of My Lai, between 347 and 500 men, women and infants were murdered by American troops (Burns prefers “killings”). At the time, this was presented as an aberration: an “American tragedy” (Newsweek ). In this one province, it was estimated that 50,000 people had been slaughtered during the era of American “free fire zones”. Mass homicide […] Read more ›
The poisonous spraying continued for a decade until it was stopped in 1971 […] Read more ›
The regular US Army invaded and occupied part of Vietnam in the 1960-1970s committing terrible crimes of genocide against the local civilians. A total death toll of civilian population in the North Vietnam is 587.000 […] Read more ›
I have personally known many Vietnam veterans who were destroyed by their experiences in Vietnam […] Read more ›
The amount of bombs dropped by Americans on the innocent citizens of tiny French Indochina was more than twice the amount of bombs dropped in Europe, Africa and Asia during the Second World War […] Read more ›
