It’s a bitter irony that “Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American
War in Vietnam” by Nick Turse was largely ignored by both mainstream
Vietnamese media and bloggers. His book documented the secret history of
U.S.-led atrocities against Vietnamese peasants during the Vietnam War. One
case, highlighted by the Washington Post
was Operation Speedy Express, conducted in the Mekong Delta by the 9th Infantry
Division under the command of Maj. Gen. Julian Ewell. “Turse documents the
savagery of Speedy Express, the gratuitous execution of thousands of civilians
in pursuit of high body counts and career advancement,” the newspaper wrote in
its review.
Another review praises the book,
which it says, “argues, persuasively and chillingly, that the mass rape,
torture, mutilation and slaughter of Vietnamese civilians was not an aberration
– not a one-off atrocity called My Lai – but rather the systematized policy of
the American war machine”.
While Americans are reading
Turse’s book in the hope that “the truth, purely told by writers as gifted as
Nick Turse, is the only thing that has the power to cleanse [them]”, that type
of truth is simply forgotten in Vietnam .
Why?
The language barrier is obviously
the first hurdle.
But I think the real reason lies
in the fact that remembering atrocities during the war brings nothing pleasant
to both sides: those who fought for the U.S. and those who fought against
it. Denying that such atrocities happened and then ignoring the whole thing is
simply the most convenient thing to do for the former; Looking the other way is
also convenient for the latter as, for them, America is the land of new business
opportunities.
Only the poor people of my land
suffered the indignities and deaths silently during the war, their fate simply
forgotten here despite the publicity Turse’s book received in the U.S. People
here are busy evicting peasants out of their land, again, in the name of
development.
