Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam - Nick Turse [epub]

Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civilians, winner of the Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction.

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few "bad apples." But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."

Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded--what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

After reading Turse's meticulous, extraordinary, and oddly moving account, it's hard to avoid concluding that the US record in Vietnam has more in common with the Wehrmacht and the Imperial Japanese Army than "the greatest generation" that fought those enemies in World War II.
—Jeff Stein