The Vietnam War/Quotes

"He fired at it [the baby] with a .45. He missed. We all laughed. He got up three or four feet closer and missed again. We laughed. Then he got up right on top and plugged him."

- Transcript of the Court Martial for the My Lai Massacre

"Private Robert Maples: Calley and Meadlo were firing at the people. They were firing into the hole. I saw Meadlo firing into the hole. Interrogator: Well, tell me, what was so remarkable about Meadlo that made you remember him? RM: He was firing and crying. I: He was pointing his weapon away from you and then you saw tears in his eyes? RM: Yes."

- Transcript of the Court Martial for the My Lai Massacre

"Mike Wallace: So you fired something like sixty-seven shots? Paul Meadlo: Right. Wallace: And you killed how many? At that time? Meadlo: Well, I fired them automatic, so you can’t- You just spray the area on them and so you can’t know how many you killed ‘cause they were going fast. So I might have killed ten or fifteen of them. Wallace: Men, women, and children? Meadlo: Men, women, and children. Wallace: And babies? Meadlo: And babies."

- Interview with Meadlo on CBS News

"'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,' a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong."

- Journalist Peter Arnett in The New York Times

"We sure liberated the hell out of this place."

- Attributed to an anonymous soldier, on a village destroyed during a firefight

"Otto: You know your problem? You don't like winners. Archie: Winners? Otto: Yeah. Winners. Archie: Winners, like North Vietnam? Otto: Shut up. We didn't lose Vietnam. It was a tie. Archie: I'm tellin' ya baby, they kicked your little ass there. Boy, they whooped yer hide REAL GOOD."

- A Fish Called Wanda

"Bomb the village Kill the people Throw some napalm in the square Do it on a Sunday morning Kill them on their way to prayer Ring the bell inside the schoolhouse Watch the kiddies gather round Lock and load with your 240 Mow them little motherfuckers down"

- "Napalm Sticks to Kids" - US Army Military Cadence during the Vietnam War

"They're sending me to Vietnam. It's this whole other country."

- Forrest Gump

"The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up, united as one man."

- Ho Chi Minh

"In the final analysis, it's their war: they're the ones who have to win it or lose it."

- President John F. Kennedy

"And it's 1, 2, 3, what're we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn Next stop is Vietnam. And it's 5, 6, 7, open up the pearly gates Well there ain't no time to wonder why Whoopee! We're all gonna die."

- "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag", Country Joe and the Fish

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

- John Kerry, addressing a U.S. Senate subcommittee in April, 1971

"How are you, GI Joe? It seems to me that most of you are poorly informed about the going of the war, to say nothing about a correct explanation of your presence over here. Nothing is more confused than to be ordered into a war to die or to be maimed for life without the faintest idea of what's going on."

- North Vietnamese propaganda broadcast directed at US troops

"Lyndon B. Johnson told the nation, "Have no fear of escalation. I am trying everyone to please. Though it isn't really war, We're sending fifty thousand more, To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese.""

- "Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation", Tom Paxton

"We're waist deep in the Big Muddy And the big fool says to push on."

- "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", Pete Seeger

"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam."

- Martin Luther King, 1967

"We weren't on the wrong side. We were the wrong side."

- Daniel Ellsberg

"Let's "do something crazy" in Vietnam: let's get out"

- Paul Harvey, 1968

"Anyone wanting to commit ground troops to the mainland of Asia should have his head examined."

- Douglas MacArthur, 1961

"The US was and is the world's leading naval power, but fearing to offend the Soviets, failed to blockade Haiphong. A river of motions flowed through that port to be used against South Vietnam and its allies."

- Nguyen Cao Ky

"More recently, we (the John Birch Society) have been emphasizing the horror of wasting American lives in Vietnam in a stage managed exhibition carried on by Washington for the political advantage of being at war and without any will to win."

- Robert W. Welch, 1965

"Kirk: Bones, do you remember the twentieth century brush wars on the Asian continent? Two giant powers involved, Much like the Klingons and ourselves. Neither side felt they could pull out. McCoy: Yes. I remember. It went on year after bloody year. Kirk: What would you have suggested, that one side arm its friends with an overpowering weapon? Mankind would have never lived to travel space if they had. No. The only solution is what happened back then. Balance of power. McCoy: And if the Klingons give their side even more? Kirk: Then we arm our side with exactly that much more. A balance of power. The trickiest, most difficult, dirtiest game of all, but the only one that preserves both sides."

- Star Trek, "A Private Little War"

"You cannot defend to the death, when every week you hear from your family that they don't have enough food to eat. And you look to Saigon, the rich had food, liquor, they have money, they relax, have a good time. Why fight to the death? For Whom?"

- ARVN Marine

"Once upon a time, our traditional goal in war and can anyone doubt we are at war? - was victory. Once upon a time, we were proud of our strength,our military power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling international posture."

- Barry M. Goldwater, 1962

"Why should we draft our sons to fight an American war?"

- An Anonymous South Vietnamese citizen

"You got us in this mess. and now you can't get us out, because you don't know where the hell you're going? Do you?!"

- Chief Phillips, Apocalypse Now

"In compliance with modern politics, the war was originally intended to save South Vietnam from communism, but the proclaimed purpose of the war was not to protect freedom and individual rights, it was not to establish capitalism or any particular social system-it was to uphold the South Vietnamese right to self-determination i.e the right to vote themselves into any sort of system (including communism, as American propagandists kept proclaiming)

The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause of a free social system and the value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voter's power, unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny. Outside the context of a free society, who would want to die for the right to vote? Yet that is what the American soldiers were asked to die for-not even their own vote, but to secure that privilege for the South Vietnamese, who had no knowledge of rights or freedom.

Picking up the liberals' discarded old slogan of World War I days "the self-determination of nations"-the American conservatives were trying to hide the American system capitalism under some sort of collective cover. And it is not capitalism that most of them were (and are) advocating, it was a mixed economy. Who would want to die for a mixed economy?"

- Ayn Rand, The Lessons of Vietnam, 1975