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 in September, 1963

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

COL Morgan: Her name is Lin. Her father was chief of the Han Phou province.
COL Cai: Until he refused to cooperate with the Viet Cong.
COL Mike Kirby: So they killed him.
COL Cai: They murdered him and her little brother in the most hideous way.

COL Mike Kirby: That's their style.

—The Green Berets

The Vietnam War has shown that in the long run we cannot keep the people of the world from controlling their own affairs, whether they're doing so badly or not. Whether they have dictatorships or not is their own business. It's not the business of the United States to deplete our treasures and sacrifice the lives of citizens in order to impose our solutions on these countries.

—Murray Rothbard, 1976

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