The
Vietnam War has many vulgar secrets behind it. Much of the public does not know
of the atrocities that happened in Vietnam. The reason being is because the
American soldiers committed these vulgar acts under the orders of the
government. In the history books they tell you an estimate of how many American
soldiers lost their lives in this war trying to protect their country. What
they do not show are those innocent Vietnamese lives taken for no good reason.
There should not have been so many Vietnamese civilians killed in that war.
The Vietnamese people had to plan their lives
around the war. Nick
Turse explains, "The Vietnamese had to plan when to look for food,
when to farm, when to relieve themselves, when to hide in the bomb shelters,
and when to leave the shelter before the American soldiers arrived." For
ten years they had to put up with bombings and their homes being burned down.
Nick Turse "Kill Anything That Moves"”, reports that the
Vietnamese lived in bomb shelters after their homes were burned down.”
"American soldiers saw them as enemy bunkers and threw grenades in
them." Towns were ransacked, food supplies was poisoned, and towns left
uninhabited.
According to Nick Turse's "Kill
Anything That Moves", "American
soldiers produced body counts by the millions. They went about these actions by
massacres, tortures, molestations, and murders." The civilians were ordered to be lined up
and then killed, some people were used for target practice, and others
molested. In his interview with Bill Moyer, Nick Turse points out the Mali massacre.
“In this massacre five hundred Vietnamese civilians were murdered.” Another
massacre was seen by a veteran Jamie Henry that Nick
Turse interviewed himself. “Jamie
Henry overheard his point man, Captain Medina, give
an order to
kill anything that moves.
Within thirty seconds of the order, nineteen civilians were killed.” An
atrocity like this should never have happened to innocents.
The
Vietnamese civilians suffered for ten years in their own homeland. To the
Vietnamese this was an invasion of their home and they had to go into hiding.
Their lives were changed by this war and they lost many loved ones, and homes
to the path of destruction the American soldiers left behind. No one should
have to go through suffering like that. None of them deserved to die the way
they did just because they were suspected of being enemy
gorillas. They deserved to live out their lives to fullest, to make every day
worthwhile. Why did the Vietnamese civilians have to suffer? Do they still have
any feelings of rage towards the American soldiers for what they did?
