The Ten Year Struggle

    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?

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