Nick Turse. Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2013. 370 S. $30.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8050-8691-1.

Reviewed by Thomas B. Weyant

Published on H-1960s (July, 2013)

Commissioned by Zachary J. Lechner (Centenary College of Louisiana)

American atrocities during the long war in cent men, women, and children dead for no ap‐ Vietnam were not limited to the My Lai massacre parent reason. He asks whether the United States or other random acts of violence; rather they military created a culture of violence in which the were part of a larger coordinated policy by Ameri‐ wanton killing of civilians was not only accepted, can military leaders. According to journalist Nick but encouraged, through the incentivizing of vio‐ Turse, , complicit historians, and lence that measured results in body counts. If the time conspired to obscure this “real” story of Viet‐ system, from basic training up to the strategic nam. Through vivid descriptions of the horrors of planning level, created a sense of ruthless vio‐ war, Turse attempts to unlock what he calls the lence as an acceptable battlefeld tactic, Turse “hidden history” of the . Written for raises the question of how much agency soldiers a popular audience, Kill Anything That Moves of‐ on the ground had in refusing immoral or illegal fers an important addition to the historiography orders. Further, Turse investigates how American of the Vietnam War by attempting to strip away perceptions of their own superiority, whether mil‐ the layers of history that have obscured the depth itary or racial, helped to construct the plans for and breadth of civilian casualties and sufering war and allowed American soldiers and their during the U.S. phase of the confict. commanders to justify their actions. At the heart of the text rests questions about In the end, Turse concludes that the My Lai the American way of war in Vietnam. Turse con‐ massacre was not an aberration but the standard fronts the reader with the difcult question of and that the United States engaged in a coordinat‐ whether the United States constructed and insti‐ ed efort to commit and cover up these war tuted a policy that called for, or at least resulted crimes. He argues that My Lai’s uniqueness was in, hundreds of incidents like the massacre at My not that it happened, but that it became so public. Lai in , which left hundreds of inno‐ One cannot explain away the level of atrocities in H-Net Reviews

Vietnam by suggesting that it was only a few “bad policy statements represented nothing more than apples.” Additionally, Turse argues that by seeing public relations issued with a wink and a nod and My Lai as the exception rather than the rule, his‐ were meant only for public consumption and not torians have dismissed other atrocities as mis‐ considered standard operating procedures in takes when they were really part of a larger sys‐ country. Thus, basic training and implied orders tem of American war crimes. There were a few to kill everything superseded ofcial orders to dis‐ heroes, in Turse’s mind, who stood up against the tinguish between combatants and noncombat‐ war machine, like service members Ron Riden‐ ants. hour and Jamie Henry who served as “whistle- As a work of popular history, Kill Anything blowers,” shining a light upon the atrocities com‐ That Moves, lacks a bibliography, though Turse mitted by the United States in Vietnam. According does provide copious notes. Turse is skeptical of to Turse, the war in Vietnam was a criminal act ofcial U.S. government sources, because he (from how America fought the war to why it views them as propaganda. To ofset this absence fought it) and the media at the time and histori‐ of material, he draws from sources he deems ans after the fact have left this crime unreported. more credible: Vietnamese government records, To support this assertion, the bulk of Turse’s veterans’ memories from the interviews he con‐ work sets out to explore how the U.S. military cre‐ ducted, and published participant narratives (of ated a system in which mass civilian killing could average soldiers, not the commanders). It appears fourish, thereby placing the blame for these that Turse accepts veterans’ memories uncritical‐ atrocities squarely on the shoulders of the com‐ ly; their perceptions of what happened become manders rather than the soldiers in the feld. crystallized facts for Turse. He also utilizes the Turse sees the seeds of atrocity initially sown dur‐ records of a Pentagon task force set up to investi‐ ing boot camp where drill instructors instilled in gate suspected atrocities, the Vietnam War Crimes soldiers a sense of unquestioning obedience to Working Group, whose collected papers in the Na‐ their superior ofcers. He maintains that the psy‐ tional Archives contain hundreds of documents chological trauma inficted on recruits at boot pertaining to alleged incidents. In terms of sec‐ camp allowed the military to foster a culture of vi‐ ondary sources, Turse leans heavily on popular olence. Once in the feld, soldiers found rewards, histories rather than academic works and relies a promotions, and even rest tied to “body counts,” a great deal on the eforts of other investigative metric used to gauge the enemy’s ability to sustain journalists. On the whole, the notes suggest a its war efort. Body counts were a part of Secre‐ deeply researched work, though more secondary tary of Defense Robert McNamara’s eforts to ra‐ works by academic historians could have helped tionalize warfare through “technowar,” and this give the text added weight beyond the realm of emphasis made mass civilian death more likely as popular history. soldiers were encouraged to make little distinc‐ In part, Turse’s sources refect where he sees tion between enemy combatant and civilians. The his work entering the historiography: as popular policy of “overkill,” as Turse calls it, led to the rather than academic history. From its construc‐ near-total destruction of civilians, villages, forests, tion to its arguments, Kill Anything That Moves and anything else that the Americans could shoot, targets the general reader. The prose is stunning bomb, burn, or bulldoze. Thus, the war intention‐ and engaging and provides a voyeuristic look at ally disrupted civilian life, destroying villages and the seedy underside of America’s war efort in displacing millions who fed to cities only to en‐ Vietnam. Turse's case studies of provinces that counter a diferent set of horrors. According to saw signifcant atrocities (in chapter 4) help to Turse, the rules of engagement and other ofcial

2 H-Net Reviews build his case for the regularity of Vietnamese conception of the war, he maintains, a “kill every‐ sufering at the hands of the American war ma‐ thing” mentality was constructed that inevitably chine; however, the case studies of individuals made mass civilian killings part of the war plan who embodied the American war ethos of kill instead of an aberration. Solders in the feld who anything (in chapter 6) serve more to titillate and made decisions to kill civilians did so, not of their infame the passions of readers than to provide own volition, but because they were brainwashed deep analysis. On occasion Turse does speak of is‐ into becoming killing machines, unwilling to sues of race and gender, though given his target question the orders of their commanders. In this audience, he refrains from detailed scholarly dis‐ argument, Turse absolves the soldiers for commit‐ cussions on the topics and provides instead super‐ ting atrocities because they were following orders fcial presentations which illustrate his arguments or incapable of discerning whether their actions about the horrors of war. were illegal, an ambiguity that would never have Though he situates his work in popular histo‐ happened had the soldiers not been brainwashed ry, Turse does see himself engaged in a distinct to become part of America’s killing system. discourse on the nature of the Vietnam War. Turse’s vision of a conspiracy to commit atrocities Turse positions the book as a challenge to the sup‐ seems overwrought, as it unconvincingly removes posedly dominant neoconservative reconciliation‐ the agency of individual soldiers and suggests that ist narrative, which suggests that the war was any action taken by any sector of the military or generally right and winnable and that U.S.-perpe‐ administration was coordinated at the highest lev‐ trated civilian killings were random acts, not part els and does not represent the independent ac‐ of a systemic culture of violence. He takes aim at tions of rogue forces. This top-down causality al‐ “apologist historians” who have obscured the lows Turse to see conspiracies behind every ac‐ harsh reality of America’s war against Vietnam tion and to dismiss any ofcial eforts to stop the and argues that his exploration of the atrocities atrocities (for example, through instituting rules committed in Vietnam represents “the real war, of engagement that forbade the killing of civil‐ the one that barely appears at all in the tens of ians) as mere propaganda meant to cover leaders thousands of volumes written about Vietnam” (p. and leave the soldiers holding the proverbial 22). But Turse does not cite any of these supposed‐ (body) bag. ly disingenuous histories or their misguided histo‐ There is something ironic about a book that rians except Guenter Lewy, who stands as the sole seeks to contextualize the My Lai massacre yet embodiment of all historians who ofer a diferent does not fully contextualize the war itself. Though interpretation than Turse on the nature of the Turse sees the lessons of Vietnam being ignored war. in the contemporary American conficts in Iraq Turse has won great praise already from fel‐ and Afghanistan, he makes very limited eforts to low journalists and a few academic historians for discern how World War II, the Korean confict, or exploring the pervasiveness of mass civilian even the Cold War infuenced the decisions made killing and other war crimes during the Vietnam in prosecuting the war in Vietnam. There is a War; however, the issues of conspiracy and con‐ great wealth of historiography that explores race, textualization cause problems for his overall nar‐ empire, and the American way of war (all of rative. Much of Turse’s argument rests on an as‐ which are ideas central to Turse’s arguments) that sumption of direct causality between the goals of he does not consult or engage with in a meaning‐ the war planners and the atrocities committed on ful way. The author acknowledges the existence of the ground. From basic training to the overall Vietnamese atrocities but quickly dismisses them as not relevant to his argument; the result is that

3 H-Net Reviews his look at atrocities in Vietnam places American to incidents in a false vacuum. Furthermore, Turse’s concerns with the present day cause him to ig‐ nore the larger cultural, political, and economic world in which the United States fought the Viet‐ nam War. The overall result is a lack of sufcient contextualization. These two drawbacks, perhaps the result of Turse’s targeting an audience of general history readers, should not discourage scholars from reading Kill Anything That Moves. By highlighting the atrocities committed in Vietnam, Turse helps to dispel any lingering heroic myth of America’s benevolent empire. In suggesting a direct causal link between the way the war managers planned and constructed the war efort and how it played out in country, Turse demonstrates that the met‐ rics used to determine success (body counts) com‐ bined with the American sense of superiority to create the conditions in which mass civilian death and sufering occurred. Academic historians will be disappointed that issues of race, gender, and power, which pop up throughout the text, are not explored in greater depth. Still, this gap leaves scholars a new point from which to explore these ideas. Turse’s powerful prose ofers a haunting image of the American war efort in Vietnam that helps to humanize the devastation wrought by the confict and provides ways to complicate the nar‐ rative of the war by ofering a fuller picture of events on the ground.

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Citation: Thomas B. Weyant. Review of Turse, Nick. Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. H-1960s, H-Net Reviews. July, 2013.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=38666

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