Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse, 2013
This week’s readings revisit the orthodox and revisionist schools of understanding the Vietnam War. These readings demonstrate the cyclical ways in which the field progresses and regresses, circling back to previously debunked arguments. Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves not only recycles anti-war and moralistic language of the orthodox school, but also regurgitates the exaggerated and politicized tales of American war crimes without critical examination. As Peter Zinoman and Gary Kulik point out in their thorough review, Turse blatantly ignores the existing literature and multifaceted debates on military violence, Vietnam War atrocities, and politicized official and popular accounts of war. Turse’s emphatic argument that the atrocities were “command-driven” or official strategies of war appear empty and weak compared to Gary Kulik’s multidimensional analysis of war crimes as narrative and reality in “War Stories”. Moreover, Turse’s extreme interpretation of American war crimes falls into Kulik’s exact critique of blind belief in what was essentially antiwar propaganda. Rather than repeat the extensive critiques of Turse’s work from Zinoman and Kulik’s review, roundtables, and VSG debates, I question instead the continual unproblematic acceptance of these tropes of American violence in the war.
The publication and popular acclaim of Kill Anything That Moves is a testament to the power of popular imagination and narrative to live on even when academic reason and evidence points elsewhere. Additionally, Turse’s work is attractive to broader audiences in its ability to provide a clear value judgment to the history of a traumatic war. Turse directs all blame of murder to the omnipotent evil state and situates himself as a dutiful advocate of the faceless Vietnamese ‘victims’ of war. Turse’s unproblematic rendition of state manufactured massacre buttresses the critical importance of Gary Kulik’s work that draws attention to the narrativity of war and war crimes.
In contrast to Turse’s superficial treatment of the politicized discourse around war crimes, Gary Kulik closely examines the ways in which American veterans, politicians, fiction writers, psychiatrists, and journalists contributed to produce the ‘narrative’ of American atrocities. Kulik effectively argues that these “war stories” were projections of the American anti-war psyche—examples of cruel, senseless atrocities reinforced in the public eye an image of a gruesome, evil, and unjustifiable war. For those Americans who vehemently opposed the war, they believed what they wanted to believe. For this reason, stories of war crimes continued to circulate, unverified and unchecked for exaggeration and pure falsification. Kulik demonstrates the recursive writing of “war stories” in literature, news, and war crime tribunal reports (WSI). Kulik closely deconstructs certain thematic and character tropes prevalent in these ‘war stories’: the psychologically crippled veteran, the American female hero and victim, the spit-upon veterans, and the young, drugged out, unrestrained soldier. By recognizing the ways in which American atrocities were invented, exaggerated, and politicized, Kulik begins to expose the realities of war and the agency of American soldiers. Urging those of the far left and orthodox school that it is in fact “time to let it go”, Kulik’s critical unraveling of the discourse of war is an important contribution towards the historiography of war violence (256).
Throughout his work, Kulik often uses the verb, noun, adjectival form of ‘frame’ to emphasize the active reorientation of truth towards a certain political purpose. At one point in his study, the ‘frame’ or war story assumes a life of its own; the ‘war story’ detaches itself from the individuals who produce it and even further from the actors supposedly involved. Kulik could have taken this concept of ‘frame’ much further to exemplify his discursive critique of “war stories.” For example, frames represent a part of a cinematic whole, carefully curated to narrate a story often through what directors and photographers choose to exclude. Actors ‘are framed’ for crimes and denied agency and justice. A physical frame supports a larger structure, but is hidden from view. Picture ‘frames’ function to exhibit, display, and finalize its contents. These metaphoric extensions of the idea of ‘frame’ border upon creative excessiveness, yet demonstrate the potential for Kulik to take his argument deeper into literary analysis and media studies.
Cindy A. Nguyen 
Interesting reviews. Have sent link to others, to include Gary Kulik.
Unrelated question: do you know of Ba Nguyen Thi Nam (Ba Cat Hanh Long) and her tragic fate?
https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_Th%E1%BB%8B_N%C4%83m
I am sorry. The link above isn’t the right one and my computer doesn’t want to send the right one. On the prior link click on item for “Nguyen Thi Nam (Ba Cat Hanh Long)” I can find no explanation why she is lost to history. Very, very few people know of her, her tragic story. Why is that?
Thank you. Apology for wrong link.
Glad to see these reviews by Cindy Nguyen and Vietnam veteran/scholar Bill Laurie’s mentioning of another book that he felt belonged in discussions of the subject of “truths” about Vietnam.
I was the creator and co-editor of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Sen. Judiciary Committee’s compendium study “The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam”, early 1972 (one of three such volumes on that subject, the other two being testimonies of D. Gareth Porter (there were almost no communist atrocities versus Dan Teodoru, a multi-times visitor to SVN and Cambodia and noted scholar, who did a rebuttal to Porter’s so-called scholarship/study). [NB: I was also a short-term MACV-accredited journalist in both So. Vietnam and Cambodia during the war].
If you want to see the names of many civilian victims of communist atrocities in just S. Vietnam alone, try to find a rare copy of “List of Civil Servants, Cadres and Civilians of the Republic of Vietnam Abducted by the Communists Since 1954”, a three inch thick SVN publication (March 24, 1973) containing the names and other data on 67,000 people whose horrible fates have been deliberately ignored by the “Hanoi Lobby” apologists.
Re Nick Turse and his book, I met a number of the “Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Vietnam”, some of whom claimed to have committed or seen U.S. atrocities against the So. Vietnamese civiians and VC POWS. Some of them have been proven to be frauds, including one Viet vet who should have been put into a loony bin many decades ago, while others made claims about events that could not have happened.
As for the Swift Boaters against John Kerry, I was one of the researchers on their book “Unfit for Command”. Without rehashing the whole issue, the least I can say about Kerry’s honesty is that it basically didn’t exist, and this was further exploded in the followup book “To Set The Record Straight” by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler.
Kerry is lucky that he wasn’t court-marshalled for killing innocent civilians himself (to which he admitted in some of his writings), and for aiding and abetting the enemy in a time of war (as a Naval Reserve officer with a security clearance) when he met with the VC/PRG and their No. Vietnamese masters in Paris on two admitted occasions, but possibly a third time.
The Vietnam war (and the communist wars against Cambodia and Laos) was a very complex event that had many players and incidents, like any other major war. However, in interviewing may U.S. combat soldiers over the past 47 years, I have never met one who I knew or could trust who said that we committed atrocities as a policy. If they did happen, they were done by rogue elements and terrible leaders (i.e. Major Calley).
My interviewees and friends were honorable soldiers, fighting to stop communist aggression and the resultant genocide that they knew would happen if we bugged out. Some of my friends were horribly tortured by the VC and the No. Vietnamese but some of what they went through will never be told (for various reasons).
People like Turse are journalistic parasites to whom the word “integrity”, “accuracy” and “honesty” mean nothing. I’m glad the Ms. Nguyen (and Kulik) helped to put these issues into their proper context, because without the “proper context”, the truth becomes irrelevant.
I served with the River Patrol Force in the Mekong Delta for 22 months. It was before Kerry reported for Swift Boat duty so we did not cross paths. However, my dislike for him started during his VVAW days when he threw his medals over the White House fence. Many folks are totally unaware of Kerry’s association with the North Vietnamese while he was still a Naval Reserve officer. Those actions were treasonous and in violation of the Hatch Act…UNLESS he was authorized to do so and if so, WHO authorized it? Many people have become bored with my reminding them of this fact and I still believe that one of the reasons Kerry may not have wanted his military records released during his presidential campaign is that Carter may have included him in his blanked pardon of the Viet Nam draft dodgers.
Someone who works for the American government aggressively defending the American government of any wrongdoing. Yawn. Your motives and agenda are transparent.
In the absence of any evidence to substantiate your defamatory imputation regarding the reviewer’s motives and agenda, your 0wn are rendered questionably opaque. As for being an employee of the American government: from 1973 onward the US Congress did its utmost to betray and abandon the Republic of South Viet Nam. That process was fuelled by the input from so called ‘antiwar’ activists and ‘winter soldiers’ testimonies and organisations such as the pr0-Hanoi Vietnam Veterans Against War. A truly murderous legislation of abandonment and betrayal was enacted by an ‘antiwar’ Congress. So given that historical track record, and the State Department’s ongoing grovelling to the Vietnamese Communist Party, I doubt very much if Cindy Nguyen intended to do herself any career favors with her review. Furthermore, as an academic in an academia dominated by ‘liberal’ and radical socialist professors, her review could hardly be described as self-serving in terms of her career. As your intellectually superior and figurative ‘yawn’, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen that pathetic trope deployed to attack somebody who has failed to conform to the dominant consensus regarding the Second Indochina War.
@Ian Goodman. In reference to my previous (see below, May 15, 1.32 pm), I believed incorrectly that your remarks were in direct response to the author’s review and not Max Friedman’s detailed comment in support of it. As your response to Mr Friedman’s statements was not a detailed rebuttal but a figurative ‘yawn’ followed up by a defamatory imputation that his ‘motives and agenda are transparent’ because of his employment, my earlier comment in reply should be related to him and not to Cindy Nguyen. Neither Max Friedman nor, for that matter, Cindy Nguyen have anything career-wise to gain from their respective assertions. Upon the contrary, they can reasonably expect to be attacked by unsubstantiated responses and slurs upon their character. Mr Friedman is not ‘defending the American government of any wrongdoing’; he is refuting the accusation that American troops committed war crimes as a matter of policy.
Absent in this hyper-partisan, ideologically driven book review by Ms. Nguyen is any semblance whatsoever of the irony that she herself is projecting her own pro-American psyche onto Mr. Turse’s book, and that Ms. Nguyen, Mr. Kulik, et al are themselves believing what they want to believe.
Sometimes the truth is hard to handle, and not everyone can handle it. It is not surprising to see the hysterical defensiveness coming from people who desperately want to believe the fantasy churned out by the mainstream media that American GIs in Vietnam were “heroes.”
Smearing hundreds of soldiers as liars because they had the bravery to blow the whistle and casting doubt on the myriad Vietnamese people whose families were slaughtered is simply despicable.
‘Smearing hundreds of soldiers as liars …. is despicable.’ Even if that accusation were true, and I don’t believe for a moment that it is, it would be less reprehensible than, for example, a book which smears thousands of soldiers as war criminals. Your double standards are as glaringly self-evident as the spurious assertions you employ to support them. If you have failed to observe that a considerable body of the so called ‘scholarship’ on the Vietnam War has been written by ‘hyper -partisan, ideologically driven academics’ whose ideologically sympathies are firmly with the ‘communist side’ then you are either sadly misinformed. Your assertion that there was ‘a fantasy churned out by the mainstream media that American GIs in Vietnam were “heroes”‘ is demonstrably false. From Hollywood to PBS, the opposite has been very much the case. Indeed, ‘sometimes the truth can be hard to handle and not everyone can handle it’ a fact that clearly applies more to you than it does to Cindy Nguyen.
How much did the feds pay you to write this biased drivel of a book review? Wouldn’t be surprised if Nguyen, Zinoman, Kulik, and other such “scholars” who attempt to whitewash America’s conduct during Vietnam were all on the same crooked payroll.
As over four years have past since your defamatory two-sentence slur. Have you found any evidence to back it up?
I served in Vietnam. This review is extremely flawed and dishonest. The atrocities that Americans committed in Vietnam were not some figment of the popular imagination; they were very real. There is photographic evidence of babies killed by American troops. There is photographic evidence of women raped by American troops. There is photographic evidence of American troops mutilating corpses. Killing quotas were indeed a thing, and we were indeed encouraged to be as bloodthirsty as possible. No amount of “context” justifies any of this. What we did in Vietnam was beyond the pale and unacceptable.
For you to suggest that veterans who spoke on the record about these atrocities were exaggerating or doing so for political gain is unbelievably disgusting. This review is nothing more than flimsy, speculative arguments supported by cherry-picked information in order to mitigate the seriousness and immorality of what Americans did in Vietnam. Nick Turse’s book—told by real Vietnam veterans, not some ivory tower academics—has far more credibility than anyone who criticizes it.
Reviews may or may not be ‘extremely flawed’ but your accusation of extreme dishonesty regarding this review suggests you have misunderstood its purpose and intent. There is a strawman aspect to this: there is valid criticism by the reviewer of how stories of war crimes have been disseminated and absorbed into the culture for political purposes. This is treated in your comment as if it were a blanket denial that war crimes of any kind occurred. Contextually, I find it difficult to believe you are unaware that the struggle between radical socialism and capitalist democracy continues apace, and far from your dismissal of ‘academics in ivory towers’, if is from within those ivory towers that the radical struggle against America, its history and its institutions and particularly it military is being waged, with a commendable minority of academics daring to challenge and expose the underlying nature of the historical status quo and how it has been reproduced.
You have served in Vietnam. So, too, have thousands of others. With regard to criticism of Turse’s underlying thesis that war crimes were indicative of the United States war effort in Vietnam, the following observations from a decorated Vietnam veteran may be of interest:
“I think it is important to correct this ‘baby killer’ stereotype, a falsehood that has been so unjustifiably used to demonize the honorable service of so many Vietnam veterans. Nothing could be further from the truth for most of us ….. I can tell you why I served. I was a 19-year-old idealist who believed in creating a world where all peoples could enjoy the democratic freedoms of religion, speech, political association and self governance, the democratic virtues that make America great. Many forget that the totalitarian communist regimes of that time vigorously suppressed and criminalized all these important rights that we take for granted.”
Those are the words of veteran, Thomas K. Equels. Both he and his unit were falsely accused of war crimes which Turse was subsequently obliged to retract.
https://www.prlog.org/12529094-agreement-reached-to-retract-story-that-decorated-vietnam-war-hero-participated-in-civilian-massacre.html
As you correctly state, ‘no amount of context’ justifies atrocities. However when atrocities both proven and alleged, are welded into a propagandist assertion that they are indicative of the United States war effort from the top down, then consideration of context is vital, not to excuse the perpetrators but to disprove Turse’s thesis that the atrocities were morally indicative of America’s conduct of war against North Vietnamese communist aggression.
You disgust me! John Birch level retellings of tired, old cold war propaganda wrapped in post-colonial theory designed to obfuscate that you are slavishly praising murderers. I hope your CIA checks dry up you ghoul. I hope you are proud to have some Nuremberg style monster in the comments so you know what you are defending!
So, for clarity’s sake, let’s itemise your unsubstantiated and defamatory slurs directed against the author of the review:
1. she is worthy of your disgust
2. she has deliberately employed an academic theory to praise murderers
3. she is paid by the CIA
4. you hope she is proud to have ‘some Nuremberg style monster’ in the comments
Re: 1-4 above
1. Given the, by now, characteristic absence of evidence, I find your opinion of Cindy Nguyen ‘disgusting’ and also infantile in tone.
2. Where does Cindy Nguyen praise murderers, let alone attempt to deceive by means of academic theory? Provide the evidence to back up that disgusting accusation.
3. She is paid by the CIA. Really! Provide the evidence. Surely you must have acquired some by now, or you’d have published a follow-up comment by way of apology.
4. With regard to your reference to ‘some Nuremberg style monster’ in the comments, if you are referring to any of the commenters thus far, I can tell you now you are on embarrassingly thin ice. If instead you are implying that Cindy Nguyen either by intention or through ignorance is a defender of Nazi-style war crimes, again provide the evidence that justifies your disgusting ad hominem assault upon the reviewer’s character and intellect.