Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (American Empire Project)

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Hieu, Trung (2007-12-29). "The Christmas bombings of Hanoi in retrospect". Voice of Vietnam (VOV) . Retrieved 7 May 2018. Among the many reasons for this suspicion was that, in village after village, U.S. patrols regularly encountered women and children plus a few old men, but almost no military-age males. "All through the whole entire time that I spent out in the field, I could literally count the amount of men or boys that we saw," one veteran who spent a year in combat told me. "You go into a village, and there was never a man in a village. Never," said another. To Americans, the reason was obvious: the "missing" men, all the village's sons and husbands, were Viet Cong guerrillas. This was, of course, one definite possibility. But it was also quite possible that the men were serving in the U.S.-allied South Vietnamese forces; or were draft dodgers, hiding from armies of both sides; or were off working in a distant rice paddy, market, or town, trying to earn a living. In any case, most older boys and young men knew to flee whenever U.S. or South Vietnamese troops arrived, since they were prime targets for conscription, arrest, or execution. Women with children and elders couldn't move as fast and stood a somewhat better chance of being spared, so they were often left behind. Meticulously researched, Kill Anything That Moves is the most comprehensive account to date of the war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Vietnam and the efforts made at the highest levels of the military to cover them up. It's an important piece of history. author of Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and Frances FitzGerald

a b c Lerner, Lawrence (2016-08-17). "RU-N Faculty and Alumni Win Prestigious 2016 American Book Award". Rutgers University-Newark . Retrieved 7 May 2018. It was a commonplace story. Vietnamese revolutionary forces, decisively outgunned by their adversaries, relied heavily on mines and other booby traps, as well as sniper fire and ambushes. Their way of war was generally to strike swiftly and immediately withdraw. Unable to deal with an enemy that overwhelmingly dictated the time, place, and duration of combat, U.S. forces took to destroying whatever they could manage. Often, civilians paid the price. If you are faint-hearted, you might want to keep some smelling salts nearby when you read it. It's that bad...The truth hurts. This is an important book.” ―Dayton Daily NewsWatson, Justin (2002). The Martyrs of Columbine: Faith and Politics in Tragedy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 25. ISBN 9780312239572. A powerful case…With his urgent but highly readable style, Turse delves into the secret history of U.S.-led atrocities. He has brought to his book an impressive trove of new research—archives explored and eyewitnesses interviewed in the United States and Vietnam. With superb narrative skill, he spotlights a troubling question: Why, with all the evidence collected by the military at the time of the war, were atrocities not prosecuted?”— Washington Post

At the end of it, if you ask people what happened at My Lai, they would say: "Oh yeah, isn't that where Lieutenant Calley went crazy and killed all those people?" No, that was not what happened. Lieutenant Calley was one of the people who went crazy and killed a lot of people at My Lai, but this was an operation, not an aberration.11 Of course, not every Vietnamese villager believed in the revolution or saw it as the best expression of nationalist patriotism. Even villages in revolutionary strongholds were home to some supporters of the Saigon government. And many more farmers simply wanted nothing to do with the conflict or abstract notions like nationalism and communism. They worried mainly about their next rice crop, their animals, their house and children. But bombs and napalm don't discriminate. As gunships and howitzers ravaged the landscape, as soldiers with M-16 rifles and M-79 grenade launchers swept through the countryside, Vietnamese villagers of every type—supporters of the revolution, sympathizers of the Saigon regime, and those who merely wanted to be left alone—all perished in vast numbers. Meticulously researched, Kill Anything That Moves is the most comprehensive account to date of the war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Vietnam and the efforts made at the highest levels of the military to cover them up. It's an important piece of history.”— Frances FitzGerald, author of Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in VietnamAnd then, in a stunning reversal, almost immediately after the exposure of the My Lai massacre, war crime allegations became old hat—so commonplace as to be barely worth mentioning or looking into. In leaflets, pamphlets, small-press books, and "underground" newspapers, the growing American antiwar movement repeatedly pointed out that U.S. troops were committing atrocities on a regular basis. But what had been previously brushed aside as propaganda and leftist kookery suddenly started to be disregarded as yawn-worthy common knowledge, with little but the My Lai massacre in between.15