I read the article, The burden of atrocity: How Vietnam was exposed as a “dirty war” on ¹Salon.com (Friday, May, 2014). Assuming that Penny Lewis, Jacobin’s (article’s author) and Michael Uhl’s (author of Vietnam Awakening) reviews captured reliably the tone and content of Nick Turse’s book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War In Vietnam, it sounds like this volume should add more perspective to the already voluminous content floating out there about the “dirty war” and the dirty of war, in particular. Another book illustrating how the non-self-reflection of troops, based on upper echelon decision making leads to atrocities.

Yep, we really need more of that perspective to drive home the point of how bad war and those that fight it are. As if that ever has gotten to the root cause of why human beings are naturally disposed to war as a noble pursuit. Only that will root out the tendency for the the human propensity toward warfare. Once again the troops are incidental to the “big picture,” making their reintroduction back into society abstract and ineffective—leaving them with the most shallow realization of the good or bad of fighting the good fight.

Yep, another book tackling the question of “why we go to war,” based on social and political forces, without exploring the fundamental particulars of the individual and national psyches that push the buttons of self and national -autonomy toward solutions steeped in a thirst for combat in the name of … Yep, we really need another book that answers questions whose answers we already have.

Carl

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¹ http://www.salon.com/2014/05/02/the_burden_of_atrocity_how_vietnam_was_exposed_as_a_dirty_war/