#vietnam

In the emergency of growing up, we all need heroes. But the father I grew up with was no hero to me, not then. He was too wounded in the head, too endlessly and terribly sad. Too funny, too explosive, too confusing. Heroes are uncomplicated. *This* makes them do *that*… But the war does not make sense. War senselessly wounds everyone right down the line. A body bag fits more than just its intended corpse. Take the 58,000 American soldiers lost in Vietnam and multiply by four, five, six—and only then does one begin to realize the damage this war has done… War when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable. It is not an occasion for heroism. It is an occasion only for survival and death. To regard war in any other way only guarantees its inevitable reappearance. ↗

— Tom Bissell

#war #death

We were children of the 1950s and John Kennedy's young stalwarts of the early 1960s. He told the world that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" in the defense of freedom. We were the down payment on that costly contract, but the man who signed it was not there when we fulfilled his promise. John Kennedy waited for us on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery, and in time we came by the thousands to fill those slopes with out white marble markers and to ask on the murmur of the wind if that was truely the future he had envisioned for us. ↗

— Joseph L. Galloway

#vietnam-war #freedom

It seems like our town has closed down these days leading up to the funeral. Old people still sit on their porches and talk, but their conversations aren't sprinkled with laughter anymore. Since the new, little kids haven't played outside, as if their moms are afraid someone might snatch them out of their yards and send them off to war. ↗

— Kimberly Willis Holt

#death #friendship #vietnam-war #age

I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story. ↗

— Tim O'Brien

#vietnam #war #life

Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#america #bombs #communism #communists #vietnam

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind. ↗

— William Westmoreland

#censorship #confused #ever #first #fought

It seems to me the American people never really forgave the Democrats for being right about Vietnam. ↗

— Paul Begala

#american #american people #being #democrats #forgave

I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more. ↗

— Richard Branson

#end #financial #financial resources #had #i

Belize suits me because I'm active and I like diving. I learnt when I was 18, in Thailand, and I have dived in Vietnam, which wasn't great, the Red Sea, which was incredible and reasonably priced, and then the Maldives, which is like being submerged in an aquarium. ↗

— Georgina Chapman

#because #being #diving #great #i

If John Kerry had a dollar for every time he bragged about serving in Vietnam - oh wait, he does. ↗

— Ann Coulter

#does #dollar #every #every time #had