Review Of Kill Anything That Moves

In 1955, America stepped foot into Vietnam for what they thought was war, but in reality, was a slaughtering of the lambs. Nick Turse unearths the true realities (and horrors) of what actually occurred during the years in Vietnam in his book “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam”. Naturally, this book unfolds not only the politics and racial tensions between American soldiers and Vietnamese revolutionaries, but it also eradicates the glorious misconceptions of the morally upright man.
Turse begins the book with the chilling re-telling of the massacre at Trieu Ai. From the start, Turse uses blunt and almost horrifying detail to recount the slaying that occurred in that small Vietnamese village. He elaborates on the absence

More mass killings are written about, the numbers truly astonishing. Body count begins to be a regularly used phrase throughout the chapters. He goes in depth, writing about the people he interviewed (both soldiers and survivors of the massacres) and the shocking cruelties they witnessed.
The extensive measures that American militants took to ensure their triumph were just short of barbaric. Turse writes about the village raids, where every civilian suffered; death, rape, loss, or all three. Suddenly, soldiers had their primitive instincts kick in. After months of being forced to chant sayings such as “kill, kill, kill!” and being thrown into this created dichotomy of “Us vs. Them”, these young boys became blinded to the true acts they were committing.
Killing had become necessary in their eyes. If you weren’t the one killing, you were the one getting killed. That’s what they solemnly began believing. Perhaps even worse than the brutal and unjustified deaths of thousands of civilians, was the constant covering up and ignoring of

Many of the veterans say that they didn’t full realize the weight of their actions until they returned home. Many of them suffered from PTSD and guilt, but were often silenced when trying to speak up about it. Turse has a captivating way of intertwining the two into a true work of art. He spent countless hours going through government official documents, and interviews in order to capture what seems to be a cloud of mystery. Turse himself went to Vietnam as well to gather pieces for his book. He wanted the facts, and the facts are what he got. Nothing short of cold reality was