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

I am about 20% of the way through Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam and recall reading that if squads performed well and got high kill rates the dress regulations (including hair length) were relaxed.

Not sure if that's the case here .. but it could be.

The US committed mass murder in Vietnam. What the US did to the people of Vietnam was the worst act of aggression since the second world war. US soldiers committed rapes and murders on an industrial scale. If the Nuremberg standards were applied to the US politicians and high command responsible for the butcher of the Vietnamese people they would have been hanged.

I think I've shared this before but I also recommend you read Kill Anything That Moves. It goes through how and why things like Mai Lai happened (and there was an atrocity like this almost every single day during the war).

So, first, I'm not American.

Second, the "Was the My Lai massacre one of many?" article is based on Kill Anything that Moves, a book damning US military policy in Vietnam. I'm using the estimates from that book.

Beak it down!

Syria - US, barely involved!

Iraq - That's a big one, addressed above.

Somalia - Minimally involved. Insignificant casualties.

Yemen - Supplied arms to Saudi Arabia. I'm not in favor of that. Still, it's not like B-52s are bombing Yemen.

Pakistan - The US looked the other way on a near-genocide in the 50's. Absolutely shameful. But that's not on US hands. They've barely set foot in Pakistan. There are drones there, and that's an issue.

Afghanistan - Included, obviously.

Panama - A stupid coup. Not many casualties.

Libya - Minimal involvement.

Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada, Chile, Lebanon, every single country on the Indochinese peninsula, Peru, Dominican republic, Guatemala, Indonesia - Fuck, I've got to go to bed. Yes, the US has fucked up a lot and ought to be reprimanded. So, subtract Vietnam for a start; subtract Cambodia because fuck Nixon, bombing Cambodia was an unforgivable mistake. Outside of that you're looking at tens of thousands of casualties all told.

> all that shit is meaningless because you love your country so much and Stalingrad (a battle completely irrelevant to US armed forces) was BAD.

Again, I'm not American. And yeah, it was absolutely the Soviets under Stalin who won Stalingrad, the US wasn't involved beyond supplies. My point wasn't that the US is awesome, wooo, America #1. My point was that in a world where everyone is intimidated by US strength, you don't get Stalingrads, even on the other side of the world. You don't get World Wars, with the millions upon millions of casualties entailed. Instead, you get "police actions" and a couple thousand casualties. Not ideal, but not exactly Stalingrad.