Reviews for Texans behind the news

The average rating for Texans behind the news based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-10-03 00:00:00 Tony Torres Page 47 (my book) Ho Chi Minh (1962) "The Americans are much stronger than the French, though they know us less well. It may perhaps take ten years to do it, but our heroic compatriots in the South will defeat them in the end." Page 387 reporter Jonathan Schell (1967) I have no wish to pass judgement on the individual Americans fighting in Vietnam. I wish merely to record what I witnessed, in the hope that it will help us all to understand better what we are doing. This book is an outstanding example of investigative journalism. These reporters inquired and explored Vietnam, bringing to us the implications of U.S. involvement. They go into small villages and the rural country-side on patrols and helicopter rides with U.S. troops. All levels, from small hamlets to air force bases and the ironies of living in Saigon are reported and diagnosed. The very best stories are "Suffer the Little Children" by Martha Gelhorn, which as the title suggests is harrowing, "The Military Half: An Account of the Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin" by Jonathan Schell, and "Casualties of War" by Daniel Lang. Page 467 Into an area of ten by twenty kilometres they [U.S. military] had dropped 282 tons of "general purpose" bombs and 116 tons of napalm; fired 1,005 rockets (not counting rockets fired from helicopters), 132,820 rounds of 20mm explosive strafing shells, and 119,350 7.62mm rounds of machine-gun fire from Spooky flights; and fired 8,488 artillery rounds. By the end of the operation, the Civil Affairs Office had supervised the evacuation of six hundred and forty of the area's seventeen thousand people, to the vicinity of government camps. In many of these stories we are given a personal view of war - what it did to the people of Vietnam and the soldiers there (soldiers on both sides - North and South). War is the ultimate negative side of humanity. Page 761 - and American soldier "We had to answer to something, to someone - maybe just to ourselves." As a personal criticism of an article by Tom Wolfe - he is so enthralled by the technology on an aircraft carrier that he is oblivious to the destruction caused to human beings. Reading through all these essays one cannot (at least I cannot) answer what the purpose was of the U.S. presence in Vietnam - or more to the point what good it did to anyone. Also what became apparent was the way this war was being evaluated at the time - largely through the use of statistics. There were many stories from both reporters and government officials in the early 1960's warning of the futility of the U.S. military build-up in Vietnam - these were unheeded. I also believe that many of us tend to view military confrontations through large massed armies, like in World War II - but historically many long-term struggles, like Vietnam, have not been fought in this method. Rather they are extended guerilla civilian uprisings - akin to tribal warfare like Afghanistan, Iraq, the Congo... And in reading this book we should always be thankful for the freedom we have and allow. The journalists in this book, in manifold ways, told us the truth about Vietnam (some lost their lives while doing so). They brought to us the consequences of war. Memorial to Fallen Reporters in Bayeux, France > in the Newseum, Washington DC

Review # 2 was written on 2011-11-25 00:00:00 Rob McGee I learned so much about Vietnam -- the combat, the politics, the protests. Two of these articles were incredibly gut-wrenching and soul-shaking to read (one was a soldier's account of battle and the nightmares it caused, one a soldier's account of his fight to bring fellow soldiers to justice after their rape & murder of a Vietnamese girl) but all important stories. It all feels so eerily relevant.