Magellan's Log: Vietnam / Iraq: Quotations from Another War

vietnamiraq.jpg (9340 bytes)
Quotations from Another War: 1961-1995

Collected by the Staff of Magellan's Log

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.
—John F. Kennedy, 1961.

This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.
—Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964.

We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.
—Ronald Reagan, 1964.

It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.
—Ronald Reagan, 1965.

I see light at the end of the tunnel.
—Walt W. Rostow, 1967

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.
                                                                        —Unidentified U.S. Army major,
                                                                            on decision to bomb Bentre,
                                                                            Vietnam, February 7, 1968.

The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture—aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.
—Stephen Vizinczey, 1968.

Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.
—Dalton Trumbo, Introduction,
Johnny Got His Gun, 1970.

We believe that peace is at hand.
—Henry Kissinger, 1972.

Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world.
—Gerald Ford, 1975.

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.
—Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1979.

Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America.
—Myra MacPherson, 1984.

One reason the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed to take an orderly, rational approach to the basic questions underlying Vietnam was the staggering variety and complexity of other issues we faced. Simply put, we faced a blizzard of problems, there were only twenty-four hours in a day, and we often did not have time to think straight.
—Robert S. McNamara, 1995.

I can envision a small cottage somewhere, with a lot of writing paper, and a dog, and a fireplace and maybe enough money to give myself some Irish coffee now and then and entertain my two friends.
                                                                       —Richard Van de Geer, letter to
                                                                           friend before he was killed,
                                                                           May 15, 1975, officially last
                                                                           American to die in Vietnam War.

END

How many voices of humor and hope
do you encounter on the Internet?

We need your support.
Thank you.

Back to Magellan's Log 72

Magellan's Log front page

Send this page to a friend.

We love to get mail from our readers.
Tell us what you think!
Your e-mail address:

Subject:

Comments: