When he got back to Phu Bai, one of the walking wounded, he was ordered to look through nearly a hundred body bags and identify those he recognized. It took him two days to complete the job, unzipping the bags and looking at the pale, lifeless faces.

— Mark Bowden

Mark Bowden Quotes

The Americans landed in Vietnam, were killed in Vietnam, and others have continued to come here without having good reasons.

— Mark Bowden

The director Stanley Kubrick, no doubt attracted by the unusual visuals of urban combat, set Full Metal Jacket in Hue, although in his film the battle is just a backdrop.

— Mark Bowden

How do you bomb a nation into the Stone Age when, in modern industrial terms, they are not that far removed from it?

— Mark Bowden

A month after it ended, President Johnson decided not to seek reelection, and Westmoreland would shortly thereafter be removed as its commander. Richard Nixon was elected president eight months later mendaciously promising not victory, but a secret plan to bring the war to an “honorable end.

— Mark Bowden

Marines do not hesitate in combat. If the Corps has a defining philosophy, that’s it. In war, when the enemy is foolish enough to show himself, marines go right at him and kill him, risks be damned.

— Mark Bowden

To me the way they were used, particularly the way their idealism and loyalty were exploited by leaders who themselves had lost faith in the effort, is a stunning betrayal. It is a lasting American tragedy and disgrace.

— Mark Bowden

The Viet Cong were not the idealistic warriors of American antiwar propaganda; they were vicious. They relied on terror.

— Mark Bowden

Increasingly the United States found itself isolated. Having for two decades enjoyed its status as champion of the free world, it was increasingly the target of bitter criticism abroad and at home, where a growing number of prominent intellectuals and church leaders denounced the bombing campaign as barbaric. The military might disdain the fickle nature of public sympathy, but a democracy cannot sustain a war effort without it, and moral revulsion was growing.

— Mark Bowden

One of its analysts was Daniel Ellsberg, who at the time was back in the States compiling the report that – after he leaked it to the press in 1971 – would become known as The Pentagon Papers. The study showed that American leaders had been systematically lying about the scope and progress of the war for years and had consistently enlarged it despite doubts that the effort could succeed.

— Mark Bowden

At the very least, Vietnam should stand as a permanent caution against going to war for any but the most immediate, direct, and vital national interest, or to prevent genocide or wider conflict, and then only in concert with other countries.

— Mark Bowden

If there was one ideological rationale that had broad appeal, it was nationalism, which for many boiled down to a fervent desire to be left alone.

— Mark Bowden

When asked what he did for a living, Dave would answer, “I work for local government,” because if he said he was a cop, the mood instantly stiffened.

— Mark Bowden

Criminals saw the man, not the badge, and they liked him, sometimes enough to tell him surprising and damaging things.

— Mark Bowden

He knew there was no road map for this session. That was not how interrogation worked. Conversations were improvisational.

— Mark Bowden

Just take your flak jackets and some gear because we’ll be back for dinner.

— Mark Bowden

Mohr quoted Westmoreland, after the general had toured the bullet-riddled embassy grounds in Saigon, saying the enemy’s efforts had failed, and that they had sought “to cause maximum consternation in South Vietnam.” “It was clear that consternation had been achieved,” Mohr wrote.19.

— Mark Bowden

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Vietnam became the case in point. In a letter to Diem in 1961, Kennedy wrote, “We are.

— Mark Bowden

How could a nation built upon ‘Give me liberty or give me death,’ ‘all men are created equal,’ and ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ have ended up waging a shameful, disgraceful war against a people who had done us no harm nor ever would or could?” he wrote.

— Mark Bowden

It was hard to keep track. If Durant wasn’t on a real mission like this one, he was off somewhere in the world practicing for one. Practice defined the lives of the Night Stalkers. They practiced everything, even crashing.

— Mark Bowden

Never in America’s history, though – however many sideburns Bowery barbers shaved or immigrants came ashore – had a losing presidential candidate argued that the whole nation had been swindled. When Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, his victory so outraged his opposition that an entire region of the country broke away. But in loss Stephen A. Douglas never claimed the election was “rigged.

— Mark Bowden
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