He had spent his first day in Hue as scared as he had ever been. The fear had started when they were shot at on the chopper coming in, and had then just stayed at full throttle. He realized he had adapted to it. It surprised him. Fear, because it was everywhere and everyone felt it, receded in importance. It was still there, but when you realized there was nothing you could do about it, it ceased to matter. It just became your new reality.

— Mark Bowden

Mark Bowden Quotes

I pride myself on not making people’s experience shittier.

— Mark Bowden

Gunny, get down!” Ker told him. “You’re going to get hit!” “By the time I get down, I’ll already be hit,” he said. “So I may as well stand up here and see what the hell is going on.

— Mark Bowden

Mark reiterated how assiduously the FBI and his own department were now gathering evidence against him.

— Mark Bowden

When Gonzalez and Canley were close enough to the machine gun they called for suppressing fire and then stood and hurled grenades. At the blast, they charged, firing their rifles on automatic, silencing the gun.

— Mark Bowden

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
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