Todd

“Producing a high body count was crucial for promotion in the officer corps. Many high-level officers established “production quotas” for their units, and systems of “debit” and “credit” to calculate exactly how efficiently subordinate units and middle-management personnel performed. Different formulas were used, but the commitment to war as a rational production process was common to all.11”
― Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

“If you want to end a war, don't wait for the orders to come in - stand up and demand from the government to focus on peace and not on war, and if they ignore you, which they most likely would, then forget their intervention and go over to the other side yourself as a vulnerable and unarmed citizen of not a nation, but of peace. And when one side of the border has a handful of such citizens of peace, then the other side is bound to reciprocate that peace.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Citizens of Peace: Beyond the Savagery of Sovereignty

“The true purpose of the various directives, regulations, and pocket-sized codes of conduct handed out to troops was not to implement genuine safeguards for noncombatants, but to give the military a paper trail of plausible deniability.”
― Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

“In Vietnam, the statistically minded war managers focused, above all, on the notion of achieving a “crossover point”: the moment when American soldiers would be killing more enemies than their Vietnamese opponents could replace.”
― Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam