Status Updates From Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam ...

“It is perpetual war that is unrealistic. Perpetual war is madness, engineered in the rational language of bureaucracy and the high-flown rhetoric of nationalism and sacrifice, operating through campaigns that could lead to human extermination. This madness can only be matched by the logic of perpetual peace and the excessive, utopian commitment to a pure forgiveness, which the species needs to survive.”

Rudyard Kipling, you are an evil white man…the writer of the white man’s burden.

“‘I am afraid that too many of us want the fruits of integration but are not willing to courageously challenge the roots of segregation. But let me assure you that it does not come this way. Freedom is not free. It is always purchased with the high price of sacrifice and suffering.’ Black soldiers fought in American wars and now, ‘America, we are simply asking you to guarantee our freedom.’” -MLK Jr.

“The Vietnamese civilian view of the Korean soldiers was worse, for some of the Vietnamese remembered how, during World War II, when the country was under Japanese occupation, Korean soldiers were in charge of the prison camps.”

“A great novel about distant others persuades us of the need to save them, which, in our laziness, apathy, or fear, many of us will likely leave to someone else to do.”

“The faces of the victimizers who became victims are the most visible rendition of the general problem that the Khmer Rouge era and its aftermath represents for a human and inhuman history: the reluctance to recognize and to reconcile with one’s capacity to harm others. When we refuse to see victims as capable of violence, we allow ourselves to imagine that we are the same way.”

Powerful material, though wordy and Consciously Weighty writing; would have benefited from simpler concise language to punch through the impact. As you get deeper, the book does get more readable. The first 2-3 chapters were a bit of a slog

Very insightful and eye-opening to be sure, if not meandering at times.