2/4: The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam Hardcover – Deckle Edge, March 28, 2023 by George Black (Author)
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John Batchelor
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🗓️ 13 May 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
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1920 Vietnam
2/4: The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam Hardcover – Deckle Edge, March 28, 2023 by George Black (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Reckoning-Story-Redemption-Vietnam/dp/0593534107
The American war in Vietnam has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. The worst of them were inflicted in a tiny area bounded by the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in neighboring Laos. That small region saw the most intense aerial bombing campaign in history, the massive use of toxic chemicals, and the heaviest casualties on both sides.
In The Long Reckoning, George Black recounts the inspirational story of the small cast of characters—veterans, scientists, and Quaker-inspired pacifists, and their Vietnamese partners—who used their moral authority, scientific and political ingenuity, and sheer persistence to attempt to heal the horrors that were left in the wake of the military engagement in Southeast Asia. Their intersecting story is one of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into close allies and partners.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Dachshua. George Black, his new book is The Long Reckoning, a story of war, peace, |
| 0:08.1 | and redemption in Vietnam. The Ho Chi Minh Trail built painstakingly from North Vietnam |
| 0:16.4 | into South Vietnam through Laos. It is 1965 and the South Vietnamese have not been successful |
| 0:25.4 | in fending off either the Vietnam or what is understood as to be North Vietnamese troops |
| 0:31.8 | crossing or somehow entering into Vietnam south of the DMZ. A decision is made to guard the airfield |
| 0:39.6 | at denang, a large seaport. The Marines are dispatched and expeditionary force, beginning the American |
| 0:46.8 | combat troop phase of the war. At the same time, Operation Ranch Hand, which was endorsed by Jack |
| 0:54.8 | Kennedy, is now enhanced with an understanding by the President, LBJ, and his consultants, his generals, |
| 1:03.4 | that the way to fight this war is to defeat the supplies that are flowing into the South. |
| 1:09.5 | And that means the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And that means George, I'm not actually sure whose |
| 1:16.4 | idea it was to destroy the triple canopy jungle. Was it one person taking credit for that concept? |
| 1:24.3 | No, it wasn't. It was really an extension of a belief in technologies of various kinds, |
| 1:32.1 | which I think was shared pretty much throughout the, really, I was going to say the administrations |
| 1:39.2 | in the United States, but really at a popular cultural level, people after World War II were very |
| 1:45.1 | enamored of the idea that technology was the future it could solve all our problems. |
| 1:51.4 | And these chemicals that were used to defoliate the Vietnamese jungles and mangrove forests. |
| 2:00.5 | And at the same time to kill and destroy food crops that were supposedly supporting the enemy. |
| 2:08.4 | It was a natural extension of what was being done. It was keeping American lawns green and |
| 2:13.1 | golf courses. It was killing weeds on farm fields. And these were regarded as miracle chemicals. |
| 2:20.0 | So extending them to the Anam in conjunction with heavy bombing, those were really technological |
| 2:27.3 | responses to the geography and topography of Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in particular. |
| 2:37.0 | Which always gave the North Vietnamese and the Vietnam con and advantage because they knew the terrain. |
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