COLONIAL FAILURE LIKE FRANCAFRIQUE: 3/8: The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam Hardcover –by George Black (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2023
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS I In The World. I'm John Bats, who are George Black. His new book is The |
| 0:09.5 | Long Reckoning, a story of war, peace, and redemption in Vietnam. It covers the critical |
| 0:15.6 | period of American combat, but before and after American combat, we meet our two protagonists. |
| 0:22.4 | One man is Campbell of Bayon, New Jersey, who joins the Marine Corps, and signs up for |
| 0:27.4 | three years, knowing he'll go to Vietnam. And the other Charles Circe of Athens, Georgia, |
| 0:33.3 | who joins the Army. And because of his training and education, he steered in the intelligence |
| 0:40.4 | corps, both end up in Vietnam and roughly the same period. This is 67 to 68. |
| 0:47.0 | George, Manus Campbell is keen on proving himself to his father. And I striking that Chuck |
| 0:55.8 | Circe, the same relationship with his father, he wants to demonstrate who he was. But |
| 1:01.1 | I'll start with Manus Campbell. Did he understand when he signed up to the Marine Corps that |
| 1:06.4 | he was going to be put into the killing zone of the I Corps? Was that information available |
| 1:12.1 | to them or were they just following orders? |
| 1:14.2 | They were just following orders. I think Manus knew about as much about Vietnam as most |
| 1:20.1 | 19-year-olds. And it's important to stress that age. I mean, these kids were too young |
| 1:25.6 | to vote. And they were seven years younger on average than the enlistees in World War |
| 1:31.5 | Two and draftees in World War Two. He was a working class, lower middle class, if you |
| 1:37.7 | want to say, Catholic kid from suburban, New Jersey. He had a very demanding father who had |
| 1:47.4 | a lot of psychological difficulties, struggled with what we would basically now call bipolar |
| 1:54.7 | disease. And was very, very demanding, very critical. Nothing was ever good enough for |
| 2:01.1 | him. And Manus was a quiet kid. And his father basically forced into this idea that he |
| 2:10.2 | had to bulk up. He became a swim champion. And he wanted to please his father. And I think |
| 2:15.1 | that, you know, if you look at 18, 19-year-old kids anywhere, their relationship with their father |
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