WHILE THE US ALLEGES CURRENT WAR CRIMES IN EURASIA, REMEMBERING VIETNAM: 2/8: The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam –by George Black (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 8 September 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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.
1968 TV WAR
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John John Bachelors. |
| 0:05.0 | George Black, his new book is The Long Reckon, the story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam. |
| 0:11.0 | The Hochi Min trail built painstakingly from North Vietnam into South Vietnam |
| 0:19.5 | through Laos. It is 1965 and the South Vietnamese have not been successful in |
| 0:27.0 | fending off either the Viet Cong or what is this what is understood is to be |
| 0:31.2 | North Vietnamese troops crossing or somehow entering into Vietnam |
| 0:36.9 | south of the DMZ. |
| 0:38.9 | A decision is made to guard the airfield at Denang, a large seaport. |
| 0:43.6 | The Marines are dispatched an expeditionary force, |
| 0:46.6 | beginning the American combat troop phase of the war. |
| 0:51.6 | At the same time, Operation Ranch Hand, which was endorsed by Jack Kennedy, is now enhanced |
| 0:58.6 | with an understanding by the.J. and his |
| 1:02.8 | generals, that the way to fight this war is to defeat |
| 1:08.1 | the supplies that are flowing into the South. |
| 1:11.0 | And that means the Ho Chi Min trail and that means George I'm not |
| 1:16.0 | actually sure whose idea it was to destroy the the triple canopy jungle was it one |
| 1:22.0 | person taking credit for that concept? |
| 1:25.6 | No, it wasn't. |
| 1:26.5 | It was really an extension of a belief in technologies |
| 1:32.4 | of various kinds, which I think was shared pretty much throughout the, |
| 1:37.0 | really, I was going to say the administrations in the United States, but really at a popular cultural level, you know, people |
| 1:44.8 | after World War II were very enamored of the idea that technology was the future, it could |
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