WHILE THE US ALLEGES CURRENT WAR CRIMES IN EURASIA, REMEMBERING VIETNAM: 3/8: 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
⏱️ 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.1968
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a new book is the long reckoning, a story of war, peace and redemption in Vietnam. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm John Bachelor with George Black. His new book is The Long Reckoning, a story of war, peace, and redemption in Vietnam. |
| 0:14.7 | It covers the critical period of American combat, but before and after American combat, |
| 0:20.1 | we meet our two protagonists. |
| 0:22.4 | One Manus Campbell of Bayon, New Jersey who joins the |
| 0:25.5 | Marine Corps and signs up for three years knowing he'll go to Vietnam, and the other |
| 0:30.9 | Charles Searcy of Athens, Georgia who joins the Army and because of his |
| 0:37.0 | training and education he steered into the Intelligence Corps. |
| 0:41.0 | Both end up in Vietnam and roughly the same period. |
| 0:44.8 | This is 67 to 68. |
| 0:48.2 | George, Manis Campbell is keen on proving himself to his father and I'm striking that Chuck |
| 0:56.1 | Ciercy the same relationship with his father he wants to demonstrate who he was but |
| 1:01.4 | I'll start with Manis Campbell. Did he understand when he |
| 1:04.9 | signed up to the Marine Corps that he was going to be put into the killing zone of |
| 1:09.6 | the I-Corps? Did that was that information available to them or were they just following orders? |
| 1:15.0 | They were just following orders. I think Manus knew about as much about Vietnam as most 19 year olds and it's important to stress that age. I mean these kids were |
| 1:25.4 | too young to vote and they were seven years younger on average than the |
| 1:30.5 | enlistees in World War II and drafees in World War II. |
| 1:35.0 | He was a working class, lower middle class, if you want to say, |
| 1:39.6 | Catholic kid from suburban New Jersey. He had a very demanding father who had a lot of |
| 1:48.1 | psychological difficulties, struggled with what we would basically now call bipolar disease and was very |
| 1:57.8 | very demanding very critical nothing was ever good enough for him and |
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