The following war photos were taken by ace war photographer Henry Hyuet. His father was French, his mother Vietnamese. He was omnipresent during the Vietnam war. His pictures shaped public opinion in the US. He worked first for the UPI, then for the AP. He was killed in 1971 when the US helicopter on which he was aboard was shot down by the Vietcong.
VIETNAM WAR QUOTES
You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.
--Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s
You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954
Operation Masher 1966. Hassled and tired US soldiers after a day of fighting
VIETNAM WAR QUOTES
You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.
--Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s
You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954
Fresh US soldiers arrive in Vietnam
VIETNAM QUOTES
Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.
--John F. Kennedy, 1961
This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.
--Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964
VIETNAM QUOTES
Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.
--John F. Kennedy, 1961
This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.
--Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964
150 miles North of Saigon. 1966. Helicopters carry troops and supplies. The rubber drums have fuel.
VIETNAM WAR QUOTES
Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.
--Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964
We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.
--Ronald Reagan, 1965
Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.
--Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964
We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.
--Ronald Reagan, 1965
A reconnaissance unit checks the beach in central Vietnam
I see light at the end of the tunnel.
--Walt W. Rostow, National Security Adviser, Dec. 1967
The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture--aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.
--Stephen Vizinczey, 1968
QUOTES
I see light at the end of the tunnel.
--Walt W. Rostow, National Security Adviser, Dec. 1967
The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture--aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.
--Stephen Vizinczey, 1968
An US soldier lies low in a paddy field as the Vietcong fire
Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
--Richard M. Nixon, 1969
I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.
--Richard Nixon, Oct. 1969
--Sen. Frank Church, May 1970
By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels' wives.
--Frances Fitzgerald, 1972
We believe that peace is at hand.
--Henry Kissinger, Oct. 1972
You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.
--Richard Nixon in a letter to President Thieu, Jan. 1973
If the Americans do not want to support us anymore, let them go, get out! Let them forget their humanitarian promises!
--Nguyen Van Thieu, April 1975
--Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1979
Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.
--Henry Kissinger, 1979
It's time that we recognized that ours was in truth a noble cause.
--Ronald Reagan, Oct. 1980
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VIETNAM QUOTES
Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
--Richard M. Nixon, 1969
I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.
--Richard Nixon, Oct. 1969
Soldiers under fire in the trench
This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart.--Sen. Frank Church, May 1970
By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels' wives.
--Frances Fitzgerald, 1972
A helicopter lifts the body of a slain US soldier near the Cambodia border
VIETNAM QUOTESWe believe that peace is at hand.
--Henry Kissinger, Oct. 1972
You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.
--Richard Nixon in a letter to President Thieu, Jan. 1973
If the Americans do not want to support us anymore, let them go, get out! Let them forget their humanitarian promises!
--Nguyen Van Thieu, April 1975
A Vietnamese family cowers. Reminds one of Oliver Stone's film Platoon
Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam.
--Marshall McLuhan, 1975
Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world.
--Gerald Ford, April 1975
Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.
--Michael Herr, 1977
Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam.
--Marshall McLuhan, 1975
Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world.
--Gerald Ford, April 1975
Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.
--Michael Herr, 1977
Saving his gun. Mekong Delta. 1968
VIETNAM QUOTES
Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.VIETNAM QUOTES
--Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1979
Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.
--Henry Kissinger, 1979
It's time that we recognized that ours was in truth a noble cause.
--Ronald Reagan, Oct. 1980
A helicopter supplies a 155 mm gun atop a hill during an offensive in 1969
QUOTES
There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.
--Philip Caputo, 1982
Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America.
--Myra MacPherson, 1984
Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country--it had all been done in our name. . . . The French city . . . had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.
--James Fenton, 1985
QUOTES
There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.
--Philip Caputo, 1982
Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America.
--Myra MacPherson, 1984
Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country--it had all been done in our name. . . . The French city . . . had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.
--James Fenton, 1985
Night shooting in Vietnam
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