Product Description

Thoughtfully and provocatively addresses the war's impact on our individual and collective lives. Walter Capp examines the war in a strongly philosophical way, ranging far beyond the usual, narrowly political assessment of its propriety.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1112665 in Books
• Published on: 1991-10-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A professor of religious studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara, Capps has compiled 36 essays by veterans, diplomats, theologians and others, resulting in a prismatic, often contradictory but usually incisive view of the Vietnam experience. Former Newsweek editor-in-chief William Broyles Jr. plumbs the reasons men love war, asserting that "war . . . touches the mythic domains in our soul" where "sex and destruction, beauty and horror, love and death" are united. With a palpable anger, veteran Paul Sgroi depicts his bout with delayed stress syndrome. Thomas Holm, a political science professor at the University of Arizona, reports that Native Americans were told to walk "point"--the most vulnerable position on patrol--because white commanders believed Indians were accustomed to the woods and made good scouts. Le Ly Hayslip writes why the Viet Cong won her loyalty when she was an adolescent near Danang. The failures among the essays are those that try to reduce Vietnam to a manageable equation. Gen. William Westmoreland, for example, argues that the U.S. military was handicapped by the American civilian population.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

"A time to kill, A time to heal;"
William Broyles who was a Vietnam Marine and subsequently editor-in- chief of Newsweek wrote about his war experience in an essay called "Why Men Love War" contained in this collection. It is a refreshing antithesis to the poltically correct dogma of the academy. I wonder if he voices what others secretly feel. I wonder how many of us feel similar emotions when we "do battle" with our gleaming swords during historical re-enactments or when practicing our martial arts or when we become caught up in the "righteous anger" of a Charlie Bronson.

Broyles writes:

"Men love their weapons, not simply for helping to keep them alive, but for a deeper reason. They love their rifles and their knives for the same reason that the medieval warriors loved their armor and their swords: they are instruments of beauty...(and) War is beautiful".

He continues:

"And then perhaps gunships called Spooky come in and fire their incredible guns like huge hoses washing down from the sky, like something God would do when He was really ticked off...Many men loved napalm, loved its silent power...I preferred white phosphorous...I loved it more -- not less -- because of its function: to destroy, to kill...War is, in short, a turn-on".

Finally:

"It is no accident that men love war, as love and war are at the core of man. It is not only that we must love one another or die. We must love one another *and* die...War is the enduring condition of man".

Obviously William Broyles feels no need to conceal his love of war, of killing. In another time, in another place, do you think we would be more likely to admit to that same blood lust??

Other, different perspectives are presented by Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Robert Bly, William Westmoreland, and others.

A book that will make you reconsider your own heart's desires!