Neil Sheehan Quotes

Neil Sheehan — American Journalist born on October 27, 1936,

Cornelius Mahoney "Neil" Sheehan is an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series of articles revealed a secret U.S. Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and led to a U.S. Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. v. United States, when the United States government attempted to halt publication... (wikipedia)

Americans, particularly after World War II, tended to romanticize war because in World War II our cause was the cause of humanity, and our soldiers brought home glory and victory, and thank God that they did. But it led us to romanticize it to some extent.

These men were wrongfully rejected, the veterans. The fighting man should never have been blamed for Vietnam.

You remember all those phrases about how 'these people' - Asians - don't value human life like we do. Well if you spend any time around them, you discover that they love their children just as much as we love ours. That is certainly true of the Vietnamese.

I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people.

We had a military and political leadership at that period which was genuinely deluded.

Neil Sheehan Quotes

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