The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes

Come and join Revolution Books in welcoming Deborah Nelson as she discusses her new book The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes. This book by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Deborah Nelson, reveals a massive cover-up of war crimes against Vietnamese people – crimes that have remained hidden for more than thirty years. THE WAR BEHIND ME: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes (Basic Books; Hardcover; Pub date: November 2008), is excellent investigative reporting and a determined search to uncover the truth. The truth, she discovers, is that the My Lai massacre was no anomaly. The War Behind Me shows that, without a doubt, atrocities were routinely committed against ordinary Vietnamese people during the US war of aggression. Teenagers were raped and then shot. Peasants were killed in their rice fields. Mothers and babies were obliterated and thrown into shallow graves. Mayhem, murder and massacre by U.S. troops defined that war. The interviews with veterans who resisted these crimes and tried to expose them are wrenching. The interviews with veterans who took part in these crimes are chilling. The significance of this book is not only in revealing a shamefully hidden history. Today the US is waging two wars in countries that are far away and as we read these stories of innocent lives cut short, and hear the undeniable statistics -- we need to confront both the war behind us, and especially now to confront the need to resist, and stop the war crimes going on in our name today. Deborah Nelson will be joined by Jamie Henry, a veteran who spoke out against the atrocities he witnessed in Vietnam and testified at the Winter Soldier Investigation in 1971.