Analysis Of Nick Turse's Essay 'Kill Anything That Moves'

In the essay Kill Anything That Moves written by Nick Turse, he specifically chooses to write about how throughout the years the atrocities and attacks were so horrendous and miserable. This is actually quite depressing to read this portion of his writing. To actually read about the true experiences of these soldiers and about how they would lie and kill without reason. On page 110, Caputo, who was a young marine officer in 1965, received instruction that the Vietnamese were not to be fired upon unless they were running. He continues to talk about the Vietnamese man who ran away from the American patrol and how he just shot him and killed him for running. Just like many officers have said in Vietnam, they need to assume if they are Vietnamese then they are associated with the …show more content…
Our soldiers were not trained to be able to detect the difference between the regular Vietnamese civilians and the Vietcong, so the soldiers just decided to kill anything suspicious that moves. Which is a very suiting title for this essay. Turse describes a moment in Chan Son when the “U.S. artillery blasted the ‘Vietcong dominated’ village with 1,000 shells. After this the marines advanced through the village, bellowing ‘Kill them, I don’t want anyone want anyone moving.” This shocks me because I would not expect our moral standards to be set so low. It also shocks me that we were so cruel to people that we knew nothing about and didn’t know whether or not they were out to kill us. Killing children had to be an image that burned in your memory forever because that is just so sad to even think about, and I am sure the soldiers didn’t enjoy it. We were afraid of people because they were different than us and we didn’t understand them. He describes how they would burn the people to death in their houses if they refused to leave their