3RAR Phrases/Quotes

3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment Phrases, Quotes and Slogans (Associated to the Vietnam War)
"If it were not for the fact that Vietnam is but a pawn in the larger East-West confrontation, and that our presence here is essential to deny the resources of this area to Communist China, then it would be damned hard to justify our support of the existing government." John Paul Vann - see publication "A Bright & Shining Lie" by Sheehan, Neil (1988). A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.
"We were not in Vietnam for ten years, but for one year ten times." John Paul Vann see publication "A Bright & Shining Lie" by Sheehan, Neil (1988). A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.
If you can't remember, then the Claymore is pointed towards you
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target.
"The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars." —William Westmoreland on Politics Government
Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo.
"the Oriental doesnât put the same high price on life as does the westerner" - William Westmoreland
It's a great satisfaction knowing that for a brief point in time you made a difference.
Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most. Myra MacPherson, 1984
"Ain't no greasy-slope ever gonna' bring me down." William Westmoreland upon visiting China, December 1998
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms, not on the battlefields of Vietnam. Marshall McLuhan, 1975
"This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I'm afraid we can't do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worst is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle -- you know who you're killing." John Paul Vann - see publication "A Bright & Shining Lie" by Sheehan, Neil (1988). A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.
You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam. US President Richard Nixon in a letter to President Thieu, Jan. 1973
Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it. You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week. Will Rogers (1879-1935)
If your attack is going well, you have walked into an ambush
Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power. Malcolm X, 1965
Don't look conspicuous: it draws fire
This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston Churchill
No event in history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. US President Richard M. Nixon, 1985
Nothing's impossible for those who don't have to do it.
Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy someone else to shoot at
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
I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies. - Benjamin Spock, 1988
Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place. --John F. Kennedy, 1961
We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. --Ronald Reagan, 1964
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
"There is no room in a soldiers' philosophy for thought, reason, or mercy." Westmoreland after being questioned about Napalm strike on Trang Bang, Vietnam 1972
We believe that peace is at hand. --Henry Kissinger, Oct. 1972
"I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy." —William Westmoreland on Politics Government
Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods. --Michael Herr, 1977
Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that. --Richard M. Nixon, 1969
"The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up, united as one man." Ho Chi Minh on Vietnam
This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity. --Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964
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
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
"The basic fact of life is that the overwhelming majority of the population -- somewhere around 95 percent -- prefer the government of Vietnam to a Communist government or the government that's being offered by the other side." John Paul Vann - see publication "A Bright & Shining Lie" by Sheehan, Neil (1988). A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.
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

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