“…it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invader’s heart.” — Winston Churchill quoted in Dave Grossman’s On Killing : The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, 1995.
Also from this worthwhile book, a story told about told by Matt Brennan abpit Con, a Vietnamese scout assigned to an American platoon in Vietnam, who had
been a loyal Viet Cong until a North Vietnamese squad made a mistake and killed his wife and children. Now he loved to run ahead of the Americans, hunting for [North Vietnamese soldiers]…. He called the Communists gooks, just as we did, and one night I asked him why.
“Con, do you think it’s right to call the VC gooks and dinks?”
He shrugged. “It makes no difference to me. Everything has a name. Do you think the Americans are the only ones who do that? … My company in the jungle … called you Big Hairy Monkeys. We kill monkeys, and” — he hesitated for an instant — “we eat them.”
