Our War: What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us [Hardcover]

David Harris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 1996

David Harris was the most famous draft resister of the Vietnam War. A former student body president of Stanford University, he refused to accept induction and be sent to Vietnam. He spent nearly two years in a federal prison as a consequence. With his marriage to Joan Baez, he emerged as the leading moral voice of his generation.

For the past two decades, he has largely remained silent as the anitwar movement he led stood accused by critics and pundits of everything from cowardice to frivolity. Now, in Our War, he speaks out in defense of a generation torn by the most divisive war in America's history.

Neither a history nor a memoir, though containing aspects of both, Our War is a compelling, even fevered account of stalking the war's moral shadow through the decades since its ignominious end. This is a one-of-a-kind look at who we were, what we did, why we did it, and what those actions made us, seen through the eyes of a unique and significant American figure and one of our most gifted writers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

David Harris, a draft resister who came to be a symbol of American opposition to the Vietnam War, writes a passionate--albeit brutal--memoir of what is known in Vietnam as "the American War." Through remembrance and political analysis Harris forces readers to confront what he considers the evils of the United States--particularly the massacre at My Lai and the Phoenix program of rural pacification run by the C.I.A, which he calls "an operation of rump legality, kidnapping, torture, and assassination." Harris fears that time has cushioned us from events that destroyed the lives of so many. By recounting the horrors of war, he hopes we can "clear our souls of this perpetual shadow."

From Publishers Weekly

Older readers may remember Harris as the most celebrated (or notorious) of the Vietnam War draft resisters, one who impressed many of his ideological opponents with his moral integrity. Antiwar to the core, he refused to join other activists in their support for North Vietnam. Since that war's end, Harris, who's now 50, has written a number of books (The Last Stand, etc.) but has generally maintained a low profile. Here, he sets out in search of a "reckoning" to "clear our souls of this perpetual shadow" of the war. His opening chapter, with its beautifully cadenced and nuanced prose, hints of cleansing reflections to come. But this early promise is followed by a disappointingly self-righteous and mean-spirited tome that reiterates much of the all-too-familiar antiwar rhetoric of old. The Vietnamese are romanticized into near childlike creatures. Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk is described as having had "a round face with liver spots across his nose and ears that stuck out like teacup handles." That old devil of the left, Richard Nixon, was "as evil a man as any who has ever partaken of the apex of American power." And as for former Defense Secretary McNamara, Harris avers, "Were I he, I suspect I would have blown my brains out years ago." Elegant prose notwithstanding, this material does nothing to advance any national reckoning. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 191 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (September 3, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812925769
• ISBN-13: 978-0812925760
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,064,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Harris is right, June 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Our War: What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us (Hardcover)

The "Vietnam Syndrome" is not buried forever, contrary to former President Bush's pronouncement after the Persian Gulf War. My heart goes out to the "loserama" reviewer of this book. Victory? For whom? The Vietnamese we were supposedly helping? No one ever wins a war. The only way to avoid condemning "millions to death, imprisonment and misery" in the future is to face ourselves. It is the American Dream that causes our wars. We have gotten the government we deserve; one that protects our vulgarly excessive way of life with brute force and cruelty. And most of us like things that way. We veterans are both victims of the empire and recipients of its ill-gotten bounty. We have to lead the reckoning.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More important now than when it was written --, July 31, 2004

By 

Cathleen M. Walker "geminiwalker" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Our War: What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us (Hardcover)

This is a great book, an important book, a powerful book more important now than ever. David Harris speaks truth and uses words the way a surgeon or an artist uses their tools. Acknowledging that, as a country, "we get what we do" goes a long way toward answering the question, "Why do they hate us?" long before 9-11 ever became the symbol for "What's wrong with this picture?"

"When a nation acts, all its citizens are joined insolubly in responsibility for the consequence of their national behavior." Truer words were never spoken.

"While it may be an accurate conclusion, calling the war a mistake is the functional equivalent of calling water wet or dirt dirty. ... In this particular "mistake," at least 3 million people died, only 58,000 of whom were Americans. These 3 million people died crushed in the mud, riddled with shrapnel, hurled out of helicopters, impaled on sharpened bamboo, obliterated in carpets of explosives dropped from bombers flying so high they could only be heard and never seen (talk about cowards!) they died reduced to chunks by one or more land mines, finished off by a round through the temple or a bayonet in the throat, consumed by sizzling phorphorous, burned alive with jellied gasoline, strung up by their thumbs, starved in cages, executed after watching their babies die, trapped on the barbed wire calling for their mothers. They died while trying to kill, they died while trying to kill no one, they died heroes, they died villains, they died at random, they died most often when someone who had no idea who they were killed them under the orders of someone who had even less idea than that. ... All 3 million died in pain, often so intense that death was a relief. This war was about us. We made it happen. It was ours. And, even at this late date, any genuine reckoning on our part must include assuming the full responsibility of that ownership. Nothing less will do."

So read David Harris's indictment of the Vietnam War. The more things change, the more they remain the same. This book should have received a Nobel Peace Price. It is a work of art, a labor of love.

Now, more than ever, it is important to read, and understand, what this author was trying to say.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rubbing our nose in the past, February 6, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Our War: What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us (Hardcover)

David presents this book as a "reckoning" for those of us who lived through the years of the Viet Nam war. That is, a sort of emotional catharsis. In some ways, it worked for me. In some ways, not. Perhaps it is good for those of us who lived through the fear. And for those of us who are left scared by the experience of those years. But the message will be lost on those who thought, and still think, that the war was a good idea. For me it brought back the full impact of the total distrust in government that the era made a permanent part of my psyche. But did I need that? I'm not sure. David's book did not change my head... But for younger readers (folks under 30) who did not live their early-adult years in the fear of being forced to kill or be killed. And for the still remaining supporters of the war, the book is highly recommended. David has done a good job of telling the story of what the war did to us. Not just as individuals, but to the country, and its poitics. Not to mention what it did to S.E. Asia. Reading "Our War" didn't help me, as a person. I _was_ pissed, and I'm _still_ pissed at what our government did to me and my generation; and hope to remain that way. So, I guess David's book failed in its attempt at "reckoning." We've already had our noses rubbed in that war. But the book works on other levels. And the results of the war echo though today's branches of government. Worth a read. --del