Hanoi Hannah Quotes

We’ve got to get out of Vietnam or else we have to educate the people as to why we are in there.

More than half the combat deaths in Vietnam occurred after Richard Nixon was elected on a promise to bring the war to an end, and after the American people had already decided that they did not want one more soldier to die in Vietnam.

[On the Vietnam War:] I leave all morality up to you clergymen.

With the passage of each day and each week, we can expect increasing pressure to stop the bombing [of North Vietnam]. This will come from various elements of the American public, of the press, the United Nations, of world opinion. Therefore time will run against us on this operation, and I think the North Vietnam are counting on this.

I simply told people what I thought about the state of the war in Vietnam, and it was that we better get out of this.

It is a damned sight easier to start wars than to end them. This truth has been stated for as long and as often as it has been ignored. High time and thank God, we are at least moving toward de-escalation in Vietnam. The road to extrication will be long, painful, bitter. But it must be trod. We are so bogged down in Vietnam that we cannot respond effectively anywhere else in the world to a military power play except through atomic bombardment.

The [Vietnam] war's gone on for three years. And we'd thought we'd ended it because we'd done exactly what we were told and what we told ourselves we'd had to do. We had a majority. We were against the war and this created a crisis for democracy and a crisis for the antiwar movement.

I think you are going to have to send troops to Vietnam and if you do, I will come up from Gettysburg to support you.

The next time you or one of your fellows plans to mention civilian casualties in North Vietnam, I want you both to come down and have a drink with me before you go to testify on The Hill.

It looks to me like we’re getting into another Korea …. What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is it worth to this country?

Ever since 1954, when the United States did not sign the Geneva accords but instead started down the road of unilateral military action in South Vietnam, we have become a provocateur of military conflict in Southeast Asia and marched in the opposite direction from fulfilling our obligations under the United Nations Charter.

In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it—the people of Vietnam.

The United States of America… cannot have a viable foreign policy if we are humiliated in Vietnam. We must not lose in Vietnam. It’s as cold as that. Right?... And they have not given us any way to avoid being humiliated. And since they have not, we must draw the sword, so the blockade is on.

We will never know what would have happened if President Johnson had said no to more troops and more war [in Vietnam]. We do know what happened when he said yes.

With 450,000 U.S. troops now in Vietnam, it is time that Congress decided whether or not to declare a state of war exists with North Vietnam

I will not be the first American President who lost a war!

We we’re wrong, terribly wrong [about the Vietnam war.]

The war the soldiers tried to stop.

The big wars of the 20th Century, like the two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, were all wars about elite control.

The United States is involved in a war in Vietnam. American troops will stay until victory.

You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street…. They don’t go to school because they are going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.

America lost its face with the debacle of the Vietnam War.

Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place.

The tragedy of America is that it entered all the wars with a consensus in favor of them, but within a defined period, the legitimacy of the war became a major domestic issue, with some people arguing that withdrawal was the only legitimate objective.

Those who had demanded no more than an end to the bombing of North Vietnam and a commitment to negotiations saw their demands being realized, and lapsed into silence.