Another repulsive thing about this war
that I don't remember in the Second World War
was the business of counting up the bodies in the newspapers.
35 Viet Cong killed today, 29 yesterday.
We're supposed to send the Pentagon
wonderful congratulations cards with little roses on them.
We didn't count up the Germans in that way.
And I remember in the Minneapolis Tribune,
there was a picture of a search and kill Marine mission having
gone out on a search and kill mission,
returning to base with the first Viet Cong soldier
that they'd killed draped over the hood, exactly like a deer.
Exactly like Detroit hunters coming back
from the woods with a deer.
And a friend sent me the same photograph in the Indianapolis
Star, in which they'd understood it perfectly,
and they had put it underneath Big Game.
So every time that the war takes a step in escalation,
it also takes a step in the desensitization
of the American.
And when Guernica was bombed, when
they had the first bombing of an undefended village,
do you know what a howl went up all over the world?
Picasso did his great painting, Guernica,
and there was howls in all the newspapers.
Do you know how many undefended villages
that we have bombed so far?
The whole nation is without defense of South Vietnam.
The most serious step was not the bombing in North Vietnam,
it was the bombing of South Vietnam.
Now nobody cares.
We make a mistake one time, and we say, we're sorry,
we didn't intend to bomb that one.
We're very sorry.
It fell through.
We'll give them all $84.
Give the families $84, that will take care of it.
And everyone says, that's fine.
That takes care of it.
Very nice of the American government.
So it's a desensitization that is going on.
So I think there's something also with the fact
that the bodies of Asians are so small.
Americans expect big things.
So here's a little poem called "Counting Small-boned Bodies."
"Let's count the bodies over again.
If we could only make the bodies smaller, the size of skulls,
we could make a whole plain white
with skulls in the moonlight!
If we could only make the bodies smaller,
maybe we could get a whole year's kill in front of us
on a desk!
If we could only make the bodies smaller,
we could fit a body into a finger-ring
and wear it like a keepsake forever."