A Jewish Vietnam Veteran Looks Back 50 years on the Moral Journey that Changed His Life
From 1968 to 1969, Moment Senior Editor George Johnson served as an Army intelligence advisor in the CIA’s Phoenix Program in South Vietnam. Based on his memoir When One’s Duty and the Right Thing are not the Same, Johnson discusses his assignment to this once-secret intelligence program and the Army’s program for “pacification” of Vietnamese villages. He also discusses how his reservations about the war caused him, upon return from Vietnam and to civilian life, to call for an accounting for the war and to re-orient his life toward Judaism and Jewish social action. This program is in honor of National Vietnam War Veterans Day.
Hawkeye Pierce: An Appreciation
B.F. Pierce is a brilliantly developed, multifaceted character, perhaps best analyzed by M.A.S.H.’s Army psychiatrist, the Jewish Dr. Sydney Friedman (played by Alan Arbus). The doctor’s observation that “while anger turned inward becomes depression, anger turned sideways is Hawkeye Pierce.”
Beshert | The Brother Who Opened My Path—and My World
My big brother, Jerry Rose, was my beshert, He was eleven years older than me. I adored him. He was my idol and my mentor....
When One’s Duty and the Right Thing are not the Same
A Jewish Vietnam Veteran looks back 50 years on the moral journey that changed his life.
Like a distant thunderstorm, at first unseen and unheard, the...
A Vietnamese Yom Kippur
by Kelley Kidd
A Yom Kippur spent fasting on the beautiful island paradise of Phu Quoc, in Vietnam, is not my typical Day of Atonement. But...