Question

Read this excerpt from "Not a Dove, But No Longer a Hawk."

Answer 1

Neil Sheehan (the author) spent over three years in Vietnam observing the war and its effects, as a correspondent for the New York Times.

In his essay, "Not a Dove, But No Longer a Hawk" (1966), New York Times correspondent Neil Sheehan told of his experiences viewing the war close up from 1962 to 1966.  "Americans, because they are Americans," he wrote, arrive in Vietnam full of enthusiasm and with the best of intentions.  After a prolonged period of residence, they leave with their enthusiasm a victim of the cynicism that pervades Vietnamese life and with their good intentions lost somewhere in a paddy field."  His own years in Vietnam brought Sheehan to realize that Americans were defending a government that did not deserve to be defended, one that was unable to win support from its own people or meet the needs of its people.  He wrote:  “Our responsibility for prolonging what is essentially a civil conflict may be one of the major reasons for the considerable amount of confusion, guilt and soul-searching among Americans over the Vietnam war.”   

Answer 2

Answer:

Between 1959 and 1962, Sheehan fought as an army officer during the war with Korea, in the 7th Infantry Division, whose newspaper he also directed. He was then sent to the Tokyo barracks, where he edited Bayonet magazine. There he began his career as a correspondent for the news agency United Press International (UPI), which entrusted him with the mission of serving in Vietnam. In 1964, for his extraordinary work, the Times recruited him to be one more season in the main theater of operations of the Indochina war.

Sheehan along with David Halberstam and Malcolm Browne were among the trio of most eminent and respected war correspondents in Vietnam. The three of them used to report on the course of the conflict in a different way than the official communiqués reproduced by the press that responded to the dictates of Nixon.