Behead and Cure: Humanitarian Work in the Vietnam War

The war in Vietnam was an ethical minefield for the medical humanitarians who volunteered to treat the injured and dying. The United States government used humanitarian aid as a counterinsurgency strategy and weapon of war. The Vietnamese people could not understand why the Americans and their allies sought at once to attack them and to save them by providing medical care. Civilian medical teams increasingly questioned their complicity in the war and whether neutrality was possible.

Behead a...