Terry Gross

In a new book about Gen. David Petraeus, author and journalist Fred Kaplan looks at how theories of counterinsurgency have shaped U.S. military policy in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The veteran journalist died on Sunday at age 87. He was famous for his reporting on the Vietnam War, and in 1989 he spoke with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about another war: The Spanish-American War and U.S. involvement in the Philippines.

In a new book, Nick Turse says the pressure on U.S. forces to produce a body count during the Vietnam War led to mass civilian deaths. "The idea," he says, "was that the Vietnamese, they weren't really people."