My Lai bastard

[unit731]

I heard that massacres like My Lai were commonplace in Viet Nam at the time' date=' where soldiers burnt down the villages and killed the inhabitants in order to 'save them'. It's just that the Mai Lai one happened to be one that made it into the Western press.[/quote']

 

As the truth about this came out from the participants themselves, I donâ??t think incidents of this magnitude were common. That is not to say it was uncommon for soldiers to kill individual villagers during a sweep with little or no provocation. From the few actual combat veterans I know, calling in close air support was a much more common way in which civilians were killed.

TH

 

 

There is no excuse for what he did. Period.

 

But interesting how history is written and observed. US has a free press. And investigative journalism.

 

None, and I say none again, of the atrocities of the Viet Cong and the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) seem to be recorded or mentioned in any/few history books. Certainly not in the Communist People's Republic of Vietnam! And these atrocities were against their own people.

 

Free Press in most of the world. None in present Vietnam.

 

Is the US to blame? The French? The Chinese?

 

Chaimberlain, Churchill, DeGaule, Roosevelt, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung?

 

Domino Theory? Cold War?

[TheCorinthian]

731 beat me too it. I was going to ask the people here that wanted Calley strung up how many VC war criminals went to trial?

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

Two wrongs don't make a right.

 

Or in other words, just because no VC war criminals when to trial doesn't mean US war criminals should therefore be off the hook.

 

Sanuk!

 

[TheCorinthian]

Not saying they do. The point is at least US does arrest and try our war criminals. In fact, I think only the US and GB do. A fact that is often over looked here.

 

If the US was like everyone else, you would never have heard of Calley.

[Sakai]

Wrong, if I look at the military justice during as far as WW2, the USA and GB were of course not the only countries to have military courts.

 

If we argue about the term 'war criminal' then it only took form after the Nuremberg trials.

 

So you take the example of Calley:

- The judgement has been heavily contested because it negated the conclusions of the Nuremberg trials

- Calley was not sentenced for 'war crime' but for premeditated murder

- He was the only one declared guilty, his direct superior who was present during the massacre wasn't, his men weren't thus making a joke of the conclusions reached at the end of the Nuremberg trial and of course the Geneva convention of 1899 and 1907.

 

Add to this the cover up from the US army and government.

 

These days, war crimes, for the western democracies are mainly commited by the GB and US for the simple reason they are the main countries currently at war.

 

 

[Bangkoktraveler]

but Calley didn't get punished. He was a hero in the eyes of most people.

[TheCorinthian]

These days, war crimes, for the western democracies are mainly commited by the GB and US for the simple reason they are the main countries currently at war.

 

 

Then if that is the case, what should be done with the people packing trucks with explosives in baghdad? They are not hitting us thank god, but I would say they are "at war." Or would you just call them mass murderers?

 

Or how about Darfoor (sp?)? Are there not "war crimes" going on there? Or would you call that something else too?

[Guest lazyphil]

its the evil white man oppressing the brown man. keep up corinthian!!!

[Flashermac]

I don't know of any VN vet who thinks Calley was a hero. To us he should have been shot. What they did tainted all vets to some degree, at least in the eyes of many. It was the civilians who never went to war who defended him because "he was our boy" and thus couldn't have done wrong. The Army deserves much of the blame simply for letting an incompetent like Calley ever get a commission. He should have been made a cook.

 

If you go to VN or Laos these days, you may be surprised to find that the French are the hated nation, not the US. Read about the atrocities the French committed when they made VN a colony. There were many My Lai type incidents - and French officers sent home photos of them standing with piles of dead villagers. One display in the Lao PDR's national museum depicts French soldiers dumping victims' bodies into a village well. I've also heard tales of Dutch troops shooting down Indonesian villagers during that independence war. Such acts happen in war time - and should be punished. Unfortunately, they very seldom are.

 

 

 

[Sakai]

TheCorinthian you are mixing everything.

 

You took the very specific case of 'war crime', the Iraqis insurgents are terrorists and they are commiting murders, mass murders, crimes against humanity and so on, but they are not guilty of war crimes as they are not part of the military of a nation, as opposed to Calley.

 

Darfur: Ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes (if commited by the army, not the militias) and so on.

 

So yes, my point is correct that among the western nations (and I don't consider Sudan as a western nation) that GB and USA are the main ones having some war crimes commited by a few members of their armed forces.

 

Sudan, Sri Lanka and many other hot spots are a different matter on another scale of course.

 

Just that your affirmation only GB and US take to trial their war criminals is incorrect, throughout history.

 

Of course, war crimes are commited daily in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world by most third world states.