Prisoners

[Arrow]

Heroes of My Lai

[39mto39g]

Lt. Calley didn't do anything wrong. Thats a very big statement isn't it?
Every bomb that was droped from a B-52 could have and in some cases has done the same thing, kill all the people around.
Calleys problem is that someone told and someone listened.
My defence would have been get in line boys every American (taxpayers) needs to be on trial. Atom bombs, which we have droped 2, aren't designed to take out military targets, they kill civilians and a hell of alot more than Calley did.
I don't belive what Calley did was right, but, it was a hell-of-alot smaller than Fire bombing Tokyo, (100,000 people killed) How many German civials died in taking of Berlin? I have no idea, but I would guess it was alot more than Calleys experiance.
I have no problem with someone commiting murder in a war, The American public has a problem with watching murder being commited, or being told of a murder. I have never understood this because its, apparently ok to fire bomb a city and kill 100,000 people but its not ok to shoot someone face to face, Hu! imagin that.
And in Friscos case, our medic wouldn't even wasted a bandage on the guy, he was dead.
Human beings do bad things to each other in war, I have ecepted that, When you do, war is easier.

Ron

[exlrrp]

Originally posted by Andy Would killing all the residents of My Lai under those circumstances have been a good thing? We both know it would not. If Calley attacked the village as a legitimate military target, justified or not, would most of the world have been outraged, probably not. If he and his men had not captured all the old ladies and kids before killing them would Calley have made the cover of TIME magazine, no.

Please don?t get me wrong, I?m not saying that Rusty and his boys were anything but bad examples. What I was doing was pointing out that killing captured enemy is just wrong, and Calley is the poster boy. There was also an effort to get into the Way Back Machine to a 1968 mind set. We know those little old ladies in My Lai were responsible for some of the booby traps that killed Americal Division people. There was a break down in command and control, anger took over, then $hit happened.

Stay healthy,
Andy

Andy

"There was a break down in command and control, anger took over, then $hit happened."
Well, I agree with that point all right. And quite a few people would still be in jail if I had my way about it, including Calley's chain of command.
But according to his testimony, Calley thought he WAS attacking a legitimate target. He'd been told by his CO that it was a "VC"Village and the people should be considered "enemy"
Calley was not only the main perp, he was also the scapegoat.
One of the things lacking here was a clear definition of"the enemy" and what to do about it. Thats the trouble trying to give infantrymen tasks theyre not trained or ready to do, like a cop trying to be a fireman or vice versa. The kind of tools they gave infantrymen gave them really limited options: either to kill.......or to kill. what do you expect is going to happen when they put bozos in charge of heavily armed, low morale troops that are poorly lead.
It goes right back to the Army for not having mechanisms that can detect this in time and do something about it. But where the Army REALLY is to blame is for the coverup.Every one of his chain of command--and others--denied this had happened and tried to cover it up right up to the time they published pictures of it. Hersch and Meadlo were vilified and excoriated for bringing it up and insisting something be done
One of the defintions of "legally sane" as you know well, is if you know right and wrong enough to cover up youre crime--if you cover it up, obviously you know it was wrong. And so it was with our leaders.
This is what they always do--right down to Abu Ghraib.

I don't think either of us thinks that kiling all those unarmed women and children was a good thing but what you said "....It always seemed that if Rusty Calley just ordered his men to roll though My Lai and shoot anything that moved, instead of shooting them all after they surrendered, he?d have never been court marshaled. US troops in Vietnam wouldn?t have had one more big black eye....." Implies it would have been acceptable.
And what I'm sayin is that youre right--it would have been acceptable--by us. Thats the bad part.
Listen to what you say: Rusty Calley was a "bad example. " A "bad example?? HE WAS A FUCKING MASS MURDERER!! Yeah I guess you can say a mass murderer is a "bad example" but it doesn't quite do it justice, does it?.
I was in enough combat around populated places to have seen dead and wounded civilians as a result of combat and there's a big difference in my mind between that and what Calley did. But more than once I either fired on or called artillery on or was witness to villes getting wiped out solely on the strength of somone telling us it was a VC ville. It was common practice. Were they all culpable VC? I doubt it. Was it murder? Sure were a lot of bodies lying around.
Like I say, if I had a conscience, I'd lose sleep over it but I lost that a long time ago.

Do you see why I say it was no wonder they didn't like us? we killed over a milion of em, mostly civilians, wasted their country. And all the time telling ourselves we were the good guys.
Well the Vietnamese sure seem a lot frendlier now we're not trying to run their country. It might be a lesson to the wise.
Stay good
James

[Andy]

Would you read my posts on this thread? I?m saying over and over that killing people who have surrendered is a bad thing. If you have captured people, then kill them, ya did bad.
Mentioned Calley because he?s the most famous soldier who violated the rules. Yes, he is a mass murder and his chain of command, to one degree or another, were also responsible. But we were talking about individual soldiers on the ground. You nor I were in the position of the OIC of the Americal, we weren?t LBJ.
BTW, our maps had white zones. Cities, towns, vills, the Black Virgin Mountain, Cambodian Boarder, parts of the rubber plantation. They were no fire zones. Where you were a spec-4 may have been able to blow away a village but in our AO sometimes a Battalion Commander could not get rounds on a rubber tree.

I agree with must everything else you said, except you really do carry around a lot of guilt.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[SuperScout]

You're dead wrong on this one. Calley obviously did something wrong, or else he wouldn't have been court martialed. The second largest mistake in the Calley affair was the fact that he was ever allowed to enlist in the Army, ever allowed to attend OCS, and ever allowed to become a commissioned officer. The people that he and his unit slaughtered were mostly women and children, hardly a threat to any real warrior. He was a totally worthless leader, and an even more worthless human being.

Many people, myself included, believe that Calley was the scapegoat for a larger command failure. Had I been ordered to serve on his court martial board, I would have voted for either the death sentence or life without parole. He deserves one or the other.

There seems to be some very blurred thinking about what constitutes a prisoner of war, and what constitutes a belligerent. When an enemy soldier has no futher means of resistance, no rocks, sticks, weapons of any sort from which he can harm a friendly combatant, we can become a prisoner of war. How he is treated must instantaneously change the moment he ceases being a belligerent and becomes a POW. It is at this point that a very lucid line is drawn between killing and murder. A real leader's role, among other functions, is to make that line extraordinarily clear to his men, and to make them understand the consequences of crossing that line. Excuse while I boast a bit, but my warriors never had any uncertainty about where that line was, and where I stood in relation to that line. End of sermon.

[39mto39g]

Ok you tell me whats the difference with shooting a civilian in the face or droping a bomb on them.

I don't agree with what he did, but what he did happened on a greater size a bunch of times, it depends on if you had a mission to do it or not.

A snipper taking out an unarmed soldier at 600 yards or shooting him in the chest, one is ok the other is not, I just don't get it.

The people of Nagasaky can tell you about a massicure.

Ron

[SuperScout]

Possible answers to your questions:

Shooting a civilian in the face is murder.
Dropping a bomb on a civilian is an example of collateral damage. The civilian was not the target, but happened to be standing, sitting, or bicycling too close to the intended target. Excrement occureth in wartime.

A sniper taking out an unarmed soldier at 600 yards? Why was the soldier unarmed? How could the sniper tell if the soldier was unarmed? Was the soldier unarmed because he was a goober and forgot his weapon? If the sniper was in a position to observe the enemy soldier, the enemy soldier had ample opportunity to be armed. Consistent with my earlier statements, the enemy soldier was not in the act of surrendering, or had been rendered as a non-combatant, ergo was still a legitimate target.

Nagaski: in the state of general war, as occurred during WWII, the city of Nagasaki had great war-making potential, and was a valid target. The fact that several thousand Japanese were incinerated as a result of the second atomic bomb is another example of collateral damage. Excrement occureth in wartime. Personally, I don't give a fig what the people of Nagasaki say about the A-bomb.

[39mto39g]

I hear you, I guess, Its just that the bombers that bomb a city my or may not be going for a building and they got to know that civilians live in a city. But if the intent was to bomb a factory and civlians got killed than they were collateral damage, but bombing a city, I can't belive that the people that plan to bomb a city didn't plan to bomb the civilians.

The discovery channel had a show on about Marine snipper school. and they had a snipper from the VN era who stated he watched a unarmed NVA eat his lunch before and then the snipper took him out at over 600 yards. To me, distance was the only difference .

A-bombs, I was just trying to point out that not all bombs are designed to take out military targets. The A-bomb was designed to take out civilian populations and again, theres no difference to than killing a bunch of civilians face to face or killing them from 30,000 feet up. There still dead.

Ron