And we continue to tell the rest of the world that we are the greatest nation and people in the history of the world. Hypocrisy at its best.
2
I spent time in the field with the Tiger Force and am proud to have done so. I knew young men who were remarkably competent and achieved an extraordinary level of comradeship. It is tragic that they were misled and misused. I knew SSG John Gertsch (posthumous Medal of Honor).
The Blade series understandably did not recount the other seven years of the Tiger Force’s service in Vietnam. Their record was among the most remarkable of small infantry units.
It is less excusable that the authors missed most of the story. I read the battalion’s daily reports from 1965 through 1968. The time in Quang Ngai province in the second half of 1967 stood out for the large number of implausible after-action reports: with no US casualties, numerous “enemy” KIAs, and few weapons captured. Sallah and company never figured out is that the entire battalion participated. Anyone from the brigade level through MACV who saw the reports knew what was happening.
I am haunted by what they did in 1967 – and by the lesser sins I and others committed as the inevitable concomitant of infantry combat.
1
Until we as Americans take responsibility for the horrible things WE have done and make amends for them, we will have endless wars and a bankrupt nation .
2
"Two former platoon members told Army investigators that many members from the unit had been drinking beer all afternoon on July 23, 1967, when they came upon the old man....". Since when is beer part of military rations?
The inhumane Hawkins, who retires with a lucrative military pension as a major, says he shot the man because he was making noise. "I eliminated that right there." No, Hawkins, you eliminated a human being who could not speak English so he couldn't understand your "command."
Why is "Major" Hawkins in prison? Why aren't all the assassins, barbarians and cutthroats? He who "beheaded an infant"? Ah yes, just "following orders." Where have we heard that before?
8
3000 years before Tiger Force- Mongol armies would boil their enemies in cauldrons then force surviving relatives to drink the human soup. Should we notify the Hague over this?
One thing liberals [especially ones who have never served] have to understand- when you wage war- you unleash the dogs of war. Unsavory things are going to happen. It's not like the movies where everyone is level headed and making morally correct decisions. In war- good people become bad people out of self preservation.
I can't believe you people are picking apart the actions of Tiger Force. If any of them are haunted by their actions today- then that's punishment enough.
Far worse people in our criminal court system are acquitted all the time- cut the soldiers some slack.
How profoundly depressing it is to be shown (on PBS) after all these years the absolute futility on top of criminal stupidity that was America's war effort in Vietnam. Those brave patriotic soldiers were sent into one meat grinder after another on the alter of national pride pumped up for increased corporate profit. As for the Vietnamese, what steel and determination they showed in the face of America's out of all bounds aggression.
9
From start to finish the Viet Nam war was immoral. So glad I protested that war.
14
Without arguing good or evil, it seems worth mentioning that the unrestrained tactics did not work.
6
Looking squarely at these atrocities and, more difficulty, publicly acknowledging them, is not unlike confronting the institutional history and ongoing practice of child rape in the Catholic church. From the leadership to the congregation members and even in the families of the victims, almost no one is willing to see the horrific truth, let alone do what it takes to stop it. Powerful institutional forces threaten to ostracize and destroy any who bear honest witness to the crime. The evil remains hidden in plain sight, unpunished. And yet, eventually, enough brave soles did bear witness, did piece together the story, did hold the institution accountable, did begin to drag evil into the light of day where cannot survive. That fight is still ongoing. It gives me hope that the fight against American military atrocities, often in collaboration with the CIA, can be begun.
How hard is it to take a knee when that banner does wave? How else can we speak the story together until it can be heard by our neighbors who cannot yet bear to listen?
19
I'm having trouble separating what these "elite" American troops did from what the German Army's elite force - the Waffen SS - did to the inhabitants of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane in June 1944, or to the Czech villagers of Lidice. Orders is orders, I suppose, or was it "We were hot, tired, angry and scared"?" Or "You had to have been there." (I was.)
How many stories about their war do these now-grandfathers share at their local VFW. How can they ever know peace of mind?
10
Why aren't pilots who bomb civilians held to the same moral standard as infantrymen ?
It seems when we think of atrocities, its always infantry - rape , torture, murdering the elderly/women/children by gun or knife or hand grenade , but never pilots who often kill hundreds or thousands more with their bombs. Is Joseph Stalin right - one death is a tragedy, a million is just a statistic?
I don't see any difference between what the men in Tiger Force did and the pilots who dropped bombs on civilians in Hanoi , or those who dropped napalm and Agent Orange on South Vietnamese peasants. The image that haunts me most about Vietnam is that little Vietnamese girl who was napalmed, running naked down the road with other villagers. What "civilized" country could do such a thing? Yet I've never heard who the pilot was that dropped it. Was what he did any less horrific than what members of Tiger Force did?
Agent Orange is still disfiguring people in Vietnam today - just google what the effects are.I warn you, the pictures are extremely disturbing. But our taxpayer dollars caused it.
When will this country ever account for that atrocity?
15
Not only the world's largest welfare organization, the US military has a long history of war crimes and atrocities, as do most armies throughout history. What is most dehumanizing is the way this culture minimizes that fact and insists the military is off limits when it comes to criticism or accountability, and yet that mindset is at the core of what too many people claim patriotism to be.
Patriotism is not about waving a flag, singing a song, banging a Bible, sloganeering, or parroting some idiot on Fox News. It's about caring about others, upholding the principles of a great nation, being a responsible member of the world community. If you can't make it to that point, stop telling me you're an American.
12
I recall call that Sir Bertrand Russell had convened a war crimes tribunal on the Vietnam War in Geneva and the hearings, revealing horrendous crimes against humanity being committed by the US military in Vietnam, which the U.S. Government and mainstream media dismissed as communist propaganda.
The atrocities being committed by Americans were known everywhere in the world but in the US itself, and when the war ended, after three and a half million dead Vietnamese and 58,000 dead Americans, the US left a poisoned and devastated Vietnam behind and no one was ever called to account for the damage done. Americans moved on.
It was precisely because those responsible for Vietnam were never held to account that later governments felt no reluctance to break the law and authorize unlawful military actions in Central America, or lie the nation into endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while carrying out secret operations in Somalia, Yemen, and more. Presidents may be impeached for indiscretions in the Oval Office, but certainly not for lying the nation into war.
14
There is no statute of limitation for murder. If the Army is more sensitive to these thing, and I have my doubts based on what I saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, then it should be bringing these men to trial and holding them accountable. That would send a powerful message to our fighting men that honor matters and that eventually, in a country that value honor, those of great dishonor will eventually be held accountable.
Anything less than that is merely hollow words, and the continuance of letting the dishonored hide being those who served honorable and who must bear the sins of dishonor who hide murder behind excuses and political calculation.
It's time to do the right thing.
6
There is too much military glorification in the culture Why is the flag,ridiculously large at times, and troops sent out before every single game of sports with a singing of a national anthem ? What does that have to do with sports ? Very telling about a psyche of a nation that is forever embroiled in useless and unwarranted conflicts.
4
Between this and the Burns series, those times are being brought back in all their gore, eliciting that old time loathing of military brass and civilians in power who denied ( and deny) and obfuscated, (and obfuscate still); and who, through their de facto approval of atrocity, insured that it would happen again and again. They also insured that troops who DO have strong PERSONAL ethical and moral controls on their behaviors - there are many - would be treated as if they were traitors it the broke the code of silence - and like the helicopter pilot who tried to stop the My Lai killings -would be shunned and cast out for speaking the truth. It dawned on me that in these cases some ( elite?) military units were operating like a street gang: ruled by continual retaliation and omerta.
I had arguments with hawkish relatives way back when the Iraq invasion was being engineered. They were incredulous when I suggested that you have to START with the premise that your own government lies when it is convenient.
Consider: we have now had several generations who have not really been faced with the darkest lessons of Vietnam. Politicians STILL insist that patriotism is about blind allegiance to symbols and authority - and attack those who seek review and thought, whether they are reporters or a handful of football players.
11
I was in the Central Highlands in '66, a young, idealistic officer. It was a nightmare because of the things we did. Rapes and torture. I had a friend, a sniper, who sat in a tree and killed people at random. We had a Captain in the interrogation unit that raped the female prisoners and a Vietnamese Captain who wired prisoners testicles with a field phone battery and tortured them. We threw prisoners, who were really non-combatants out of helicopters for fun. When the first one was thrown out, the others got really scared, justly. The thing is, I thought we were Americans, proud, noble, with dignity and compassion. I was wrong. We got the Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper, every day and we read about the Yankees and all the lying, ignorant politicians in Washington. The South Vietnamese did not want us there. We killed their men and raped their women, and I thought we were noble, and compassionate and good. We all argued about why we were there but nobody knew. The communist domino theory was pure crap. The picture of George Bush on the aircraft carrier claiming we won his war in Iraq literally made me sick. Trump makes me sick, very sick. He will start a war with a tweet at 5:30 in the morning on an impulse. Do not believe that the United States soldiers are noble in war. They are soldiers, young men with incredible firepower and not a whole lot of maturity. It's not their fault. They should not be there. And. They are not protecting America
55
Ralph
Hear! Hear!
Watching the build up to the war in Iraq, the adulation poured onto GW and the NeoConservative Project for the New American Century, Trump, the financial crash, a draft dodging, billionaire, women abusing playboy being president, ya, I'm with you.
9
I always heard that people that were actually in war didn't talk much about it...
Sorry fella. It is their fault. And it was your fault. I was in Vietnam in '67-68. That was not the norm. It was the exception. You and anyone who took part should have been prosecuted. If there were mitigating circumstances then maybe a General Discharge was sufficient, otherwise a DD (Dishonorable Discharge) and brig time would be appropriate. Don't project your behavior on other soldiers and the "politicians". Every war has some disreputable soldiers. They are a disgrace. Politicians are no more corrupt than some military officers. It's called accountability.
9
War is evil unleashed. Always is. Look at Iraq. Thats why war is a stupid choice usually. Like G Bush acted like a child when he started the Iraq war not having any idea of what the unwanted consequences are. Now we have two new children playing chicken over what exactly? Again naive about what war in Korea would really look like.
13
No War is Sanctioned murder in mass. its not evil, its Murder.
As always war can bring out the best and the worst in people. America has a long history of barbaric behavior. The fact that other nations have done as bad or even worse does not make it any better or any more forgivable. Slavery, genocide, mass murder on a huge scale, nuclear bombs, fire bombing whole cities into oblivion, we have done it all.
The only real hope for salvation comes from learning from one's past so that it can never happen again. Sadly, frighteningly it seems the very worst of who we have been is becoming who we now are.
Only a mad man propted up by the deep hatred of his followers could so blithely threaten nuclear destruction upon a whole country as if it were no more then a Sundays morning jaunt and still have people cheer him on.
If this is what you think make America great again is all about then I dare say you are not so far removed from the people of tiger force.
18
Actually, the fact that others do worse DOES mean that we are better. That's literally what "better" and "worse" mean.
2
"The platoon leader, Lt. James Hawkins, lifted Mr. Dao and shot him in the
face with a CAR-15 rifle.
"Mr. Hawkins ... said he shot the elderly carpenter because he was "making a lot of noise. I eliminated that right there."
And firing his rifle didn't make a lot of noise?
The arrogance of this Hawkins in mocking his depraved act of murder is astounding. And he was apparently repeatedly promoted after this, retiring as a major.
This interview with Mr. Hawkins reported in The Blade was in 2003.
In the 14 years since Hawkins admitted to having murdered an unarmed civilian, together with this facetious motive, there has been no further action by the army, no justice, no even reprimand at all.
With this further reporting, this case must be pursued by the US government. There is no statute of limitation for murder.
39
The Viet Cong and NVA were determined to unify Vietnam under the government of the North and only a minority of people living in the South cared to have a separate country from the North, and they lived in the cities not in the countryside where the VC guerrillas operated nor in the jungles where the NVA fought. The VC were ruthless and cruel in the methods they used to control the people in the villages across the country but a of them also found support in those villages. The American soldiers were told that they were fighting the enemy to enable the people to be free but these people were letting them be ambushed or killed by booby traps or helping the VC and the Americans knew it. At that point command needed to deal with the fact that the overall objective was to enable a free and democratic state to be created by these same people but those people were not helping that to happen. Instead the commanders simply behaved as if once the enemy was killed off, the peaceful and liberty loving country would simply appear like magic. The whole affair was mismanaged from start to finish because nobody South of Hanoi had a plan that had a start, middle, and end that could be reasonably envisioned and planned.
5
Well, the people in the countryside of South Vietnam did not want us there. They did not need us there. We caused the Viet Cong to kill them so they wouldn't support the US troops. They were caught in the middle. There was no reason for us to be there. They did not want war. Were they supposed to want war? I don't think so.
13
Hold on... We caused them to kill? That's a stretch.
Lies. 60 plus years of lies, all to protect the US of A? No, more to protect the profits of war, and there are many. And, this Congress just threw another $80B on the fire -- burn, baby, burn.
14
We think of Nazis and ISIS, who have committed unspeakable atrocities, as people who are completely evil. We can't comprehend how they - human beings like us - can be so devoid of human decency. Yet some of our soldiers, American soldiers, the good guys, have also committed horrendous atrocities.
I am not comparing American soldiers who fought in Vietnam and the Middle East to Nazis and ISIS. But it's disturbing that even our soldiers, who should be "better," are just as capable as our worst enemies, in the "right" situation, of engaging in despicable behavior.
The soldiers and leaders of Tiger Force who commited these crimes should be punished, regardless of how many years gave gone by.
17
We send young men (and now women) into other countries in the midst of civil war and expect rational, honorable behavior? Vietnam was a living nightmare for any in-country soldier. No one knew who was the enemy, who was hiding Viet Cong, weapons, supplies for the enemy. Afghanistan is no different, just no jungle. Our people will fight honorably when our country has to be defended and we are on our home ground. Yet, even then the horrors of war will follow. Ask partisans of any stripe. War really should be the last resort.
4
...and still they protest: "They called me baby killer. I didn't kill babies." Perhaps you didn't. But somebody did.
I've seen the pictures. I've seen dead children.
Can we simply admit that it happened?
That it was wrong?
That the Vietnam war was wrong?
21
Why single out the Vietnam War? This country has been engaged in some act of war every single day since it was founded. Most of it involved incursions and conquering to promote economic gains and opportunities, not to defend ourselves from others trying to take us over or do us in. From that unethical posture, is it any surprise that unethical behavior typically follows?
And it is not just our military. In California, I have seen the posters the state used to promote a bounty program for "Indian" scalps.
Small wonder Congress picked a bloody battle song for our national anthem!
3
America, we have to stop our corrupt and incompetent leaders' slaughter of the poor. America killed millions of Vietnamese, Iraquis, Afghans. Now tRump warns he will "totally destroy North Korea" and threatens Iran and Venezuela (at the U.N.!) as he sends four thousand or more additional troops to Afghanistan and sells billions of dollars more weapons to Saudi Arabia to kill Yemenese.
The rich have to stop using the poor to kill the poor.
12
It sickens me when we preach morality to the rest of the world and are guilty of atrocities as this. How dare we!
12
Some people seem to think that war, while bad, is easily carried out in a virtuous fashion when a country's heart is in the right place.
The reality is that war has always been, and will always be the large-scale commission of murder, rape, theft and destruction.
When this has not been the case, it is a laudable exception to the rule.
These men were doin what (tragically) comes naturally in the middle of a long, terrifying campaign. They should never have been there, but having been sent, they should and could have been better trained and led, but they weren't, and it's a stain on our national honor.
Many, maybe most, people would sink to similar atrocities under such conditions. Look at Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, it appears she has gone from Nobel peace laureate to abetting ethnic cleansing.
9
In the CIA's Phoenix Program, mentioned briefly in Ken Burns Vietnam documentary segment last night, more (possibly many, many more) than 15,000 people were killed and tens of thousands brutalized. Of those killed, about 80% were civilians according to the CIA's own estimate.
The techniques used were the sorts of things president Trump has championed: electro-torture, water torture, beatings, stress positions, sleep deprivation and confinement in a freezer compartments for months or, in at least one case, two years. Of those subjected to torture, the CIA estimates only one out 83 were Viet Cong agents, meaning 75,000 or so innocent people were horrifically abused by the CIA with large scale support from the American military.
In one of the most Nazi-esque torture experiments, Vietnamese held captive at Bien Hoang prison had their skulls opened so that electrodes could be implanted in their brains. The CIA psychologists then manipulated the electrodes to see if they could make the prisoners of war fight each other. The experiment failed. The three victims were shot to death and there bodies were disposed by burning them.
No one has been held accountable for the Phoenix Program. No one has been held accountable for the abuses and killings at Guantanamo, too, which Republicans refuse to close.
These crimes have been carried out under the American flag. The honorable thing would be to insist on justice instead of turning a blind eye and saluting. That's how pride is earned.
25
For further context, I had a friend who was chosen to participate in the Phoenix Program as a translator from the Marines. (He died a few years ago.) As he interviewed Vietnamese men and women, he recognized that the people being abused and killed were civilians. He objected to what was taking place. His reward for challenging unlawful orders to participate in an unlawful program was as brutal and devastating as some of the torture he sought to stop. The physical and neurological damage done burdened him and his family for the rest of his life. After years of fighting for his VA benefits, he was finally acknowledged by the military as just another disabled veteran, a waste product of their institution.
I regard him as a hero and wish there were more like him. The histories of institutional war criminality being recounted in some of comments, here, speak of need for such principled courage in service to our country.
I think of that lack when I hear people tell others to salute the flag shut up and go somewhere else if they want to point out the moral stains on that flag. It is not easy to look at those stains. But if we are ever to make a welcoming home for the for the brave and honest patriots, we need to bear witness to the good and the bad done in the service of our country.
8
If we demand 90+ year old Nazi flunkies be brought up to trumped up calls for "justice,"
how do we explain the refusal to bring to justice, actual murderers in our own military, whose crimes are known, and whose identities and whereabouts are clear?
Justice American style? Hey world, look at what we do/demand of "others," not what we demand or ourselves. Our people are held to a different "standard."
27
American creeps, Trump supporters, who go to protests carrying AK47s are pure cowards who don't have a clue what war and killing is all about. Yet they think they are solid Americans. Put them in a live combat zone.
10
Australia is currently conducting detailed investigations into possible war crimes committed by its special forces in Afghanistan. Its likely that most of the incidents will not result in charges. However, the point is that these investigations are being conducted. Australia is one of the most professional special forces operators. It can therefore be assumed that other forces - in particular US special forces - should also be subject to this review and investigation process. Yet the silence is deafening.
10
The after effects upon soldiers who commit atrocities will last their lifetimes. Either they will suffer consciously over what they did or they will bury their feelings so deeply that it will make them into people who simply cannot be themselves ever again. Even if an officer and a unit detests civilians who they are certain are their enemies in all but using weapons against them, they must refrain from acting out for the sake of their own lives, to be able to live with themselves later on.
2
"But in the end, no one was prosecuted, and the case was concealed in the military archives for the next three decades." That's your take away right there. The crimes were despicable, the cover up was perhaps even worse - unless one is willing to concede that all the blather about American Exceptionalism is a total myth - then it all makes logical sense.
8
Nick Turse wrote a book about the Vietnam war entitled "Kill Anything That Moves" which is a direct quote from Captain Ernest Medina, the commanding officer briefing the troops before they were sent to My Lai. That wasn't the only village attacked in that operation but because of a complicit media that's the only one the American public heard about.
America has a well established reputation for committing atrocities in war but American citizens, and their educators, the mass media, refuse to acknowledge it.
It's enlightening to read that during the War of 1812 when the British were invading and burning Washington the British officers strictly enforced a no looting order against the civilian population. They even summarily executed men who violated that order. The Americans looted much more that the British invaders did. Even today British solders have a much better record of not committing war crimes when sent to fight.
14
Centuries of British privateering were winding down by then. But don't you worry, the "supplemental navy" had done a fabulous job of looting around the world by that time. On the bright side, now that Trump is ushering in the decline of American imperialism (whether he knows it or not) perhaps we will clean up our act as the British did when their empire started to crumble.
2
The line, "The platoon fired at civilians after being told to kill anything that moves", caught my attention. This reminds me of the book, "Kill anything that moves: The real story of the war in Vietnam". The author, Nick Turse, found copies of the U.S. Army's own investigations of our atrocities in Vietnam in the National Archives. Those documents have since been removed from the National Archives. Who removed them? Is the government concealing the truth of our history in Vietnam and obstructing justice?
15
During WWII the Germans and the Japanese committed horrible atrocities, but by the end of the war they paid an extreme price. This resulted in major changes to their national cultures -- from warlike to pacifist, from arrogant to humble. The U.S. has committed many crimes for which it has never been held to account: Slavery, VIetnam, Iraq, countless CIA-led covert interventions. The result of no accountability is continued bombast and a self-righteous, superior attitude toward the rest of the world. Someday our luck will run out.
18
In the Burns documentary on Vietnam a high ranking North Vietnamese leader said "its better that 99 innocent people are killed than one counter revolutionary live. It's better that 99 innocent people are killed than 1 enemy of the people lives. It's better that 99 innocent people are killed than one criminal bandit live". Atrocities are committed by both sides in any war. It's why we should heed the words of Robert Jackson at Nuremberg " both side do terrible things to win a war. The difference is One side chooses to do these terrible things. The other side is forced to do them"
2
And which side was the US on?
8
The supervising authorities who ordered/sent the GI's into the field with orders to kill everything moving should be in jail; not the soldiers who were doing what they were trained to do ....... follow orders.
2
No, Frank. Soldiers are not required to follow improper orders.
3
It seems to be an oxymoron to be horrified by the actions of the Tiger Force in the middle of a war.
War itself is inhumane and it seems like splitting hairs about their actions. The government ask young men to go and kill people to prevent the spread of an ideology, so you can't expect this to be nice and neat.
I understand there are (and should be) rules of engagement but I can't really be outraged over their level of savagery when it was savage to begin with.
3
I thought there was no statute of limitations for murder and war crimes.
5
I have done a lot of reading about the violence of war and came to two conclusions. One, anyone can be a victim. And, two, most people can become mass murderers. If ordered to kill by your leaders, you kill. I often wondered about bomber pilots who could kill hundreds in one mission and go on to lead normal lives. Are they worse then the men of Tiger Force?
I was in a bar in Saigon in 1968 when a pilot began bragging about shooting villagers. "You should have seen them run," he laughed. One of my fellow grunts told him to shut up, and a free for all broke out. None of my friends wanted to be in Vietnam, and more than a few of them had Vietnamese girl friends.
11
The Tiger Force was a really nasty failure of leadership during the Vietnam War. The classic emotional conflicts which arise in soldiers trying to defeat an enemy that is virtually impossible to discern from non-combatants among non-combatants who mistrust everyone or who have sympathy for the enemy is their ethical convictions which forbid murdering people with their deep resentment of people who seem to be enabling the enemy to kill their comrades and need to end the threats to themselves or to get revenge. It's the job of officers to indoctrinate their troops in the necessity to exercise self control to address the need to win over the non-combatants or at least to avoid infuriating them into greater support for the enemy. It's the job of the officers to direct their soldiers force to winning the war rather than to satisfy the imperatives of their rage and frustration. So the atrocities committed were in one big part a failure of command. But the entire war effort was mismanaged in that our soldiers were forced into a situation which made it highly likely that they would kill innocent people even if they sought to avoid doing so. The only way to avoid this was to hunt the enemy down, capture the enemy without using battlefield weaponry or waiting for the enemy to leave the civilians before using battlefield tactics to destroy them. That kind of action required highly skill operators, far more experienced and skilled than regular soldiers, and lots of them.
1
“The modern Army is also much more sensitive to the severity of these issues, and better able and willing to deal with them immediately and appropriately,”
I do not believe this for one second.
26
I served in our military but never in combat so I cannot fully immerse myself in the minds of these young men.
I remember how close I became with the guys in the unit in which we served. We trained, ate, slept, worked and partied together. I would have given my life for any one of them. That said, if I saw them harmed by anyone while in a combat situation regardless of whether they were a combatant or a civilian I may, possibly, have flipped out and committed atrocities...I don't know.
I am in no way condoning or pardoning the acts described in this article....I just know what it's like to be close to your brothers in arms...
8
Your comment touched a very raw nerve. From 1966 to 1970 I served in the army but was never posted to Vietnam, for which I am eternally grateful. Like you, I have my doubts about how I as a very immature and naive boy from Idaho would have reacted to the pressure of being in that war. A part of me sympathises with the soldiers mentioned here for what they went through. I have absolutely no sympathy, however, for the military and civilian 'leadership' that cynically manipulated and dehumanized these young men into becoming killing machines.
13
I had some reservations about posting that comment. Thank you Bob.
I totally agree with Denis and Bob's posts.
I'm sure that if the Tiger Force troops just utter the magic words these atrocities would be forgiven.
I was afraid.
Works for our occupying forces here at home.
Why not away.
12
Where there are humans there is atrocity. It's not like it didn't exist in Asia before the Americans showed up.
2
From Granta magazine:
A group of soldiers were ordered to go into a village and kill all the inhabitants. One soldier refused to obey the order. Saying it was an illegal order and not honorable. He was court marshaled. The prosecutors did their job; they followed the order to where it originated. What they determined was the order, ultimately, came down from the commander-in-chief. Rather than pursue that line, they quietly discharged the man from the Wehrmacht.
8
What do you expect when you send a bunch of weaponized barely-educated poor or working-class toughs into the midst of a hapless civilian population anywhere?
6
Military experts declared that "...the troops were acting out of rage over the death of comrades..." I'm not turning up that passage in the Geneva Conventions that says when the people you're shooting at shoot back, you get to rape, kill, and mutilate civilians.
8
OK NY Times you ran this story. But yet no call for justice? Even more so since it's on the Opinion page.
It seems you have a choice to make. Either do so or keep running these sort of pieces for the war-porn value.
For all the call to action by the NY Times for recognizing that Civil War monuments need to be torn down or some non-existent right of immigrants to cross into the US illegally there is no cry by the Times for justice for the Vietnamese victims of these crimes. You have their names.
As I said, it's war-porn and nothing else.
4
The draft dodger Donald Trump calls upon all Americans to respect the flag.
Look up the word "hypocrite" in the dictionary and see if there is a picture of a youthful Donald Trump.
How was this hypocrite elected President of the United States? Disgusting!!!
9
How were these soldiers different from the Nazi SS troops on the Eastern Front? Not.
Why are these officers and soldiers not in prison for life? Because, although Vietnam won the war, it did not invade and conquer the United States.
Every one of these men should have been tried for crimes against humanity at The Hague. We have become Nazi beasts. And it still goes on.
13
These individuals in this Tiger Force are war criminals like the einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) of the ss. Every mass-murderer in this death squad must be hunted like nazis & put on trial. The USA must pay reparations to the families of each individual victim. There can be no maga without addressing the USA's war criminal atrocities.
11
What war did not have atrocity? Our veterans all have a story of something done against the rules of war. Julius Caesar gave a speech to his troops that quoted 'when good men see no virtue in doing good that which is unnatural becomes natural'. He was commenting on the nature of human nature.
1
terrible, disgusting, despicable,
however, it must've been aussies, not americans.
these atrocities would go against the vaunted values that the country is always lecturing the rest of the planet about.
12
Atrocities are committed by members of all armed forces in wartime. There are differences between doctrine, loss of discipline and breakdown in command structure.
1
Are you being cynical?
You're in serious denial, you've never heard of the My Lai (pronounced Me-Lie) massacre??? There was a trial. This was no different. And No it wasn't the Aussies, they only had a few hundred troops in VN, US had 500,000, over 3,000,000 US troops served and cycled in-and-out for 1 year tours. over 300,000 wounded, and 58,000+ killed.
There is no dispute that history is important, but why do we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over?
9
It's human nature, sadly enough. While reading this article, I couldn't help but think about our current problems with police behavior in this country. It's what happens when soldiers (or police) come to see a civilian population as in sympathy with the enemy, real or imagined. The civilians become the enemy as well, and are treated accordingly. It's a problem I fear no amount of "training" or "culture" can ever solve.
4
58,000 U.S. dead. 2,000,000 plus Vietnamese plus dead. There was no reason to be there in the first place. In the end everyone runs a consumer society based on profit. Nothing else matters. Governments regulate hard or soft but there is only one game in town. And this will all come to an end. The world can not afford everyone to be middle class and above. We will outconsume ourselves soon enough. That is unless we destroy ourselves in other ways. Everything has to be personalized when basically the fundamentals are wrong to begin with. And so it goes.
3
You're in serious denial, you've never heard of the My Lai (pronounced Me-Lie) massacre??? There was a trial. This was no different. And No it wasn't the Aussies, they only had a few hundred troops in VN, US had 500,000, over 3,000,000 US troops served and cycled in-and-out for 1 year tours OVER 15 YEARS that the war lasted. over 300,000 wounded, and 58,000+ killed.
3,000,000 VNese dead, on both sides. Getting VNese to kill VN was what US did.
2
So why would anybody take a knee when the national anthem plays?
15
Nazi war criminals were tracked down and prosecuted decades after the crimes they committed. So should these war criminals. There is no statute of limitations on murder or war crimes. Our country fails to have honor if we allow war crimes to go unpunished.
30
All armies at war breed barbarians. The US is only superior in the lethal firepower these barbarians get to deploy. True then, truer now.
2
Vietnam should go to the UN and demand that action. But the trick is that if they do so and with no Wannsee Conference and resulting plans then these crimes remain individual crimes.
I served in Vietnam and committed no atrocities and worked with South Vietnamese civilians and military alike.
3
"Military experts who examined the Tiger Force case said the troops were acting out of rage over the death of comrades, frustration over fighting a canny enemy and fear for their own safety."
Please name those "military experts".
I have never understood why their boilerplate explanation excuses war crimes.
19
I don’t think it was intended to “excuse” war crimes, but to explain to readers what motivated soldiers to descend into such savagery.
Except we rarely hear these justifications when our enemies commit atrocities.
The shoe and boot is often blamed for the kick - whereas its motivation , command , rationale , comes from and is initiated in the heart and brain
4
I wish people would research what happened in N. Vietnam when the communists took over. Or what the Vietcong did in S. Vietnam. I'm not justifying any war crime at all, just saying, we were over there for a reason, and if people don't understand the threat of communism, their desire to take over the world, then they should read up on it. Eventually, because of public disgust and the large number of American dead, we abandoned our ally and in relatively short order, years not months though, the N. Vietnamese and Vietcong did in the south what it had done in the north. That's the real shame of it. We do not fight to win since WWII and if an enemy hangs on long enough, it can win too.
5
davod j eisenberg....seriously!? have read anything about the war since the 1960s? americans were there for their own reasons. the domino affect which was nonsense. the usa took incidents or, more accurately, ginned up incidents and built a rationale built on lies. ever heard of the gulf of tonkin?
4
We do not fight to win since WWII because we do not represent good since WWII. The threat of communism - don’t make me laugh. I’m sure you think the Iranian threat was equally global (and now the generalised Islamic), rather than the truth that these were convenient excuses for expansionist ideological imperialism that transformed minor regional dangers into truly global ones.
4
No, you are justifying war crimes.
3
Reading this has made me deeply ashamed.
My father won a Bronze Star in the Pacific in the Second World War, and is buried in Arlington Cemetery for his service. He told me at the time that Vietnam would be a war like no other and that we should never get involved there. That my father was correct does not make me feel better.
Reading this has made me feel ashamed. We've become a country of jingoistic fools that glorify war and complain bitterly when people take a knee during the national anthem. What is wrong with us?
29
vesuviano....the feeling of superiority brought on by an ignorance and belief there is only one country and guess which one it is. also, a complete lack of critical thinking by vast swaths of the population.
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
23
But we do it so much more cleanly now... bomb peasants, women, farmers, wedding parties... then we get to go home at the end of the day like any other commuter.
No blood, no gore, no trauma... for us, at least, right? And even less for the Saudis.
23
These army officers should be tried for war crimes. Killing, raping and torturing defenseless women, children and elderly civilians are barbaric acts that should not go unpunished, even 50 years later.
19
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of . . . ?
Sometimes a great nation, always a lousy empire.
Thank you for your service?
10
paul connah...always chuckle when i hear 'my country is of thee....etc' since the melody is from britain's national anthem.
too bad irony is not america's strong point.
3
It is true that Kim of North Korea and Trump have been egging each other on. But why is a noticeable fraction of the Republican Party itching to have a war with Iran? It is not just the Donald. A war with Iran will make the war in Iraq look like a picnic. It will be another Vietnam. It does not matter whether the Iranians are divided. If attacked by the US, theo most certainly will unite and fight. We the people should double down against initiating a conflict with Iran.
13
With a doctorate in nuclear engineering, Rion Causey should (very) appropriately be referred to as Dr. Causey.
1
Nah that's for M.D.s..nobody I know with a Ph.D calls herself Dr. !
1
Let's go for 'professor', shall we?
3
Within the academy or in his degree-related occupation, perhaps. Otherwise, on the street and in a newspaper article that has nothing to do with his occupation, only a pompous Phuddy-Duddy would expect this honorific.
2
Even before my very first group session at the VA, I knew the Vietnam generation of veterans were fundamentally different from mine. Like many others now, I have been riveted by the new Ken Burns series, though I haven't been watching to relive and maybe heal old wounds. I watch to try to understand how we got to where we are.
Atrocity is a fundamental component of war. Effective front-line combatants routinely dehumanize the enemy, and those that fail to do so bear deeper scars than their more calloused compatriots. It's a sad reality I've considered too often, even while on active duty.
What is most striking is the difference between a volunteed force and draftees. Poor kids still fight and die by the commands of the wealthy, and we still fight elective wars, and stay longer for the flimsy justification of reputation.
What differs is the protests. Iraq and in many ways Afghanistan are just as stupid of conflicts as Vietnam, but largely are ignored or tolerated. When the kids of affluence are spared the consequences, it seems there is a consensuz that we volunteered not just volunteer service, but to have our lives and health jeapordized in any stupid engagement policy makers desire.
The civic body is supposed to be our shield, and it feels to me the public has largely failed to honor their end of the bargin. Don't support the troops by throwing money at the VA. Do it by making sure we are going there for the right reasons.
40
You've summed up what many of us think, but fail to put into suitable words.
4
Wouldn't it be great to see a major movie made about this? It would be good, surely, for the American soul to be shown that the great tragedy of the Vietnam War wasn't all about them after all. That in fact, they suffered very little compared to the suffering they caused.
Then, perhaps a serious Hollywood director - Kathryn Bigelow maybe? - might tackle the subject of My Lai, about which, I suspect, most Americans know little and care less.
Yeah, I know, dream on....
12
I would like to see a movie about the NVA and Viet Cong. Why did the people of Vietnam fear them so deeply? Why are we so motivated to make a case against ourselves as if we are a separate species from our enemies? Any movie about atrocities in Vietnam would be less than half complete without a full account of what they so viciously did. We were wrong to fight police actions the way we did. But make no mistake, untold scores would have died in Vietnam with or without us. What happened under Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, was happening under the North Vietnamese. Or were the boat people just imagining it.
8
Roger Hanley
Great idea, yes, but... we don't live in that ideal world. Capitalism is involved. Even a Bigelow has to convince investors and distributors. They don't care about morality. They care about ticket sales. Spielberg could sell "Schindler's List." That was about Nazis. Try to get American audiences to watch a "Schindler's List" like movie about Americans in Vietnam? How likely are Australians to go to a film about atrocity involving the Aborigines? or Aussie soldiers in Vietnam?
I don't think you're dreaming. In a better world it would happen. In a better world there would be unlimited resources to pursue alleged human rights cases. That isn't a dream in reality, it's a nightmare because there aren't unlimited resources. People prefer to spend money on themselves. Worse, there are interests aligned against questioning at all, pursuing the cases, and the expenditure .
4
roger...they'd make the movie. however, it'd centre on one of the americans falling in love with one of the young women in the village....
2
Reason seems so weak and worthless as a counterforce to the power of our primitive reptilian brain. Is this an explaination of the obvious realty that there is something horribly wrong with us? Even a child can see there is little sense to the way human social systems use their resources to kill those in other communities and destroy everything in sight. I think our capacity to symbolize allows us to live in a world where we each declare the "truth" we prefer, while ignoring facts. It can be a violent dream-world that denies objective reality, within which one becomes the center of the universe, entitled, and indifferent to the suffering one inflicts, and worse, seeing the brutality imposed as not only justified but what others we claim are inferior, deserve.
3
I have often thought that the word "war" often becomes a word that obscures more than illuminates. I'm in favor of using descriptive words like murder, torture, intimidation, terrorizing, bullying, blowing up, etc., etc.
The kind of terms that make us sick to our stomach when we actually experience them and won't let us escape their impact through rationalizing them with a word such as 'war."
6
The rush to judgment is somewhat uncalled for. I for one do not know how I would have reacted in the same circumstances. I would hope that my compassion would forbid me to kill unarmed civilians. I would also hope that the officers would take steps to ensure that such actions do not take place. It is easy to sit here online and say with any certainty that we would all take the moral high road. To my mind we can only justify going to war only if we or our allies are attacked. The Vietnamese did not attack us neither did the Iraqis nor the Afghanis.
7
Everybody cheers when we prosecute a 90-year old Auschwitz guard, even if he did nothing but stand at a gate. But someone who shoots a civilian in the face for no reason gets to live a comfortable retirement. We are the biggest hypocrites in the world.
43
anne....the rest of the world knows the big difference is americans give themselves incredible leeway to do why they condemn others for. how about japanese waterboarding during ww2?
torture.
americans didn't torture in their most recent forays after september 2001. they only did some enhanced interrogation.
big difference.
3
oops...do WHAT. not do WHY
The Phoenix Program was designed, coordinated, and executed by the CIA with the assistance of US special operations forces and US Army intelligence collection units. The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong." The two major components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected Viet Cong members and civilians who were thought to have information on Viet Cong activities. Those captured were taken to interrogation centers and tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on Viet Cong activities. Methods of torture inflicted upon captured women included rape and rape followed by murder [conduct later attributed to the East Area Rapist]. Phoenix Program personnel killed between 26,000 and 41,000 suspected Viet Cong operatives, informants and supporters. (Source: Wikipedia)
I have a theory that a former U. S. Army intelligence service member who was part of this infamous Phoenix Program returned to the United States and committed at least 45 rapes and 12 murders in California. He was known as the East Area (of Sacramento) Rapist - Golden State Killer. It is speculated by many people that the CIA, the U.S. Army, and state law enforcement have cooperated in hiding his identity.
12
Maybe a Pulitzer Prize winner-to-be will be able by means of investigative journalism to establish the connection which remains at this time only my theory.
2
Has anyone mentioned My Lai and its aftermath?
Turning to Wikipedia, for lack of times, we read the following:
"Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest."
We should remember the widespread outrage among the American public and government officials in response to Calley's conviction. Take a look at Wikipedia. Public opinion was overwhelmingly for leniency.
Then there was Woody Hayes's reaction to My Lai, which by chance I came across the other day.
Striking that on a quick read no commenter has offered a principled defense of the outrages committed by members of the Tiger Force, only the usual mealy-mouthed observations that bad things happen in war.
At least one commenter has said that members of Tiger Force who committed atrocities should be prosecuted. Good for that person, good for others who said the same.
14
Lt. Calley was first charged with the murder of "109 oriental human beings" a type of human being that is different from other human beings. The charge was changed to just murder.
The original charge exposes the racism involved.
13
If the lower levels are prosecuted and the higher levels escape, this sends a message, too. The message is that there is no accountability even though there are scapegoats. Those prosecuted are being sacrificed to protect the institution as a whole (the Army) from enemies in its environment (those in Congress who seek to chip away at its budget and autonomy by damaging its reputation). In war, some soldiers lose their lives, some lose their physical health, some lose their minds (their ability to function in civilian society), and some lose their moral integrity.
Those who have lost their moral integrity may later be prosecuted to save their superiors from having to face or openly reveal their lack of moral integrity. The system works; Nixon was pardoned and dubya's punishment was that no one in his party talked about him or wanted him around for a few years thereafter. It is outside the envelope of the establishment's thinking to even entertain the idea of holding them responsible for trashing the moral integrity of some of the troops they commanded.
This is the way countries work, and we are not exceptional.
15
We drag this baggage around in our heads and community memory, sometimes trying to abandon it in rooms we don't like to go into, anymore, but the ghosts they are don't respect doors or walls.
They wake you up at night.
I was just a grunt in an infantry company. By the time I arrived in early 1969 Tiger Force atrocities were two years distant. But the persecution of civilians went on. One of the first actions I was involved in was "searching a village." I was 20. Vietnam was different, yes, but I'd grown up in a small farming town. I knew what ransacking people's homes did, what it meant, how I would feel about it. We turned over an old man's wagon full of thousands of tediously, carefully gathered canes and reeds and scattered them across the village ground looking for weapons. Then walked away, leaving him crying behind us. He could have been my grandfather.
Days later a similar old man was killed by one of our ambushes, violating curfew. I know, knew then, he was headed out to the pond to relieve himself. Nature doesn't recognize curfews.
One evening as we moved into position along an abandoned road our point squad tripped booby traps and we took fire from a nearby canal. Gunships shot up and rocketed the area. In the morning I went with our CO to inspect the hamlet there. Dead water buffalo. Dead dogs. Dead pigs. Destroyed homes. Terrified, hating, furious civilians. Hearts and minds, lost forever.
Tiger Force sins were a macrocosm of the sin of the nation.
84
And now we are repeating the same behavior in Afghanistan. We are sending outstanding special forces soldiers into an agrarian society whose values are much different than our own and killing men, women and children because; well, I have yet to hear a convincing reason why we continue after 16 years. Because we value the sacrifices of the men and women that have already died there? There is nothing we can do to bring them back. Because we have already spent hundreds of billion of dollars on the effort? That's an unrecoverable sunk cost. Because we fear the loss of American prestige? That's gone. We went in to punish the Taliban for giving safe sanctuary to OBL and his ilk. He's been dead now for 5 years. Pakistan continues to give sanctuary to the Taliban and other terrorists, why don't we invade Pakistan? Because they have nukes, thats why. It's difficult not to conclude that we are a warmongering society. Why do we try to force "democracy" down the throats of societies that are neither want nor are prepared for that form of government by having the institutions required to sustain it? Dick Gregory, the comedian who recently died, famously said, "I don't know why America runs around the world trying to force what we have on other people at gunpoint. In my experience, if you have something that other people really want or need, they will come to YOU and ask for it or take it at gunpoint". The best way to honor and support our troops is to bring them home.
71
How about someone posting the names of every one of those murderers? It is not too late for the innocent public to know just who their neighbors might be. These war crimes should be prosecuted, whether it is now or later.
26
rac
Ya, and achieve what?
Hold a trial in the court of public opinion?
Were you there? Do you know what happened, and why, and who did it? Is the evidence hearsay, corroborated, and supported by material evidence?
Ya, there were sins then, and there, but they were all over that war, and on both sides.
Horrible sins. Sins no other animal on this planet is capable of. And there's nothing now, might not have been then, either, to do about it, but to hope those who did murder without the typical tragic justifications of a war, suffer with the retribution of ghosts the way some innocent of murder suffer from haunting, regardless.
We can't even stop those sins, or even the encouragement of them in contemporary war; what, in God's name, do you propose to achieve prosecuting a case as cold as 50 years, the ravages of 8 more years of war, denial, repression, and the passage of many monsoons and deaths of time, can make it?
6
Well there is something called "justice".
Crimes against the humanity don't just go away because, well we "can't stop those sins" and it was a long time ago.
After all we are still prosecuting nazi veterans for crimes against humanity, right?
But I suppose prosecuting american veterans for their crimes would be too much to stomach for the proud flag-bearer crowd. After all, US is suppose to be the "good guys".
So lets just assume those atrocities were collateral damages, accidents of war, etc. whatever works to keep the US safe in its moral superiority bubble.
US hypocrisy at its best.
6
Unbiased
This isn't about flag bearing or flag waving. I'm pretty far from that. I'm more likely to take a knee during the national anthem than NFL players are. I've seen what humanity is capable of.
But it is about law, and justice. Unfortunately, "crime against humanity" involving even more current cases is very difficult to pursue in any court, including a world court dedicated to it. Doing so in the case of old crime is quite difficult. Justice is, after all, about justice. That means both sides are represented, both sides present cases, both sides have opportunity to argue against the other, and both sides have right to object and appeal.
I've no qualms about going after veterans. But courts are not necessarily deciding "justice." Courts are deciding what is and isn't legal.
Surely, living in Peru you have sufficient reason to be familiar with the failure to achieve prosecution of criminal inhumanity.
The world is awash in it. Prosecute the cases you can win in the interest of not squandering resources.
If you think you can make the case now, 50 years later, against Tiger Force participants, have at it. I'm for you. Otherwise you're a Trump equivalent, hurling insults and questioning integrity without sufficient, let alone valid cause.
5
Capt. Ernest Medina, Lt. Calley's CO in C company, was seen by the chopper pilot Hugh Thompson who intervened to end the massacre, shooting unarmed civilians. So he testified.
Medina was tried & acquitted in 1971. All these folks were lionized by that era's version of Trump supporters.
Wading into all these atrocities would actually be quite a swamp. As the actors age, and they of course do near the end of the road, witness accounts will probably start spiking up.
Such a review of our conduct would be a great thing for our country - a more-or-less unprecedented cleansing dose of honesty. I won't hold my breath.
26
I was thinking the same. There was a witness to My Lai. Still, no conviction. No one was held accountable for killing the innocents. How could that be? How much harder to prosecute in this case.
6
The inhumanity of people is beyond the Pale. A country built on slavery, genocide, jim crow can expect what we are now experiencing. We made some progress in many area, but we are now steaming backwards.
66
Respectfully, calling atrocity, genocide, and brutality inhumane does us all a disservice. These forms of behavior predate recorded civilization. They are all too human.
When we anathematize our worst impulses, though it may stem from a noble desire of our self image, it blinds us to the reality of our nature. The language of Burns' documentary is correct. The veneer of civilization is thin, and without constant vigilance, war does serve only as finishing school for the horrors that can lie within us. Only by acknowledging the full spectrum of our nature can we create strong deterrents to our worst impulses.
2
It is sad to say, but a historical fact, that the atrocities of the Tiger Force are by a footnote to the major atrocities committed in our name.
After the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945 where 100,000 civilians burned overnight (done for no strategic purpose other than to create terror) General Curtis Lemay said "we better win this war or we will all be tried as war criminals."
The firebombing of Dresden, packed with refugees, caused tens of thousands to burn overnight as well - in addition, after the bombing, Allied fighter planes strafed and killed the huddled masses of survivors who made their way to the parks of the city to get away from the flames (they were "targets of opportunity").
General Sherman's march to the sea was nothing short of a brutal scorched earth policy that led to thousands of deaths - done to prove to the rebels that "war is hell" and to dissuade them from ever even thinking about rebelling again.
So, for those of you wringing your hands reading about the Tiger Force know this: atrocities go with war, and to think otherwise is naive, as is the notion that Americans are in any way different from any other peoples who charge headlong and knowingly into the barbarism that is war itself.
31
all true, but i'm curious why you mentioned tokyo, but not hiroshima and nagasaki.....
1
I am a psychologist in private practice here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. For over ten years now, the bulk of the clients I see in my practice are disabled veterans, most of whom have experienced a mix of both physical and psychological injuries. My work with veterans has left me with the a very clear and strong impression that the basic hard-wiring of the average human being does not leave us well equipped for dealing with the atrocities and trauma of war, or being able to bounce back to the civilian world unscathed. Combat fundamentally changes a person, often re-hard-wiring their brains, leaving them scarred for life, and creating on-going struggles and suffering that can go on for decades. It has been surprising for me over the years to hear how many veterans will report that one of the primary sources of their trauma was one or more of their commanding officers. Poor decisions and toxic leadership styles can carry a much larger charge and ripple effect than many realize. The lying, misinformation, and egos of those at the top can easily generate dangerous and deadly outcomes all the way down the chain of command. War is not the answer. When will we ever learn?
45
if you were in real combat and were not profoundly changed and affected
then you were never really there.
draftee, purple heart. 73 ys old n very crippled and in daily pain from a
land mine.
I never thought that these things would happen to me and daily I exist
but for what I can not readily express to others because they would avoid me.
ive done all the va counseling im ever going to do. I await the great sleep so that I do not awake and start the remembering all over.
keep counseling veterans as you do, I feel certain that your grains of understanding and therapy are of help. for the rest of us its way too late.
carry on soldier.
17
We all share in whatever responsibity there is. Modern warfare has evolved to the slaughter of civilians. Since the beginning of World War II civilians have been the primary casualties (90 percent give or take). When we vote to go to war or stand by when others do so, we are complicit. Blaming those sent to do our biding , knowing what will happen, is at dishonest.
14
These atrocities were consequence of the American political embrace of the Cold War (authored by George Kennan and implemented by Harry Truman), the "domino theory", and the related policy of containment.
Seventy years on the world's largest capitalist economy is found in China and, although the NLF took Saigon in 1975, Vietnam is a dominant (capitalist) player in outsourced textile and leather goods found in American big box stores.
Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh were American allies during WWII. Ho was a nationalist who sought, first and foremost, to free his land of foreign control - first the French and then American. The Vichy colonial French were allies of Imperial Japan and fought on the other side.
At least two million Vietnamese lost their lives as a consequence of the 10,000 day war. Agent Orange continues to produce birth defects several generations after the defoliants were dropped.
The remnants of this misguided foreign policy lives today in what Admiral Stavridis gauges as a 50/50 chance of conventional war with North Korea and at least a 1 in 10 prospect for a nuclear exchange.
All the while the current administration is scaling back diplomacy and amping up mindless and provocative rhetoric that has no purpose beyond shoring up domestic support for a failing presidency.
George Santayana's observation that, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", was never truer than at the present moment.
56
Patrick from Portland: You have been living in a bubble.
Ho Chi Minh was not a nationalist. He was a committed and power hungry communist and member of Comintern since 1920. He went to the Soviet Union to get ideological training in Marxist Leninism. Similar occurrences happened in Eastern Europe. Ho's assignment from the Soviet Union and Communist China was the spread of communism in South East Asia.
That Ho sought to be a US ally during WWII was mere propaganda by the peace movement in the West. The alliance was a convenient one. The Soviets were not just nationalist because they were part of the anti-Nazi alliance. In fact, while everyone was geared up to fight against the returning French colonialist after the end of WWII, Ho entered a convenient peace agreement with the returning French colonists so that he could focus on exterminating other anti-colonialist Vietnamese nationalists.
If Ho were truly nationalist and democratic, the Vietnam War would have never been necessary. Vietnam could have turned out to be one of the Asian economic power just like South Korea.
Now, the people of Vietnam, except for the very few communists, are very pro-American and anti-communists. They realized that the communist party had led them down a path of unnecessary destruction for a false ideology. Internal documents showed that some communist party members were bitter that Mao wanted Ho to fight the war to the last Vietnamese.
The officers who allowed Tiger Force's rampage to continue, and did not intervene to stop it, were not just accomplices to terrible crimes against the Vietnamese population. They were committing a crime against their own men.
To allow American soldiers to murder women and children, and thus saddle them for the rest of their lives with the memory of having murdered women and children, was a horrible thing to do to those American soldiers.
20
Wars, which sooner or later will be fought with nuclear weapons, will kill most humans and destroy and decimate this planet for humans never learn from the past history of wars. We just have to listen to what is going on right now between Trump and Kim Jong un. If one of the two looses control and indeed orders the firing of a missle with a nuclear explosive /hydrogen bomb we are done.
6
In the jarring Ken Burns series, some of the vets talk about how close we are to being savages... just a small step. If they are right and I suspect they are (at least for men), then we must be so dedicated to peace and compassion that we will never allow ourselves to descend into such a disgrace.
26
In the human species, the reptilian brain overrides the cortex in proportion to the degree and duration of threats to one's existence.
9
Ugly Americans. Donald John Trump and the rest of the GOP leadership would fit right in. Create enemies and influence events. This is where lies and deceit end. 'I was following orders.' The Nuremberg defense.
Disgusting. Revolting. True.
Vote against the Ugly in 2018.
19
These men are war criminals, along with those in command who covered up their crimes.
We are still prosecuting Nazis, and we should prosecute them.
37
"The horror! The horror!"
1
Sounds like the stories we've all heard about the atrocities committed by the SS.
11
The photo accompanying this article intrigued me. It all began to make sense when I got to paragraph 14:
"many members from the unit had been drinking beer all afternoon" before they shot the old man with the geese.
That explains the soldier in the photo marching around with a lampshade on his head instead of a helmet.
4
It's not a lampshade, it's a local straw hat commonly worn by villagers in Vietnam at the time.
1
Yes, tpgbrennan, I know it was a straw hat.
My buddy, Charlie Davis (not to be confused with Victor Charlie) was evacuated from the Central Highlands to Saigon for R&R in a Chinook. All the other guys on board were sitting on their helmets. Charlie thought that was stupid, so he placed his helmet at his feet.
The V.C. shot at the helo and Charlie sustained a flesh wound...in the buttocks. He received a Purple Heart, but never spoke about it. Too embarasing, I guess.
1
I began to hear about these sorts of atrocities in 1966-7, related by the perpetrators themselves with an unsettling mixture of regret and braggadocio, usually in bars. The stories were hard to believe, and I took them with the requisite salt, until I'd heard them so many times that it began to occur to me that they were not only true, but approaching common knowledge. I'm the same age as most of the men who served, and while admiring the courage of those who did so honorably, I have since that time found it hard to be shocked or surprised at anything this country does, including electing a profoundly dishonest billionaire as its president.
106
I heard them too, the ones I recall most clearly were stories of outright banditry and murder by helicopter crews. This was toward the end of the war when I was still in the Air Force. I do not recall that those talking about "stitching" some poor farmer or robbing a man walking down a road of his watch ever expressed any remorse.
2
Veterans of the War were sharing stories about VC being dropped out of helicopters during interrogations in 1966.
War crimes galore, by Americans. Cruelty and brutality are cousins apparently condoned by the mantle of war. Despicable as it was, the savagery seemed 'natural' to those combatants, as they lost their humanity, and trying to justify to themselves a 'holy' mission of evil against the world, conveniently forgetting their conscience, telling them 'right from wrong', in spite of the circumstances. The whole Vietnam adventure was a mistake of course, only belatedly told to wash their guilt, regain their souls. Although a bit late for that, one would like to think this may be a lesson to remember, and the need to avoid the horrors of war. Now, go tell that to irresponsible, and immature, Trump, sneaky enough to have dodged the draft, to stay away from his stupid rhetoric, hoping to gain some relevance in taunting North Korea towards war...so to escape judgement of his own incompetence in government (misrule), however he exploits the flag issue to secure his base.
3
Since this has sat around for forty years without any sustained discussion, and in fact hidden away, why does anybody believe that this was not endemic across the entire field of battle. I have had many vets confess to me of comparable atrocities and one close friend, a helicopter gunner, who told me of regularly using up his magazine on random civilians, when travelling back to base. I have heard of worse things that seem to have regularly happened during the war. The next time we complain of how the north treated the south after the war, keep all this in mind. We did it all, not some maverick company of criminals.
We routinely prosecute Nazi guards seventy years after that war. There is time to put these officers in jail if we really cared. We didn't then. We don't now. There are not two sides to the Viet nam war. It is just us, being cruel to our own as well all the others we came upon during our march backwards from civilization.
19
everything about the war was a pr stunt. ambushes became victories, atrocities became non-events, colonial princelings became patriotic leaders, peasants were straw for the fire.
the vietnam was one big lie, from beginning to end. i thank the gods i wasnt sent there, because at the time i would have been naive enough to go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ong_Thanh
5
Some nightmares never go away.
2
And that is why the US is so beloved worldwide.
19
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
4
...and if we take a knee during the anthem the alt-right cries that we disgrace those who serve. Vietnam, please forgive us.
10
"Mr. Hawkins, 76, who retired from the military in 1978 as a major, could not be reached. But in an interview with The Blade in 2003, he said he shot the elderly carpenter because he was “making a lot of noise. I eliminated that right there.”
War criminal. Anybody wanna bet who Hawkins voted for in 2016?
20
He eliminated the noise by shooting a rifle? I would guess that a rifle shot would be louder that some old guy moaning.
5
This has to be followed up on. A damnable disgrace that I have never heard of.
5
This is just sick. Our generations version of the destruction of the Native Americans.
5
Prosecutions of Nazi war criminals continued (in fits and starts) for decades after the end of WWII. A few elderly men were sent to prison. That was appropriate then, and prosecution of Vietnam-era war criminals is, too - even now.
14
As a Vietnam infantry veteran, I am horrified.
All Americans, Vietnam vets included, heard about My Lai after the fact, but we were all told this was an isolated incident. While in country I never heard of atrocities being committed. We would have condemned such actions as murder. It's true that circumstances were present that might make such criminal behavior more likely, but never justified.
It appears that for The Tiger Force atrocities were premeditated as a part of the mission, not a spontaneous and isolated event. This is horrendous, beyond unconscionable.
I can and do understand and to an extent identify with the anger, anguish, and frustrations of combat soldiers, but barbarity is never within the realm of an acceptable response.
As a nation we have prosecuted war crimes, but also as a nation we have rejected the authority of any world court to punish Americans. In our history the actions of some of our political leaders would equal those for which we have exacted punishment. We bury our atrocities and don't police ourselves.
At what point will we accept our own accountability?
137
Read Nick Turse's extremely well documented, disturbing book "Kill Anything That Moves" and you'll learn that these incidents were not only more common than we've all believed, but that they were in many ways a product of official policy.
Turse based the book on long-hidden U.S. military documents revealing the atrocities, so this is not speculation.
The underlying assumption of this article is that you can concript young men, send them to fight a guerrilla enemy for a year, let them see the local civilians hate them and that despite all this, the young men will obey the rules of war.
There is no evidence for this assumption. War brutalises people and its not surprising conscript soldiers behave like brutes. The most important prevention method was the move to a professional army.
6
If you don't want war time atrocities, don't have a war. Expecting people fighting a war to act like it's a baseball game only involving the other team has always been nonsense.
15
These events in 1967 and 1968 were well known, if you were willing to read and hear the truth. It was only the ideologues who refused to believe what was being reported, or cheered on the daily "body count."
I was 13 and 14 at the time. Too young for the draft, but it sure made me realize there was no way I would ever go. That's why we should at least honor the draft dodgers as much as the kids who fought.
Kerry and McCain were heroes, but many others were murderers.The best I can say for them is many of them have spent a lifetime with PTSD and/or addiction from their guilty conscience.
As for war criminals, yes, both Macnamara and Kissinger should be remembered that way. Too bad they never faced a courtroom.
8
The poor fighting a rich mans war was what happened here. A useless war killed millions. Nixon. The poor soldier found this out. Revenge.
The right wing has turned this truth into blaming hippies when Corporatism was taking over the government. The military industrial complex needed to keep going after WW 2. The cultural nuts, rich busines men were accumulating fortunes off of war and wanted that to continue. Witness the lies about the size of the Russian nuclear arsenal so Truman and Eisenhower could bloviate ultimate power. One president warned you what was happening but the lure of lucre is to much. These events also speak to a lack of human education in ‘America’. The greatest thing the US did was educate its people after the war which proved a problem in the sixties: people started to figure out how they were being used. Since then of course the education system has been in dispute and funded. Don’t want people thinking after all. Good luck.
8
In case you missed it, Ken Burns's documentary on that war provided actual film and still photos of the Tiger Force atrocities. And for all of the heat movie director, Oliver Stone, received for his film, "Platoon," that story, too, no longer looks like the fiction it was presented as.
It is unfortunate that our soldiers returning home from that war were treated so terribly, tarred with the same brush for the acts of a few. Regardless of the hideously stupid reasons for sending our troops over there, nearly all of the soldiers fought with bravery and honor.
From Truman to Eisenhower, Kennedy to Nixon, the fear of communism spreading throughout Southest Asia was their call-of-the-wild. The French Empire was crumbling in French Indo-China. Without our membership in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), there is a high likelihood none of the five presidents who authorized that war would have done so.
Modern warfare is filled with atrocities. Germany is still atoning for Hitler's extermination of Europe's Jews. ISIS is only the latest iteration with their mass executions, media-fed beheadings, and torture. War crimes are crimes and must be exposed with punished imposed.
Ken Burns's series has been dificult to relive for this 73 year old veteran, and I was never in combat as an aircraft engine mechanic for the California Air National Guard. But I heard about atrocities from my friends returning home. It happened a lot. We knew it then. We must share it now.
13
The bottom line can't possibly be that nothing was done about what happened, nothing came of it; it was buried. Some of those up the chain of command were beasts encouraging and deliberately overlooking what they knew was happening, and they are still beasts.
These aren't victims of the fog of war. They are war criminals. It's not too late. Prosecute.
14
In retrospect, it's clear that the Tiger Force atrocities described here were not aberrations in an otherwise "moral" war, but part and parcel of a genocidal campaign to terrorize and subjugate Southeast Asia. The official myth that the Vietnam War was a "mistake, started in good faith by decent men" is utterly debunked by the statistics -- the fact, that the U.S. dropped more than 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, more than three times the total tonnage US planes dropped in WWII. That, according to the Red Cross, one million Vietnamese still suffer the effects of Agent Orange, the carcinogenic and birth-defect causing herbicide sprayed by US planes over millions of acres of Vietnamese forest and cropland. That as many as 4 million Southeast Asians were killed -- what can only be called a "holocaust" for these tiny peasant nations. The My Lai Massacre was the U.S. war in microcosm. Our current wars are no less atrocity-filled; it's just that we've become numbed to the wanton killing.
26
How quickly we forget. In 1945 at Nuremberg the United States along with representatives of our allies held trials to determine whether members of the Nazi regime were guilty of crimes against humanity.
This was significant because many, if not most of the atrocities carried out were done in accordance with German law or were based on orders given by the military. How can someone be guilty if they were obeying the "law"?
The answer that the tribunal fashioned and that has since become part of international customary law was that there are certain legal principles, reflected in part in the UN Charter that supersede domestic law.
All human beings have rights and their violation in extremes may constitute a crime against humanity.
Following orders or free fire zones eco the excuses given by German soldiers for atrocities committed against civilians that numbered in the tens of millions. Yet, they were only following orders. Even at Malmadey Belgium when 92 American POW's were summarily executed, they were just following orders.
Principle IV states that war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder are a violation of international law. The United States played a major role in this important change in international jurisprudence. Yet, barely 20 years from this historic event we waged war in Vietnam and simply became the new Germans.
But unlike Germany, we were only subject to victor's justice, which has turned out to be no justice at all. How quickly we forget.
49
American troops waterboarded Filipinos resisting the US takeover after the Spanish American War.
Japanese soldiers were convicted in US military courts of war crimes for waterboarding Americans in the Philippines during WWII.
Waterboarding was revived in Gitmo post 9/11.
The lesson of the the new millennium is that it's only a war crime when the other side does it.
3
I find it interesting that few atribute atrocities to the millions scorched by airstrikes in both Vietnam and Korea. Clear acts of terror, far exceeding the events of 911.
16
Thank you for this. Ken Burns is glossing over the depth and pervasiveness of America's brutality in his highly acclaimed, Vietnam series, which is good but could be a lot more honest.
9
Frankly, I do not favor a trial for war crimes fifty years after those crimes occurred. Trials may result in punishment and create martyrs.
I favor truth and reconciliation. Telling the truth, naming names and publicly shaming the perpetrators of war crimes is far more humane and allowing the perpetrators to come to grips with their actions is far more effective in preventing future atrocities. A perpetrator's self-serving statements defending his actions make him an object of pity, not a martyr.
5
I spent time with a dying friend last summer who turned nineteen at Iwo Jima. He's the only person I have ever talked with who killed other men, many, some with his bare hands. The memory overwhelmed him. He mentioned a "collection" that had been lost when his basement flooded. "Some collected noses, some collected ears." I am not sure what was in the basement, or whether it was his. But we agreed that war is an immoral state, kill or be killed, and that those who were truly responsible were those who asked others to do this. This man was as good a man as I have ever met, kind, gentle, humble.
He resented the suits that showed up at events to commemorate Iwo Jima, those who never served, but celebrated, or initiated elective wars on specious grounds.
I missed going by a year. On my birthday, 1974, a teacher took me out of class to go sign up for the draft. I am grateful that I was not put in the position the men in this story were, because I don't expect I would have done differently, and I would not have wanted to live with the consequence.
11
The story you told is compelling and I agree with your opinion. However it needs to be realized that the number of US soldiers involved in combat after 1972 was dramatically diminished. It was mostly air bombing going on by the US after 1972. So the odds of being in a combat situation in 1974 were highly unlikely.
And we wonder why people hate the U.S. very well done article sadly it reflects on the many young American troops who served with honor.
11
I am a military veteran who was fortunate to serve in peace time. My father was a bomber pilot in the second world war. My university was conducting a historical record of WW2 veterans and I interviewed my father. He rarely if ever had spoken about his experience. As the interview was ending he made a statement that summed it all up, he stated "Its all just murder, that is all it is, who can kill more faster".
I wonder if politicians realize what military intervention really is when they endorse it so easily. I don't think that the Tiger force was an anomaly but in reality the true nature of warfare. The idea that you can create a prosperous and peaceful nation by waging a war is absurd.
116
My father also served in WW2 but in a non combat role. The USA even falsified their own historical record of the Allied bombing campaign suggesting that civilian bombing targets were military installations, etc. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey is rife with such falsifications. Subsequent research by German authors exposes those lies.
The British civilian population did not know until near the end of the war that the Royal Air Force was deliberately bombing city centers as a part of a deliberate terror campaign against the civilian population.
2
I have a similar story. My father, also a WW2 veteran, rarely spoke about the war. About 3 years ago, not long before he died, I asked him to talk about his war-time experiences so I could write them down. He related the route his division took from N.Africa into southern Europe. When he talked about the time in Italy, when the German army was in retreat, his eyes began to well up with tears. He said that it was upsetting him to think about the young German boys lying dead by the roadside. Our conversation ended there.
2
The Tiger Force atrocities were highlighted this past week in the Ken Burns and Lynn Novik Vietnam special. I had never heard of them, we heard about My Lai and those who protested were told that they were giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Unpatriotic. Even saint Jimmy Carter then the governor of Georgia spoke in favor of Calley.
The atrocities were well known but if you ask younger people today their view of the Vietnam War is often that brave troops were mistreated but the American public and not sufficiently thanked for their service. The Peace Movement was somehow un-American. So it goes today with the current national anthem debate, salute the flag and don't ask questions. There is nothing for which to thank them. Rather for many they should receive an apology for being so misused for the political gain of politicians.
Those still alive from this unit should be prosecuted, it would tear our country apart but that seems to be happening anyway. Better to criticize black NFL players who are ungrateful to America, use them as a punching bag. Its all really a rerun of the past, nothing has changed.
Lots of old scars being opened up again and new ones created.
42
I was there in '68/'69, a company clerk stationed at Long Bihn. What I saw there was such widespread graft and corruption that I knew we weren't the good guys. When I got home I studied the war. What we did there was a monstrous crime against humanity.
We are the most powerful country in history, yet we're afraid. Karma.
47
Yes, I agree that war itself is a crime, but I believe our country answered the question of what constitutes "war crimes" when it played an important part in the Nuremberg Trials.
1
Our self-concept is that we're the good guys. I went to Vietnam and into combat believing that. It might be well, as Robert Burns suggested, to consider objectively why others, starting with some villagers in Vietnam, might not see us that way.
Our arrogance, our idea of American exceptionalism, is self-destructive. To be good neighbors on the planet we should impose standards on ourselves consistent with the values we as Americans aspire to.
44
How many believe our Commander in Chief today would insist on humane rules of war? The worst perpetrators of war crimes are cowardly leaders, especially political leaders, who want to display how tough and manly they are. Donald Trump will always refer to himself as a "fighter" and his need to prove his prowess will inevitably involve surrogates in war and torture, just as the needs of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld resulted in atrocities we're still learning about.
19
Young men have two desires: sex and to stand out amoung their peers. With no women at hand they will seek to stand out in whatever endeavor is at hand.
This is where leaders come in.
We didn’t have any in Washington during Vietnam and sadly, we still don’t
9
The U.S. is responsible for the deaths of more foreign civilians since 1960 than any other Country in the World. By far.
22
Every day, at least once each day, I say to myself, "Just when I thought I couldn't get more disgusted". It's usually about current events. But today I'm disgusted about something that took place half a century ago, in a deeper way even than when we were living through it.
84
I've always found the expression "war crime" perplexing. War itself is the crime; all the rest is just the details of how the crime is perpetrated. When people are put in such de-humanizing circumstances it is not surprising that the lose their humanity. I doubt we will ever put an end to war. It seems to be part of our DNA. Rational creatures would look back on 10,000 years of human history and, horrified by the centuries of slaughter, truly vow to never let it happen again. Not us.
50
A nice way to avoid dealing with extraordinary atrocities--if everybody is guilty, nobody is guilty and Nuremberg was just victor's justice--Phooey!!!
8
If evidence of particular cases exist of murders, the alleged perpetrators if still alive, should be given a fair trial even today after 50 years. It's counterproductive to refight the arguments for and against our VietNam involvement. Many people were in favor, many people were against our involvement but no American believes that murdering an old man or beheading a baby should go unpunished especially when the murder was committed by an US Army officer.
111
Lots of Americans will justify that--remember the support for Lt. Calley? I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Trump would oppose such a trial and would pardon anyone convicted.
12
You would be surprised at how many would be in favor of beheading a child or at least of ignoring the offense because it involves a Vietnam War Veteran.
Not sure how old you are but those of us who remember the controversy that surrounded the My Lai massacre remember that the controversy was that the military would even consider prosecuting soldiers for "doing their jobs". Lt. Calley was pardoned by Nixon or had his sentence commuted. Injustice!
12
Actually, I could see Trump (never served) approving, even applauding the "toughness", as necessary political un-correctness.
10
One good way to prevent it happening again would be to honestly teach what happened starting in all service academies going right down to basic training. If soldiers know what soldiers are capable of, they have a brake they can use when they see it developing.
89
Some members of Congress probably knew of the actions of the Tiger Force. But they apparently did nothing after the Army appeared to have covered up the murders of innocent Vietnamese. Did any member of Congress, especially members from Ohio, react in any way after the Toledo Blade stories were published in 2003? An accounting has to be made even now, 50 years later. It is incumbent on the current Secretary of Defense to at least acknowledge that these murders occurred. Some high-ranking official in the current administration should apologize to the Vietnamese people for these atrocities.
68
How difficult it is to hold onto one's humanity in the fog of war. How easy it is to slide down that slope of barbarism.
Robert McNamara, LBJ, Richard Nixon were all responsible for the Tiger Force atrocities. These men used soldiers as political pawns to advance their own agendas, and they died with blood on their hands.
We had no business engaging the Vietnamese. We had no business fighting that war. They thought all we had to do was wave the American flag and the Viet Cong and NVA would turn tail and run, and they had General Westmoreland feeding into that myth with exaggerated body counts and that infamous "light" at the end of the tunnel. It was more like an approaching freight train.
For shame.
128
"We had no business engaging the Vietnamese."
Or, the Iraqis.
So true!
8
The phrase "they thought all we had to do was wave the American flag and (they) would turn tail and run..." makes me think of our current POTUS and his trash-talk. These are horrifying times, we need to learn from our mistakes.
6
Kudos and thanks to Mr. Sallah and the other members of the Toledo Blade team for bringing these crimes by the Tiger Force commanders and soldiers to light. One of the flaws of the current PBS Viet Nam War series so far is that, while they note atrocities and non-combatant deaths caused by both sides, the documentary fails to interview survivors and participants. I am interested in seeing how they treat Mylai, which has not yet been mentioned.
45
I was interviewed for close to four hours by the Ken Burns organization and actually show up for about twenty seconds in episode five where the Tiger Force "incident" was covered for about one minute. I think the documentary is supposed to be part of a healing process for the entire war. My interview was quite graphic and definitely not of a healing nature. I obviously feel quite strongly about what happened with Tiger Force in Vietnam, but do not fault Burns for not covering it more extensively. I am one episode behind on watching the documentary, but perhaps My Lai will not even be covered. The combat veterans are the ones that need the most healing from this documentary, and I don't think emphasizing the atrocities is going to achieve this. That is my humble opinion.
1
A disgraceful tragedy. Thank you Mr. Sallah for your work on this issue. Professional soldiers recognize these actions as clear violations of the Law of War and also the result of the poor strategy and weak leadership that characterized much of the Viet Nam war from its inception in the "bear any burden" policy of President Kennedy, all the way down to the likes of Lt. Calley, Lt. Hawkins and, no doubt others of their ilk.
38
But hey, let's all stand for the Star-Spangled Banner. Our heroes deserve respect.
106
Over half a million men served in Vietnam. This unit numbered 45. They committed crimes. They do not represent the rest, and they especially do not represent those who lost their lives fighting an enemy whose atrocities were greater in kind and degree.
2
How do you know about the rest? The rest I know did the same.
2
You know hundreds of thousands of Vietnam vets? Not possible.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) clearly states that it is illegal to follow an illegal order. Further, deliberately killing civilian non-military personnel is illegal, according to U.S. and international law.
This should lead us to question the single most important illegal policy of the U.S. military from 1945 to this very moment. Why do we use and target our nuclear weapons at non-military population centers?
Although U.S. law has a provision for conscientious objectors who refuse to take lives this same military will not recognize a category of warrior who would kill an enemy combatant but refuses to kill civilians, the limited conscientious objector.
I would encourage the New York Times to get a clear explanation for this hypocritical and illegal military policy that certainly represents an atrocity far beyond the be-heading of a single infant, horrendous as that certainly is.
55
Reading this article in conjunction with watching the Vietnam War by Burns & Novak fills me with great shame & sadness for my country & for the Vietnamese. Humans do not appear to be capable of learning from their past. We are a disturbing species.
96
These crimes have put a stain and everyone who has served particularly if those who committed them are not held to account - and they need to account no matter how long it takes.
73