At least 347 and up to 504 civilians, almost all women, children and elderly men, were murdered by U.S. Army soldiers. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children as young as 12.
only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., the leader of 1st Platoon in C Company, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after his sentence was commuted.
Research has highlighted that the My Lai Massacre was not an isolated war crime. Nick Turse places it within a larger pattern of American atrocities enabled by deliberate policies from commanders, such as “free-fire zones” and “body counts”, as well as widespread racism amongst American military personnel. Many other atrocities were also covered up by commanders.
Why you should know about this: It is important to know about history so that we can learn from it, avoid the mistakes and atrocities of the past, and know which institutions have a history of performing atrocities, trying to cover them up, etc. and what that looks like.
The only reason why my Lai is known today is because one helicopter pilot had a conscience and ordered his door gunner to open fire on their own troops if they were to approach another group of Vietnamese civilians that he decided to protect
Had he not, likely nobody would have known what happened
And only because this has gone public, they had to award Hugh Thompson Jr. with the Distinguished Flying Cross. Otherwise military court.
For a long time, I assumed that veterans who didn’t want to talk about their time served were doing so because they witnessed difficult things or felt shame about what they had to do in combat situations.
These days, I wonder if it’s because anyone they talked to would see them for the monster they are.
Well, the US did more than that in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Vietnam, Somalia, Nigeria, and a lot of other countries!
The reality is the USA is the real example of a terrorist country… spreading fear, killing innocent people and ruining their lives.
Don’t forget Cuba, which is an actively ongoing event. Innocent people are being starved and deprived of medicine and other essentials, purely because the ruling class want to demonstrate how socialism is a failure. Such a failure that the US has needed to ruthlessly oppress and terrorize them for decades, and yet despite it all Cuba has still made incredible medical breakthroughs such as vaccines for alzheimers and lung cancer, which aren’t even available under capitalism… I wonder how they did it if they didn’t have innovation, such a mystery
US soldiers also raped thousands of French women during WW2.
I’ve read about this too, and the US blamed the problem on black soldiers. Maybe that’s something that deserves its own post?
Yup. They burned my grandma’s city to hide the looting.
Did they harm your grandma?
No the women were hiding in the country side. But her dad was a fireman and he was among the first on scene
| Sentence | Life imprisonment; commuted to three years’ house arrest by President Richard Nixon |
Fucking hell Nixon …
“Protect the children and women” Except from my murderous rapist soldiers apparently.
Interesting how this narrative keeps getting used to justify our colonialism. “These are backwards savages and we are agents of progress and feminism” and then, in the course of the conflict, women and girls are raped, killed, and bombed while women’s rights are stonewalled or even stripped away back home
The police protect women,
WHICH WOMEN!?
I’m a little confused did I say the police protect women? I don’t think I did. Fuck the police.
it’s a quote from a song, sorry. i was in agreement with you
Nixon is dead, we will never know.
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What those in authority don’t want to tell us is that this is exactly what they expect in war. They want our soldiers to be so horrific that the other side quits. That’s the goal of EVERY leader who starts a war. Any hand-wringing or regret later is just theater.
The only sin is letting the Civilians hear about it.
It’s historically the only effective way to fight an insurgency and every military since ancient times knows it. Basically anytime you hear a modern military is enacting a “counter insurgency” it’s either code word for doing death squads, or it’s a tacit admission that they are out of ideas and have found themselves in an unwinnable quagmire.
The only way to defeat an insurgency is to do massive amounts of crimes against humanity…or avoid creating one in the first place.
And between the two options you presented, even when the latter is surprisingly easy to pull off, for “some reason” we just keep diving head-first into war-crime territory.
It’s the same mentality that got the DNC fighting their own guy who was turbo-winning in NYC. Anything is preferable to building a strong, sustainable, cooperative future as far as these kinds of people are concerned.
It’s a tale as old as time, no one wants to fight for a future that doesn’t advance their own personal positions.
How would a center right politician afford a vacation home in the hamptons if we actually regulated their corporate relationships? What good is a general if there isn’t a forever war?
Valid.
Yeah, you’re right of course, this is why we should get rid of all rulers, now and forever, and ensure that they never return. We do not need a ruling class to order us around. We can build a new society where all are equal, and where decisions are made by consensus, rather than by diktat or decree.
It is important to know this because when the military is turned on you, you should know they’ll obey. If you think there are enough that would so no, you’re wrong.
What no one ever considers is what is happening right now in real time. They are actively pushing out the troops that would object morally to bad orders. The administration doesn’t care if they are left with inferior troops, as long as the ones they have left will follow orders blindly and without question.
As a former member of the US military, please go fuck yourself.
I’ll accept that.
But it’s all about the crowd and momentum. The crowd gets hyped the crowd is gonna do some shit an individual won’t.
That and it’s beat into you to do what you’re told.
you seriously think none of your fellow service members would listen to violent orders?
I never said that. There are plenty of stupid people in any crowd. But dismissing it as entirely full of people who would target US citizens is insulting. That would not stand.
Democrats and Republicans want to murder each other NOW, they’re not even in the military. Why would GIs be any different?
In a civil war, all will be armed, the armed forces will split as they did before.
Shut up and follow orders.
War and rape go hand in hand; you can’t dehumanize people and respect them simultaneously.
Not to mention that a lot of soldiers are amped up on drugs and/or alcohol. Many of them don’t want to even be there.
I suppose many of the perpetrators who were there are still alive today. I wonder if they sleep soundly in bed at night.
Someone who lacks enough empathy to brutally gang rape women and children are rarely people who feel remorse for hurting others. They unfortunately probably laugh themselves to sleep at night knowing they committed some of the sickest shit imaginable and will never be punished.
Of course they do. People thank them for their service. These brave brave war heroes
Vietnam vets are not necessarily famed for coming back and having a great time.
“You should know: [totally horrible political sexual abuse thing with absolutely no kind of warning on it at all]”
…no, I really, really didn’t need to know that, thanks
– Frost
The warning is implied, don’t you realize that? If what happened at My Lai and the subsequent legal outcome was justice, then that justice can be done to you as well.
them vets are the main foment vector for what we now know as the white supremacy movement. not that the sentiment wasn’t prevalent, but it was disjointed groups, churches, cults, klan, militias, prison gangs, etc., each pushing their own thing with only limited local reach.
the influx of large swaths of radicalized and trained MAMs was the igniter. all those power squabbling groups started coming together under one banner and they had a new tool - computers.
early on, they realized you can reach a whole lotta more folks with the new tech than the usual zines and the like. so they formed armored truck robbing gangs, and used the proceeds to buy home computers for establishing a network of BBS all over the country, pushing their shit to previously unreachable corners. I mean, if that’s not a michael mann movie, I don’t know what is…
for more, kathleen belew - bring the war home, available at anne’s site or wherever you pirate your shit.
Thank you for sharing, I had only heard of it tangentially until a Mr. Beat video on the Vietnam War. There’s a lot of fictional media in that time frame that references atrocities like this in that conflict, beyond just Apocalypse Now.
Yeah. So stop equating them with Germans. Please
We aren’t the ones deciding to go to war and cause a generation of men to have their psychological well-being put through a wood chipper. We don’t produce the propaganda that make men willing. We don’t make poverty rampant so men get desperate enough to enlist.
It doesn’t matter if we learn, plenty of us already know and it doesn’t change anything. People like Trump, like Putin, like Netanyahoo, don’t care about us or whoever ends up a victim of their ambitions. Putin and Netanyahoo know what their troops do and don’t give a fuck, they might even use it to their advantage.
The problem isn’t learning from the past, it’s that psychopaths are good at gaining power. They know and simply don’t care. If voters weren’t such ignorant imbeciles, maybe they wouldn’t vote for ppl like Trump, but they are, so here we are. If customers weren’t such ignorant, weak willed cowards incapable of not buying the new toys, we wouldn’t fund the people stealing all the property and making us poorer every generation. We are all victims of the decision-making prowess of the average voter, the average consumer.
I understand how you feel, but we actually do have the power to change our world. We need to first recognize that something needs to be done, build a popular consensus, network and build connections with like-minded people, and start a real movement for change.
Electoralism has not solved our problems in the past, and it won’t do so in the future. At best, it is harm prevention, and at worst, it’s a distraction from more effective efforts. I encourage people to vote for the candidates they feel best, but to be aware that it’s not a real, long term solution. It’s always just the best of two terrible candidates, both of whom ultimately serve the ruling class.
The problems we have did not start and will not end with Trump, they are in the fundamental roots of our society, and the road to change our society is a long and difficult one, but it is a journey we have to undertake. We are going to have to act if we want to live in a better world. Simply giving in to nihlism is not an option.
The people have never been roused to action simply because of a good idea, or a wise course of action. They are incapable of even identifying a good idea. Any individual that gains traction changing power structures is targetted and sometimes killed for it. We are all in a cage built by the wealthy and anything that’s effective is demonized through propaganda or made illegal and dealt with violence. We are also now on precipice of the greatest surveillance and propaganda system humanity has ever endured and people still don’t notice and stop supporting it. We are at the precipice of autonomous drone technology capable of killing that will be used for violence against the prisoners. All because the general population refuse to see the cage or the technologies that have built it, instead helping build their own system of subjugation. The average person is a threat and a traitor to their own interests.
Of course they have, all of human history is a story of ideas that have changed the world. Revolution is possible. You already see the problems, but you are so deep in the despair of the situation to see that a path out of it is possible. Don’t give up, help me instead.
the American revolution didn’t actually start until Lexington and Concord. it was then further fueled by vile acts of aggression against American colonists.
the threat of the spread of communism allowed the US to enter into the Korean war.
the threat of terror attacks on the American public allowed the US to invade Iraq and even overthrow the leader the CIA put into power.
People don’t react to stories. people react to stimulus. fear, hunger, sex, pain, greed. these are the things that motivate us to take action. because, why would we risk what we have unless we’re motivated to do so.
Stories make people feel things, like anger. Anger gives people lots of energy and motivation to act.
The LA riots for example were sparked by the lack of justice after the police’s brutal assault on Rodney King.
stories are based on acts. nobody gives a shit how little jenny was raped. all they react to is the act of rape.
nobody gives a shit if Trump raped children because it’s all a part of the story now.
you heard the story a hundred thousand times by now. you’re sick of it, and don’t want to hear about it anymore.
this is what mainstream media is used for.
stories are used to satiate the masses.
you heard the story a hundred thousand times by now. you’re sick of it, and don’t want to hear about it anymore.
Speak for yourself.
Look, you can disagree all you want, that’s fine, but let’s try to be a bit more constructive. What would you propose instead, to try and fight against the Epstein class?
No, I don’t see a path out. History doesn’t show any path out as far as I can tell. The power of change for the masses is in mass actions. It isn’t coincidence that we are distracted all the time, that we lack strong community, that our attention is grabbed at every moment, that life is too expensive for free time. It’s to prevent mass actions. If not by manufactured distraction then by criminalization or propaganda.
I watched the masses pay companies to put cameras in their homes, microphones in their pockets and tracker their devices. I watched them put all the details of their lives and their social connections on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter to be surveilled. I watched them click yes on every TOS without reading, agree to give up anonymity and privacy not just for themselves, but for everyone. Now we are watching people tell LLMs their thoughts, feelings, fears and inner most identities. All that information get collated, catalogued and analyzed. A dossier on every citizen. A prediction algorithm for every cohort. The greatest surveillance, social mapping, propaganda and behavior prediction system ever devised by human beings, all in the hands of genuine psychopaths who run the companies and run for office.
The only times things have gotten better for the masses is when circumstances, technology or calamity, destabilize the existing power structures and allow the oppressed to reclaim the space. That only lasts long enough for the ambitious to reconcentrate power again into the hands of the few. Whatever path you see is one built of faith alone, not evidence of how humans organize ourselves when the destabilizing force dissipates and life returns to a static state. We are living through that reconsolidation of power, watching our communities turned into fascism.
All because the masses can be bought with toys.
