At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre • Hacker News Board

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#131

Post by angersock » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

7952 wrote: post #72

gaius wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of rational society that fights giant insects with lightly armoured infantry soldiers In the movie. In the book the MI wear power armour.

Sure, but they could have just thrown rocks from space, or nukes from orbit. A culture that can fly across the galaxy does not need to use infantry any more than a US marine needs to throw a spear. It is a very common thread in this kind of sci-fi. It is just more glorious to shoot the insect from close up. There is more opportunity for pointless sacrifice.

Heinlein actually addresses that point:

> If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him...but to make him do what you want to do. Not killing...but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how—or why—he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people—'older and wiser heads,' as they say—supply the control. Which is as it should be.

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#132

Post by angersock » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

LifeLiverTransp wrote: post #116

verylittlemeat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the Vietnam war that is what happened. Soldiers were treated like baby killers upon returning to the US. There was a sort of rebranding of the American solider after that catastrophe. The American citizen is now supposed to see the American solider as a utilitarian third party cog in a system where soldiers don't make decisions they just execute them. So if you're unhappy with the war you take out your disappr…

Wait, so a attack on a soldier is wrong- and attacking the government (aka the people in a democracy) is right? So the whole of the people view themselves as a sort of warlord?

When the solider is out on the sharp end, they're goin g to make whatever policy is most likely to keep them alive modulo broad mission objectives. This had been true somewhere have been humans fighting.

The time to consider the impact of this is before you deploy the solider. Ergo, to affect change, we must look at the government and not the solider.

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#133

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

fractallyte wrote: post #9

So, just finished reading the article... I guess everyone should, just for the sense of thoughtfulness it should provoke. The thing is, the perpetrators started out as ordinary young American men. What tipped the balance, to turn them into stone-cold killers? It's not unique to this situation: this is what soldiers eventually tend to do. The ultimate modern example of pure, large scale monstrosity is the Red Army, at…

[deleted]

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#134

Post by angersock » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #76

doktrin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure, I've wondered this myself. At a certain level, there's the fact that the US is simply a very patriotic place. Similarly, in Russia it's also not socially accepted to publicly criticize military service members. That said, there are many other "patriotic" countries in the world, and not all of them impose this social reverence on the military, so some other factor is at play. Common knowledge says that the U…

The US has been at war, somewhere in the world, since its inception as a nation. It has dropped one bomb every twenty minutes, mostly on innocent people, for the last 3 decades. The US currently has the world ensnared in its remote military bases, and is a number one cause of trouble in the world. It regularly defeats real democracies using covert means, installing its own puppets to function as feudal lords. When co…

What you say may be true...but it has worked out pretty well for us.

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#135

Post by LifeLiverTransp » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #132

LifeLiverTransp wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so a attack on a soldier is wrong- and attacking the government (aka the people in a democracy) is right? So the whole of the people view themselves as a sort of warlord?

When the solider is out on the sharp end, they're goin g to make whatever policy is most likely to keep them alive modulo broad mission objectives. This had been true somewhere have been humans fighting. The time to consider the impact of this is before you deploy the solider. Ergo, to affect change, we must look at the government and not the solider.

But didnt he/she volunteer. Shouldnt then there be some conditional clauses to service- aka, i m only a soldier to this democracy, as long as it is acting in my missions in true self-defense against a unprovoked attack.

Else- in theory, couldnt your goverment just rent you out to the highest bidder as mercenary and you would still have to do whatever this entity demands of you. This cart blanche of action, combined with the chance to loose your life- that is strange.

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#136

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

jashkenas wrote: post #129

For firsthand testimony by American soldiers involved in similar operations — I cannot recommend Winter Soldier, the 1972 documentary film, highly enough. It's something that every American adult deserves to see. Part 1: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x67rpbi Part 2: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x681bui In short: The film records a 1971 Vietnam Veterans Against the War event in Detroit, where dozens of veterans…

[deleted]

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#137

Post by maxxxxx » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

Erlangolem wrote: post #130

maxxxxx wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at where this discussion started. It started from someone talking about the Viet Cong and the US. Then you said there is no such thing as the US because it's so big and diverse. In this context the US has to be seen as one unit or how else can you describe a war? As far as Sweden goes I bet the people living north of the Arctic circle have little in common with people living in Stockholm.

To this day, many are maimed and killed by US land mines in the region, and the US does not give a shit. My point is that’s it’s incorrect to speak of 330 million diverse people as collectively not giving a shit. I stand by that.

Then never talk about any other group like "the Chinese", "the Russians" or "the Nazis" again either. Because these are also millions of diverse people too.

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#138

Post by slantedview » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

While My Lai was horrible, evidence collected since then such as in Nick Turse's book "Kill Anything That Moves" [1] and at the Winter Soldier hearings [2] show that Mai Lai was hardly an aberration. Horrible atrocities committed by US soldiers were widespread in Vietnam, much more so than most people digesting the Ken Burns narrative realize.

What's important to learn about My Lai isn't just that it happened - that Americans are indeed as capable of horrible atrocities as anyone - but that almost no consequences resulted. In fact, as Turse discovers, Army officials who were aware of what was happening in Vietnam later moved to take control of the Criminal Investigation Division in order to suppress investigation and prosecution of the innumerable war crimes that took place. The most significant prosecution that took place was of Lt. William Calley, who ultimately received 3 1/2 years of house arrest after being convicted of hundreds of murders. The message that this sends to the rest of the world is that we are imperialist killers of the highest order, and we are above the law.

Without looking at these atrocities in the eye, we are doomed to repeat them. And so we have.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Soldier_Investigation

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#139

Post by slantedview » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

eludwig wrote: post #40

I'd also like to recommend the Ken Burns "The Vietnam War," which can be found on PBS. It is amazingly well done and the depth of it is beyond most documentaries. For example, there is one episode (1.5+ hours) that covers a six month period from 1967 to '68. I was a small child during the war (10 in '68) and (to be truthful) only somewhat remember watching the coverage on TV. My mother said I used to ask her if I was…

The Ken Burns doc is informational in some ways and a joke in others, particularly in the way it frames America's involvement from the outset as one of having been "sucked into" an unwanted war, a framing which is unsupported by historical evidence.

The reality is that the US systematically executed tens of thousands of unarmed civilians and committed countless atrocities along the way including regularly torturing and raping civilians, as was documented by the American government. But this contrasts the the image of America as most people see it, which is why Burns saw it fit to exclude the full extent of US war crimes from his documentary.

Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre

#140

Post by Erlangolem » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #137

Erlangolem wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To this day, many are maimed and killed by US land mines in the region, and the US does not give a shit. My point is that’s it’s incorrect to speak of 330 million diverse people as collectively not giving a shit. I stand by that.

Then never talk about any other group like "the Chinese", "the Russians" or "the Nazis" again either. Because these are also millions of diverse people too.

Then never talk about any other group like "the Chinese", "the Russians" or "the Nazis" again either. Because these are also millions of diverse people too.

One of those things is not like the other, two of those things are kinda the same. Nazism is an ideology, a movement, so I’m going to move past that red herring.

The rest though, good advice that I try very hard to live by. I’m not sure at what point you decided that I was arguing in favor of something else. It would be downright stupid to assume that the lives and views of someone raising ducks and pigs on a small farm in an outer province of Chins bears much resemblance to the life of a high-level beaurocrat in Beijing. Some teenager with no future or hope in the outskirts of Moscow isn’t like a grandmother in Novasibirsk, or an oligarch in a penthouse.

By the same token, don’t assume that the US is some magically homogeneous group of people who don’t care if a Vietnamese child is blown away by a 50 year old mine.

Edit: Because apparently it must be said, The US Governmemt != “The US” in the same way that the Chinese Communist Pary isn’t “China” and Putin isn’t “Russia”.