At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
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At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
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Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
#2I was surprised by how much war footage and gut-wrenching videos I could find online. More people should be exposed to those documents as a form of shock therapy. It gives weight and meaning to words so effortlessly spoken by our leaders. It might also help young people have a little more empathy for actual individuals, as opposed to abstract demographics.
The article reminds me of War against War!. It's a 1924 anti-war photobook (180 images) designed by German pacifist Ernst Friedrich. It's a sobering read. http://craigritchie.co.uk/archives/2581 [WARNING: 18+ NSFL]
EDIT: I added a few quotes describing the War against War! photobook.
> Outraged by the unprecedented barbarism and massive destruction of the First World War, Ernst Friedrich complied and published a collection of pictures and other visual material which attempted to illustrate not only the tragic human consequences of war, but also the lies and hypocrisy of the social, political, and economic forces that produced and promoted it. Aimed at an international audience with multi-lingual supporting text and captions, it was one of the first concerted photographic expressions of protest against the barbarism of modern warfare in all its tragic folly.
> Friedrich’s strategy was to present shocking images of the atrocities of war and then juxtapose the official German patriotic and military propaganda and rhetoric of the time with graphic illustrations of what this discourse actually produced.
> The horrific imagery builds gradually, commencing with illustrations of children’s toys and propaganda posters, followed by photographs of the soldier’s march to war, the privilege of the elites orchestrating the violence, the devastated and then forgotten battlefields [...] and the graveyards of the dead.
> The most unbearable pages are in a section called ‘The Face of War’, twenty-four close-ups of military and non-military survivors with huge facial wounds.
> Never before had the people there been subjected to such horrendous images of the savagery and the senseless destruction of the First World War. During WW1, most European governments forbade the publication of war photographs and few images of the war had appeared before the publication of Friedrich’s book.
Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
#3How do people manage to condemn this type of thing but not the 100,000s murdered in Iraq because of the US invasion? I can't work out how Americans think being proud of their soldiers - both left and right wing people are. Is there something I don't know?
Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
#4How do people manage to condemn this type of thing but not the 100,000s murdered in Iraq because of the US invasion? I can't work out how Americans think being proud of their soldiers - both left and right wing people are. Is there something I don't know?
My opinion has changed after you've marginalized a tragedy and treated it like an either or event in history. Thank you for showing that neither is important by what about ing.
Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
#5> Duc was eight years old in March 1968, and as Haeberle spoke with him, through an interpreter, he realized with a jolt that the woman he had photographed dead behind a rock 43 years earlier was Duc’s mother, Nguyen Thi Tau.
It was hard not to cry reading that.
It is terrifying to think about all the other massacres where a photographer wasn't there to document it or someone like the helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson to intervene.
Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
#6I was surprised by how much war footage and gut-wrenching videos I could find online. More people should be exposed to those documents as a form of shock therapy. It gives weight and meaning to words so effortlessly spoken by our leaders. It might also help young people have a little more empathy for actual individuals, as opposed to abstract demographics. The article reminds me of War against War! . It's a 1924 anti…
I went to a First World War museum near the Italian Front as a kid. I will never forget this photo of soldiers who survived the war missing half their face.
https://www.tripadvisor.ie/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g319788-d...
Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
#7Wow had no idea the Vietnam was this bad (bad as in how bad the Americans were). Almost makes the invasion of Iraq look noble. I went through the US educational system and while we know about the Vietnam war, the protesters, this is definitely not the picture of the war that we were given. It's basically propaganda and history rewriting what they are doing here, even though the US didn't even technically win the war. We were taught that the Vietnam war protesters were just pacifist hippies.
No wonder why China is fiercely anti-American (in terms of influence, policy, etc).
Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
#8How do people manage to condemn this type of thing but not the 100,000s murdered in Iraq because of the US invasion? I can't work out how Americans think being proud of their soldiers - both left and right wing people are. Is there something I don't know?
> but not the 100,000s murdered in Iraq because of the US invasion? I
Maybe not by the mainstream media, as they were getting pretty reluctant to point out things like Obama, the Nobel Prize recipient, dropping over 20k bombs in countries we were not even at war with in just 2016. Some did report though ex: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/americ.... Was there someone's mom or baby killed by those bombs? Was that more humane than landing a helicopter and shooting them in the head?
As for general Iraq war criticism, you can still follow Democracy Now, Amy Goodman and others did a good job there. There was a video they did with drone operators who describe how they did the killing. They also currently have retrospective on My Lai as well https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/16/50_years_after_my_lai... (it' s a shorter interview not a full piece like the article we are discussing).
Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
#9So, 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 the close of WWII. But - make no mistake - many (most?) males are capable of such acts.
Some serious psychological tools need to be thrown at this problem.
Re: At My Lai: The Photographer Who Captured the Massacre
#10Wow had no idea the Vietnam was this bad (bad as in how bad the Americans were). Almost makes the invasion of Iraq look noble. I went through the US educational system and while we know about the Vietnam war, the protesters, this is definitely not the picture of the war that we were given. It's basically propaganda and history rewriting what they are doing here, even though the US didn't even technically win the war.…
Every nation will try to hide the atrocities its own forces inflict on the 'enemy'. There's nothing unique about America in this regard; China is just as guilty.