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

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

#71

Post by mmjaa » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 11:57 AM UTC

fractallyte wrote: post #59

7952 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ironic how that is a mirror image of fascist beliefs about military virtue. They wanted to give power to veterans so that wars could be started and won! They wanted to suppress the influence of weak willed peacniks. It is ironic that this could be reversed to imply that rationality means peace. Heinlein had some pretty fascist ideas, and books like starship troopers project that in a comfortable form. It is eas…

Heinlein's point was that one's vote is a huge responsibility, and that privilege must be earned: by demonstrably placing the needs of one's country above individual wellbeing. Thus only military veterans could participate in governance. Militarism doesn't automatically equate to fascism. There are further ideas in this: that, having experienced a war, a (typical) person would never again allow such a thing to happen…

>That's sound thinking, in my opinion.

Except for the fact that its pandering to the survivors fallacy. Of course, the ones who don't want to fight wars won't be around - they'll have been dead. The ones who survived war, are more likely to want more war - especially when they emerge as the victor nation. Just look at how blood-thirsty the 5-eyes nations are, currently: none of them have truly 'lost wars' (i.e. fought on their own territory), only troops. Yet, here today, don't ask your average Aussie to ever criticise their nations war-making; they'll think you need psychiatric help for just questioning the Australian Defence Forces' heinous crimes...

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

#72

Post by 7952 » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 11:58 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #57

7952 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. The kind of rational society that fights giant insects with lightly armoured infantry soldiers despite being highly technologically advanced. A lot of problems are complex and require competing demands to be balanced. There is no single objectively correct solution to those problems. Rational intelligent people come to different conclusions. That is why we have politics, to deal with the messy complexity of t…

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.

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

#73

Post by mmjaa » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 11:59 AM UTC

lopmotr wrote: post #23

megous wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they are to blame. People often times go to prison if they kill someone on the road even if they didn't intend to. The people you're talking about are more to blame, given how much they were war profiteers themselves and were intertwined with war profiteering firms. Also it can't seriously be called negligent killing if there's no serious effort to reduce or let alone count the dead and find what the "mista…

I agree with you, but why don't at least left-wing Americans agree too? Even HN posters are keen to show proper respect to soldiers and get angry if you don't do the same.

Groupthink is an ultimate political power, and it has been weaponised.

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

#74

Post by TaylorAlexander » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 12:00 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…

Seconded. I just made it through the whole 20 hour series and it was sobering. I never learned very much about this significant war in American history (I am American).

To think that we started this war to help an ally (France) maintain their colonial power over people who wanted to be free, and then stayed in it because it would look bad, is horrific. Nixon even interfered with peace talks before he was elected to make sure he’d have a better chance of being elected, and that fact was seen as so damaging that those in power decided to keep it the American people in the dark. A presidential candidate interfered with the peace process to get elected and the American people weren’t even told about it.

And then the massacres. So much humanity was lost. Not just in the massacres but in the battles for a war that didn’t need to be fought.

The Vietnam war is such a dark part of human history, and yet we barely talk about it. Or when we do, many people to this day believe the government lines they were being fed at the time of the war. That this was necessary, etc.

And now we have a president that threatens war and people support him in it. Hell Obama pushed war too and advanced many war efforts.

I wish we could stop all this killing. I mean - we could. I wish we would.

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

#75

Post by taneq » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 12:00 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #66

taneq wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The support is for individuals, not necessarily the institution.

But the individuals are doing the work for the institution. If they'd just refuse (for example, don't sign up to be a soldier working on behalf of an institution you ostensibly don't support), then it wouldn't get done.

People who don't support the military won't sign up at all. People who do sign up don't have full information on all of the operations they'll be involved in at the time they sign up, and by the time they do have that information they generally cannot legally dissent.

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

#76

Post by mmjaa » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 12:01 PM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #43

lopmotr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but why don't at least left-wing Americans agree too? Even HN posters are keen to show proper respect to soldiers and get angry if you don't do the same.

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 covert means fail, the USA goes overt - and has practiced and refined its presentation of these actions such that the rest of the world is helpless to do anything about it. Nobody wants to believe it, but the USA is a wholesale exporter of death, destruction and mayhem.

Yet, the American people are ignorant of all of this, because of the luxuries afforded them by their state.

Until we deal with the decadence problem, we will not be able to deal with the militarism.

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

#77

Post by technotarek » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 12:02 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…

I'm a little younger than you, born after the war ended. In the 80s, there was a weekly dramatized series called Tour of Duty that ran for a bit on one of the networks. Paint it Black was the shows theme song. Anyways, I was too young to watch it critically or remember if it had a message to it. Does it ring any bells?

Also, I read your comment after suggesting a video in a separate comment below. You might like it. Re how the press uncovered the event.

https://investigatingpower.org/vietnam-war/

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

#78

Post by afarrell » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 12:03 PM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #50

afarrell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an American who believes that the invasion of Iraq, either in conception (many believed and many now believe we should never have invaded) or in execution (Even among those who believed that the US should have overthrown Saddam, it is a pretty common opinion that the post-war occupation was bungled tragically). The reason you don't see more condemnations of it in the American med…

At the time, the Iraq war enjoyed broad public support particularly on the right. That support persisted for over a decade, and to this day you'll still find people justifying the whole mess, arguing for the existence of "WMDs", contrasting Saddams atrocities and of course roundly blaming Obama for creating ISIS by disengaging.

I’ll point out that your list consists of separate arguments. Some people point to the evidence Saddam had chemical weapons because they believe we found stocks of chemical weapons he’d kept even after using some on the Kurds, not because they think we should have overthrown him. Those are two separate statements—-one is a question of fact and one an opinion.

Still other Americans initially opposed the invasion but believed that, having overthrown the government, we had a moral obligation to stay, develop the istitutions of the country, and prevent sectarian violence from breaking out again. I was in this camp back in 2006.

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

#79

Post by afarrell » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 12:05 PM UTC

7952 wrote: post #70

fractallyte wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heinlein's point was that one's vote is a huge responsibility, and that privilege must be earned: by demonstrably placing the needs of one's country above individual wellbeing. Thus only military veterans could participate in governance. Militarism doesn't automatically equate to fascism. There are further ideas in this: that, having experienced a war, a (typical) person would never again allow such a thing to happen…

But none of that explains why the actual results would be better. You could make the same argument about other kinds of virtue like religion, property ownership, wealth, or ancestry. That may seem irrational to us, but it made sense to some people historically. And the choice of service is completely subjective. Maybe only parents should be we to vote? Because only they can truly understand. And they have sacrificed…

> It would be very difficult to create a culture that glorifies military service, but treats war itself as repugnant.

There are large sections of the American left which hold this sort of perspective.

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

#80

Post by 7952 » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 12:05 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #71

fractallyte wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heinlein's point was that one's vote is a huge responsibility, and that privilege must be earned: by demonstrably placing the needs of one's country above individual wellbeing. Thus only military veterans could participate in governance. Militarism doesn't automatically equate to fascism. There are further ideas in this: that, having experienced a war, a (typical) person would never again allow such a thing to happen…

>That's sound thinking, in my opinion. Except for the fact that its pandering to the survivors fallacy. Of course, the ones who don't want to fight wars won't be around - they'll have been dead. The ones who survived war, are more likely to want more war - especially when they emerge as the victor nation. Just look at how blood-thirsty the 5-eyes nations are, currently: none of them have truly 'lost wars' (i.e. fough…

Yes. Historically the more direct your experience of war, the less likely you are to survive. There are lots of WWII veterans who spent the war washing clothes and driving trucks miles from the front line. That is worthy of massive respect and gratitude. But it is not a passport to wisdom.