#My Lai: Vietnam

[destielmemenews]

"On March 16, 1968, Calley led American soldiers of the Charlie Company on a mission to confront a crack outfit of Vietcong enemies. Instead, over several hours, the soldiers killed 504 unresisting civilians, mostly women, children and elderly men, in My Lai and a neighboring community."

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[porterdavis]

See you in hell

[an-eclectic-of-mass-destruction]

I went down a YouTube rabbit hole and wound up on a video that was a list of most gruesome and violent scenes in movies.

In the video, there featured clips from a movie called “My Lai Four”. (the scenes shown were very gruesome so I will not describe them.)

I hadn’t heard of it so I looked it up to see what it was about. Only to find out it’s a film based on the true events of the My Lai massacre.

What happened is so disgustingly vile and evil that I refuse to say exactly what happened, but if you aren’t easily triggered by anything then I highly suggest you look it up.

Basically, it was a series of horrific war crimes committed by United States Army personnel during the Vietnam War.

After the war, 26 soldiers were charged with the crimes committed. Only 1 was convicted. He was given a LIFE SENTENCE but only served 3.5 years under house arrest.

This obviously horrified and nauseated me, but it also had me wondering about what other war crimes the U.S. has committed. Which led me into a very terrifying deep dive.

Admittedly, I had to stop my researching prematurely. Only because it was making me physically ill.

As a United States citizen, I thought I was fully aware how fucked up my country was - oh how wrong I was.

The lack of support for Palestine from my government is starting to come into focus for me now.

What is happening in Palestine are War Crimes. They are Crimes Against Humanity.

There is no excuse for what is happening.

There is no “but they…” or “I feel…”. No.

This is wrong. Going into someone else’s country to colonize it by bombing, starving, and mutilating innocent civilians is evil.

End of story.

#FreePalestine

[joshualunacreations]

We often talk about how white supremacy uses the Model Minority Myth as a wedge, but rarely talk about how Black Americans adopt racism and jingoism against Asians domestically and abroad. (Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)

If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal.

[stele3]

Lieutenant William Calley is dead.

Lieutenant Calley is dead, at 80, after living a long, long life.

He didn't deserve a fucking day.

On March 15, 1968, Calley led Company C of US Army infantry into the hamlet of My Lai in Vietnam. (The presence and culpability of Captain Ernest Medina was covered up. Medina also lived a long, long life and died at 81 in 2018.) Over the day, Company C carried out a systemic massacre of 504 women, children, and elderly men, who were the only occupants of My Lai.

When people think about Vietnam and the atrocities committed by Americans there, they might not know the name My Lai. But it was the big one.

The only thing that brought the massacre to a halt was a helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh C. Thompson, who landed his bird and threatened to order his gunners to shoot the infantry. He then went out and shielded the Vietnamese civilians with his body. Afterwards, Thompson was ostracized by the military, hounded by the press, and driven to an early grave.

He died at the age of 62 of liver cancer, having drunk himself to death.

William Calley died today.

I spit on his fucking grave.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Platoon (1986, Oliver Stone)

24/03/2024

Platoon is a 1986 film, written and directed by Oliver Stone, which deals with his time in Vietnam as a volunteer during the war and is inspired by the real experiences the director had between 1967 and 1971 during his military service.

The film won 4 Oscars out of 8 nominations and Oliver Stone was also awarded the Silver Bear in Berlin as best director. In 1998 the American Film Institute placed it in eighty-third place in the ranking of the one hundred best American films of all time, while ten years later, in the updated list, it dropped to eighty-sixth place. In 2019, it was chosen for preservation in the National Film Registry of the United States Library of Congress.

The bloodiest episode, as in many other films dealing with the Vietnam War, is inspired by the most atrocious event of that conflict, known to history as the My Lai massacre, in which American soldiers committed atrocities including rape of very young girls, indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians, destruction of the homes and resources of the inhabitants, believed to be allies of the Viet Cong, despite there being no evidence. From this perspective, the figure of the platoon commander, Lieutenant Wolfe, both for his inability to control his men and for other characteristics, can be traced back to the main person responsible for My Lai, the then US Army Lieutenant William Calley, convicted to several years of military detention for that very affair.

Due to an error by Lieutenant Wolfe, who gives wrong coordinates via radio, the platoon is decimated by friendly artillery.

In the last war action of his volunteer service, Chris escapes a deadly ambush by the Viet Cong who almost completely annihilate the platoon and the subsequent American bombing with napalm.

Initially Hollywood snubs the script as many producers are of the opinion that what three is to say about the Vietnam War has already been reported in highly successful films such as Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter, however the strength of Stone's script still attracts some producers who see enormous potential in him. He was then assigned to write a screenplay for another film, Stone accepted and wrote Midnight Express in 1977, thanks to which he won the Oscar for best non-original screenplay (first statuette for Stone) a fact that made all of Hollywood understand the Stone's enormous potential; it was therefore not difficult for him to find the producer to begin work on Platoon.

The film was shot, following the great example of Apocalypse Now, director Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece, on the island of Luzon, in the Philippines, starting in February 1986. The film's production was almost canceled due to the political upheavals in country, due to Ferdinand Marcos, dictator of the country. Upon arrival in the Philippines, the cast members underwent a two-week course of intensive training by Dale Dye (former Marine captain during the Vietnam War and interpreter of Captain Harris), during which they had to dig trenches and suffer forced marches and night "ambushes".

[follow-up-news]

William Laws Calley Jr., who as an Army lieutenant led the U.S. soldiers who killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre, the most notorious war crime in modern American military history, has died. He was 80. Calley died on April 28, according to his Florida death record, which said he had been living in an apartment in Gainesville. His death was first reported by The Washington Post on Monday, citing his death certificate. Calley had lived in obscurity in the decades since he was court-martialed and convicted in 1971, the only one of 25 men originally charged to be found guilty in the massacre, which helped turn American opinion against the war in Vietnam. On March 16, 1968, Calley led American soldiers of the Charlie Company on a mission to confront a crack outfit of their Vietcong enemies. Instead, over several hours, the soldiers killed 504 unresisting civilians, mostly women, children and elderly men, in My Lai and a neighboring community.

[anintelligentoctopus]

Can't watch too many Vietnam War documentaries ig it gets so infuriating

[southeastasiadiary]

Day Nine: A Day at My Lai

By some strange twist of fate or karma, I woke up today to find this article in my Facebook news feed:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-case-against-travel

Well, as I’ve said before, people travel for all kinds of reasons. I once knew someone who traveled simply to “collect” countries. In fact, he was a member of a club for people who’ve been to more than a hundred different countries. (It’s a real thing: The Travelers’ Century Club. Look it up.) He couldn’t understand my approach to travel, and I couldn’t understand his. Suum cuique.

Some travel for the sheer fun of it. Others travel to shop. Still others travel for adventure. I travel for understanding.

Today was a day all about travel for understanding.

I spent the day in My Lai (one of the villages of the Son My settlement) where personnel from the U.S. army murdered 504 unarmed citizens on March 16, 1968.

A man who had been seven at the time, told me about his recollection of the event. His mother (who is still living, at the age of 91) was up making breakfast when helicopters landed in the rice paddy just outside their house. Not knowing what was happening, she told the boy to hide under his bed. Their house, being so near the helicopters, was the first to be approached. They were all ordered out and taken to the rice paddy. Then the shooting began, first one by one, then with automatic fire. Military intelligence had erroneously reported that the village was a haven for Viet Cong, but there were, in fact, no Viet Cong in My Lai at the time, not even any men of military age, merely civilians.

A machine gun was then placed on a guard tower, and almost all those in the paddy were killed.

In all, 102 people were killed in the rice paddy alone.

It remains actively used as a rice paddy today.

The few survivors (including the boy, his mother, and his brother) lived only because other bodies fell on top of them, and they remained still until the soldiers moved on.

Fifteen more people, some as young as 2, were shot next to a silk cotton tree not far from their house.

Houses in My Lai at that time were traditional L-shaped huts with thatched roofs. So, the soldiers began setting the thatching on fire and shot the people as they fled their homes.

After the soldiers had left, the survivors crept out from where they were hiding and went to a nearby village. Several days later, they returned with several of the people from that village to bury the bodies. But there were too many bodies to bury one by one, so they dug mass graves. Today, memorials mark those graves

and, in a few cases, unnamed “tombs” have been placed at the spot.

At a small museum, a large plaque lists the names and ages of all who died. The dead ranged from 82 to less than a year old.

After telling me his story, the man and his wife invited me to lunch in their home (a gesture of generosity I’m not sure I could have extended if the situation had been reversed).

Finally, before I left, I asked the man if he would do me the kindness of having his photo taken with me.

In the photo you see, the man’s wife, the man, me, and the director of the small museum at My Lai. Today was her day off, but she came in special because she was told that "an American who had a serious interest in understanding what really happened at My Lai" would be paying a visit.

So, no, I don’t think there’s a case to be made against travel.

[trendynewsnow]

The My Lai Massacre: A Somber Reflection on a Tragic Event

The My Lai Massacre: A Reflection on Tragedy The strawberry ice cream stand located near the ticket booth felt strangely out of place at the site of the My Lai massacre, one of the most horrific atrocities committed during the Vietnam War. The museum, intended to honor the memory of those lost, is surrounded by a desolate parking lot that held only a single vehicle. A large sign positioned at the…

[gotohellfuckingyankees]

[porterdavis]

History that needs to be taught

Sadly the My Lai massacre was only the best-known of the atrocities committed by American GIs during the Viet Nam war. As it was, despite the rape, mutilation, and murder of over 500 Vietnamese old men, women, and children that day, only 14 soldiers were charged after the Pentagon cover-up fell apart, and only one was convicted. Lt. William Calley was released into house arrest after three days in prison by President Nixon, who three years later fully pardoned him.

It is chapters of history like this that some in the US are desperate to whitewash. My Lai, the Tulsa massacre, the Trail of Tears, Abu Ghraib are all truths that must be known and taught. History demands it.

[nachoaveragejoe234]

not just americans

No citizens of any country are somehow inherently bad or evil because of their government. Full stop. That includes Russia citizens, Israeli citizens, Palestinian citizens, Chinese citizens, Iranian citizens, North Korean citizens, etc.

Everyone in this world is just living their lives, each with their own complex needs and desires and interests and emotions. They all have hobbies and friends and families and favorite foods. They all have their own motivations and varying political opinions and views on their governments. They all weigh the risks of standing out or speaking up and they all make their own decisions about that.

They all fear the same in times of danger. They all feel grief and pain and terror the same. They all love and hate and bleed the same.

They are people. They are no different from anyone else, they are not monsters or caricatures or nameless bodies in videos. Complexity and humanity are not exclusive to your country, to people like you.

[its-ok-to-be-asian]

Rest In Fucking PISS.

I swear if I ever hear another Americunt white trash scumbag talk about "muh HuMaN rIgHtS" or "ChInA bAd" I'm going to lose it and shove this shit in their fucking pasty mayo face.

So this piece of human filth gets a slap on the wrist treatment and got to walk free like nothing happened but America whines about "hUmAn RiGhTs" in China and other Asian countries. The utter fucking hypocrisy stinks to high heaven.

Fuck his fakeass apology and his shitstain soul.

"As of 2018, Calley was living in Gainesville, Florida.[31] He died there on April 28, 2024, at the age of 80. His death was not reported until July 29, when it was discovered in public records. On his death certificate, a question asking if he had ever served "in [the] U.S. armed forces" was marked "no".[56]"

So this war criminal piece of shit Americunt wants us to accept his apology and that he's "sorry" yet couldn't even admit that he served in the US military where he committed the fucking war crime in the first place? Fuck out of here. If he has a grave I'd like to take a dump on it.

[dspd]

I'm not Vietnamese but if no one with actual ties writes an HP fic that includes ma lai I might have to read even more on Vietnamese culture and kidnap a specific Vietnamese friend I have in mind in order to cowrite one