If you've never looked closely at the details of this attack, or only saw some of the infamous photos, this twitter thread might not give you the full magnitude of what occurred. It makes it seem like maybe a few dozen people were killed. The number of deaths from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_Lai_massacre:
"347 according to the United States Army (not including Mỹ Khe killings), however others estimate that more than 500 people were killed and the number of people who were wounded is unknown; the Vietnamese government lists 504 killed in total from both Mỹ Lai and Mỹ Khe"
The military covered the whole thing up even with this guy kicking up a righteous fuss. And his friends and he were treated as pariahs.
Makes you wonder what happened when there was no one like this guy around. Reckon there's a bunch of villages there with no one left to tell the tale.
I suppose no one there ever asked "Are we the baddies?"
Pretty amazing from the people of that nation, though, to beat three world powers in the matter of a couple decades: France, the US, China. Takes quite something to do that when your enemies will do things like this. With the gloves off it's not clear that the powers can beat locals - as Russia is finding out.
The people of North Vietnam beat the people of South Vietnam, with heavy American (and Chinese and Russian) intervention. There were "baddies" on every side:
The communist single-party government of Vietnam refuses to acknowledge the Hue Massacre, and persecutes Vietnamese who speak out about it:
>The Vietnamese government still does not acknowledge that a massacre took place and does not allow any public dissent from this position.
War is complicated. The Vietnam War is extremely complicated. It is good that America can face up to the crimes committed in that war by its soldiers. I hope one day the Communist Party of Vietnam can do the same.
I’m not sure why HN always falls into black and white thinking. Maybe engineers aren’t good at seeing gray.
But your point is true. There are good and bad people on each side of every war.
People love to talk about how the South Vietnam government was never democratic and heavily corrupt but never seem to consider the state of the country today in that same light.
War is terrible. Thus, even "good people" in a voluntary unjustified war on the other side of the planet do terrible things. Emphasizing some unprovable triviality like "I'm sure there were some NVA soldiers who fired several shots at USA troops who wanted to surrender" is just a distraction from the only relevant point. The NVA wouldn't have fired those shots if we hadn't invaded. Whatever they did wrong was LBJ's fault. (Sure, it seems unfair to blame him for going to war, when refusing to do so was the reason his predecessor was killed, but life ain't fair.) The massacre discussed here wouldn't have happened if we hadn't invaded. None of the bloodshed, whether "good" or "bad", would have happened. "Shades of gray" has no place in a discussion of a developing nation resisting a violent invasion from people they've never threatened on the other side of the planet. When you parrot this lukewarm on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand bullshit, you distract from the basic point: the worst actions of the Vietnamese during USA's invasion of Vietnam were entirely USA's fault.
I'm surprised I have to explain this on a forum frequented by adults. Then again, in this thread we see the goofy idea that there are "good people" and "bad people"...
I'm surprised I have to explain this on a forum frequented by adults
It's funny you accuse others of having an infantile view of the war when you seem to be espousing the unsophisticated view of "good guys and bad guys".
You're wrong on basic facts. The US never invaded Vietnam. On the contrary, NVA and Viet Cong ireggulars invaded the countries of both South Vietnam and Laos. US armed forces entered South Vietnam at the invitation of that country's (sadly corrupt and undemocratic) government for the purpose of territorial defense. The US specifically chose not to invade North Vietnam in order to avoid war with China, who stationed more than 150,000 soldiers there during the war.
The entity that became RVN was specifically created by USA and France to undermine the Geneva Conference and protect Western access to rubber plantations. At USA's behest, the former emperor appointed Ngô Đình Diệm prime minister. Ngô kicked out the French in favor of USA, rigged elections, and instituted policies of anti-Buddhist Christian bigotry. He was never elected in a real election, rather propped up by Westerners because he served their interests. Those interests included his inviting lots of USA military and spooks into RVN. When his service no longer pleased us, we had him killed, and Hồ Chí Minh accurately predicted that his absence would lead to the reunification of Vietnam. Ngô's various successors behaved in similarly craven fashion toward USA. Nothing about the USA occupation was the sovereign will of the Vietnamese people.
This was just as much of an invasion as if USA were to occupy Venezuela at the invitation of Juan Guaidó. You should ask some Vietnam veterans about this.
Ngô kicked out the French in favor of USA, rigged elections, and instituted policies of anti-Buddhist Christian bigotry. He was never elected in a real election, rather propped up by Westerners because he served their interests.
Have you tried evaluating the North by the same standards?
"Ho Chi Minh kicked out the French in favor of USSR, rigged elections, and instituted policies of anti-religious secular bigotry. He was never elected in a real election, rather propped up by China/USSR because he served their interests."
Sure, we can criticize anti-democratic actions no matter who does them. I submit that there is a difference between such action taken within one's own nation and such action taken on the other side of the planet. Hồ Chí Minh was a complicated man, but he really did try to improve the lives of his fellow Vietnamese. Somehow Truman chose to rebuff him while coddling a troglodyte like Rhee Syngman. The point is that we must have a sense of proportion. Nations should govern themselves. Accusations of deficiencies of democracy do not justify voluntary wars against remote nations who could not possibly threaten the aggressor.
Also, French and American commercial interests in rubber plantations did not justify the mass murder of Vietnamese people and large-scale bribery that was required in order to install Ngô Đình Diệm as prime minister in the first place.
There were "baddies" on every side, but one side was the morally "rightest" - the ones fighting for their freedom and independence (aka North Vietnam, the communists). All the rest were colonial powers trying to force a corrupt puppet state which had nothing positive going for it other than being against the communists. So, motives-wise for war crimes, I'd take "freedom (not individual, for the country and peoples) and independence" over any of the reasons why France, the US or China were there. Still war crimes, still needed to be tried, but nobody did that anyways in that war, so all else being equal the motives "win".
Downplaying the conflict's moral depth without evidence is what you did, and why I posted my comment. I happen to know Vietnamese who fled to America as refugees after the war. They don't feel that Americans and South Vietnam were "the baddies", or that communists who invaded the South in the first place and violently suppress(ed) knowledge of things like the Hue Massacre are "the good guys." Many Vietnamese remain divided on these issues. It's complicated. That's the point.
If you view attempts at nuance as "trolling lies," you might be a great fit for one-party government.
Consider that their success in warfare may be attributed to the fact that, in their culture, subversives like yourself are dealt with. In the end, they are better fighters.
If you like the Ken Burns series, I highly recommend WGBH's Vietnam: A Television History. There are uploads on YouTube as well being as available on DVD.
Clearly you haven't watched the documentary. Half the interviewees are former North Vietnamese or Viet Cong combatants, including serving Vietnamese military personnel. The point is repeatedly made that it was primarily a Vietnamese civil war. The film is made for an American audience, so naturally it also focuses on the lives of American soldiers and their families.
I don't know what your last statement has to do with anything.
When he died there were lots of extremely positive and nostalgic comments about him. Are war criminals automatically forgiven when they die? Will Bush also be remembered fondly and for his buffoonery and not the war crimes? That's bleak..
Well, compared with the other neocon hawks, Powell was at least not a neocon. And not terribly hawkish.
We live in times when people want to turn the war criminal Jimmy Carter into a moral hero. Don't even talk to me about more recent shit being too far gone. Carter ended the age of the New Deal President. He introduced neoliberal economics, which most people finally realize we're suffering from now. Our bleak future is Carter's "Crisis of Confidence." It's our fault, according to Carter.
Sadly this is more truth than it should be. There is usefulness in understanding someone's past. The emphasis on "being tough enough to forgive" in the thread is visible in how often we see public opinion turn on politicians for things in their past that are (sometimes) irrelevant to the role ahead.
@dang, would it be possible to automatically redirect all Twitter submissions to a thread reader? I know that there are several to choose from and I don't particularly care which one, it's just that Twitter's UX is dreadful.
Best way to reach dang (or other HN mods) is by email at hn@ycombinator.com
There are a few variants of Twitter front-ends. Threadreader is specifically aimed at presenting longer threads. Nitter removes the annoyances of viewing a specific post and discussion (it includes replies, Threadreader does not).
I've suggested that given the increased dark patterns / hostile attitude that HN might run its own Nitter instance and proxy Twitter submissions through that.
That suggestion might also be made of YouTube (via either Invidious or Piped), and Reddit (Teddit), and Medium (Scribe). There's also Bibliogram (for Instagram), though that site gets very few successful submissions.
HN does presently rewrite all Reddit submissions (and possibly comments) to "old.reddit.com" from "www.reddit.com" to provide the old desktop interface. I increasingly view threads only through Teddit to avoid numerous Reddit annoyances --- Teddit will rewrite further links so that you're rarely if ever redirected to the broken nominal site. (I can't recall an "if ever", other workarounds such as i.reddit.com or old.reddit.com frequently land back at the new broken-by-design site.)
I've rarely found a notable thread that Threadreader can't access, though Jim Wright (Stonekettle Station) apparently disabled it (I'd emailed suggesting he reconsider some years back).
His feed is accessible via Nitter (and via that: RSS).
This is what scares me about all the talk if "civil war" lately. How many Thompson's are out there to stop massacares and speak up. It isn't easy. I hope we never have to witness a massacare again but unfortunately it is human nature that makes it inevitable, be it at home or at a far away land.
Massacres happen in war because people are involved. What keeps them to a minimum is the discipline of the military forces as well as who controls them.
The North Vietnamese committed many massacres (such as at Hue), but their political leadership justified them, and they still punish people who try to talk about them.
The US military studies this and other massacres so that future leaders will be better prepared to not let something like this happen. It is not illegal to talk about this and other failures in the US. The goal is to remember and to avoid any such thing in the future.
Russia is currently using massacres and other terroristic practices in Ukraine and other countries. It is an intentional strategy.
Honestly it is sickening that the supposedly mightiest military power in the last decades is incapable of holding its war criminals to account. During WWII generals (like Yamashita) were hanged for war crimes that happened in their area of responsibility (not even under their command and control), so nothing as a consequence for directly ordering a massacre or torture is simply unacceptable.
Edited to add: not only is it incapable of holding its war criminals to account, it has an explicit law to allow itself to invade anyone trying to do that (Hague invasion act). It's not incapable, it's hostilely unwilling.
What happened in Dresden, for example, was clearly a war crime, the biggest atrocity in one attack, one bombing run (not one bomb, but one attack), ever.
There is no honest judgement. There is no reciprocity. There is only the victors writing the history and punishing the non-victors, except the ones they pardon for being valuable.
I think what US lacks severely is humility. That big ego acknowledging that even they can and sometimes do fuckup big time, despite all good that is done. This very effectively prevents recognizing and addressing issues like these and much needed improvement.
It goes deeper - US needs allies, everybody does. But if you position yourself above everybody else and treat rest as sub-humans (which is what effectively various US laws state), people and nations will align with you only of its convenient for them, and not for 1 second more. You will receive a lot of hatred, open and hidden. Nothing healthy for long term empire.
I think we in Europe are somehow slowly starting to understand that. We have big powers like Germany and France, and a lot of smaller countries. If the big countries want to be respected and not treated like the USA (=someone who can help you but can become a bully in an instant when it suits them), they need to be more open and less egoistical. This needs to happen on a global scale, though, to really work.
>What happened in Dresden, for example, was clearly a war crime, ...
It would only have been a war crime if the city was undefended. Since Dresden had AA guns and fighters defending it those attacks were not war crimes. Bear in mind the same test was applied to german bomber attacks, no germans were convicted for the bombings of Coventry or London, so there was no inconsistency in the way bomber attacks by the two sides were treated.
That logic seems very flimsy. Every city had AA guns and fighters protecting it. In the same way that massacring a bunch of civilians in a village that was defended by armed soldiers is still a war crime.
For a counterpoint, Alexander Löhr was hanged in Belgrade after the war, in part because of the bombing of the city he commanded.
Maybe, but that was the legal standard at the time. I've no idea what the charges and evidence were levelled at Löhr beyond the few lines in Wikipedia, except that his fate seems richly deserved for numerous reasons and it seems likely many of them had a perfectly valid legal basis. If there were any lapses in legal nicety, I shed no tears over the matter.
This was not considered to restrict aerial bombardment as early as the first world war, drawing on precedent based on naval bombardments which could target undefended facilities provided they were of a milirary nature.
Article 2
of the Hague Convention No. IX of 1907 on naval bombardments in
time of war allowed naval forces to fire on certain objects even when
the locality concerned was not defended.
[snip]
Generally speaking, it was possible to
observe a steady shift, for bombardment to be permissible under inter-
national law, from the requirement that a locality be defended to that
of the presence of a military objective. 5 By the time the First World
War ended, therefore, the law of air warfare had virtually lost its sole
codified basis: the prohibition on dropping explosives from aircraft had
become invalid and Article 25's field of application had turned out to
be extremely narrow. It had been replaced by the very imprecise prin-
ciple of the "military objective"
If you continue reading that document it becomes clear there were multiple attempts the codify the rules (eg the Washington Conference talks, the Hague Commission of Jurists) none of which were ratified.
However, the 1922/23 "Hague Rules of Air Warfare" (which were not ratified) are notable in that the discard the idea that defense makes any difference and switched entirely to the military objectives view, with carve-outs to try to protect civilians and monuments.
So they made it easier to justify attacks, and harder to prosecute such attacks as war crimes? In any case as to legitimacy[0]:
In 1946 the Nüremberg International Military Tribunal stated with regard to the Hague Convention on land warfare of 1907: "The rules of land warfare expressed in the Convention undoubtedly represented an advance over existing International Law at the time of their adoption ... but by 1939 these rules ... were recognized by all civilized nations and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war" (reprinted in AJIL, Vol. 41, 1947, pp. 248-249). The International Military Tribunal for the Far East expressed, in 1948, an identical view.
> So they made it easier to justify attacks, and harder to prosecute such attacks as war crimes?
Yes.
It's worth noting that the idea of "international law" really only became a thing with the Nuremberg trials. Before that it was assumed people would do the right thing, or something...
I agree you could make a reasonable case that the allied bombing campaign on Dresden at al should have been war crimes, but the fact is they were not, and nobody at the time had any expectation that they could or would be. There would have been no legal basis, even a flimsy one, for prosecuting them as such.
While it might have been a war crime the existing international legal mechanism were unable to deal with such war crimes. The Nürnberger Prozesse were not run by an international mechanism but by the allied forces. Similar in Japan.
No, Dresden was a big garrison city, manufacturing and transportation hub. Bombing it, as cruel at is was, served a purpose for the Allies to remove safe retreats for the Germans.
Lots of Dresdeners were supporters of faschism before the war and after the war. A quite vocal minority still supports neofaschism up to this day. In the 90ies they installed the myth of the "holocaust bombing" as an allied war crime, trying to turn themselves into the victims of war.
> Lots of Dresdeners were supporters of faschism before the war and after the war.
Loads of Afghans support the Taliban. Doesn't mean firebombing any city there is the proper answer to anything there.
And loads of people support the US government, the Russian government, the British government, and so on and so on. All of those countries have some absolutely massive atrocities under their belts.
And absolutely none of it is deserving of burning the flesh off civilians and children.
This equivocation between Nazi war crimes and the Holocaust (not a war crime, but a crime against humanity) on the one side, and whatever excesses the allies committed, is deeply misguided. And I say that as a German.
There is obviously an element of “the victor gets to write history” to the Nuremberg Trials. But there is still an underlying, objective truth of grave injustice, and the trials did the best that was possible under the circumstances to capture it.
Dresden, Nagasaki, My Lai, the Iraq war in its entirety: all of these were wrong, to different extends and for differing reasons. The industrial slaughter of more than four million people, intended to wipe out a culture and motivated by nothing but shallow hatred, still stands apart, incomparable.
Mỹ Lai doesn't belong on that list. It was straight-up indiscriminate rape-and-murder of an entire village--and is just the best documented episode of many in that war. The tactical or strategic justification for the action was a stretch, at best. If anything it should be grouped with German actions in Belgium in WW1, or the Japanese in Nanking.
The countries that suffered the worst from Nazi Germany (the countries that become post-war USSR, France) also had some of the lightest touches when it came to persecuting war criminals after WW2.
Why? Because the war didn’t happen in a vacuum. The decision became a practical one and there were more important things to do.
While it's good of course that the courage and sound judgement of Hugh Thompson be recognized, remembered, and celebrated, My Lai isn't a story about a hero.
It's the story of abominable war crimes committed by abominable US soldiers who were never held accountable for their abominable crimes.
Isn't this the same sort of thing Julian Assange is being hunted for now. from [1]
"In April 2010, WikiLeaks released the Collateral Murder video,[4] which showed United States soldiers fatally shooting 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq,[85] including Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh. ...
The US should not be persecuting Julian Assange, but the Collateral Murder incident was clearly a case of mistaking civilians for combatants and carelessness, not willfull murder of non-combatants as in My Lai. The two cases aren't remotely comparable.
Yes, with some emphasis on the “sort of”? First of all, because Assange is not “hunted” for that video specifically, as far as I know, but other leaks and the process he went about to get at them.
The My Lai massacre also differed, I would say, from that killing in Iraq. In numbers, obviously, but also in motivation: My Lai was a sadistic masssacre, involving not just murder but also torture and rape. There was absolutely no doubt, not even for the most motivated reasoning, that the victims were innocent.
As an American Army veteran I disagree. Thompson represents the values the USA should hold dear and the struggle of the nation to fulfill the promise of those values.
This isn't Anti-American, this is a reminder that we should strive to do the right thing no matter the cost. "Do what's right, legally and morally."
"347 according to the United States Army (not including Mỹ Khe killings), however others estimate that more than 500 people were killed and the number of people who were wounded is unknown; the Vietnamese government lists 504 killed in total from both Mỹ Lai and Mỹ Khe"