Calley Apologizes for 1968 My Lai Massacre

[GracchusBabeuf]

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[Communist]

Perhaps we'll be seeing him at anti-war demonstrations and visiting Vietnam to do volunteer work then. Otherwise, his apologies won't mean much.

[genstrike]

While Calley's role and what he did was horrific, Calley was just a fall guy, just like Lynndie England today. Pick out some low-ranking Lieutenant involved in one of many crimes of imperialism, and punish the "bad apple"

All the thousands of other Calleys should have been punished, as should the people who gave the Calleys their orders, the people who decided to engage in an imperialist war, and the people responsible for the dehumanization of the Vietnamese people, all the way up to Nixon and LBJ.

[Pawn Power]

As Chomsky has noted, "The My Lai massacre was a mere footnote to the vastly greater atrocities..." like the carpet bombing of cities, the use of chemecial agents on civilains, and the purpesful destruction of farm land which killed millions.

[n0thing]

500 people don't look that impressive next to 4000000.

[x359594]

While Calley's role and what he did was horrific, Calley was just a fall guy, just like Lynndie England today. Pick out some low-ranking Lieutenant involved in one of many crimes of imperialism, and punish the "bad apple"...

Please don't re-write history; not everyone lives in the United States of Amnesia.

At the time, Calley was not punished other then being confined to the base during his trial and serving a few months under house arrest. Nor was he regarded as a bad apple, but rather as a hero. He was not a fall guy since he didn't take a fall. In fact, there were "Rally for Cally" gatherings held throughout the US.

By contrast, Hugh Thompson, the soldier who rescued as many villagers as he could, was denounced by U.S. Congressmen, received hate mail, and death threats.

[x359594]

500 people don't look that impressive next to 4000000.

But those 500 were part of of those 400,000,000.

[genstrike]

Please don't re-write history; not everyone lives in the United States of Amnesia.

At the time, Calley was not punished other then being confined to the base during his trial and serving a few months under house arrest. Nor was he regarded as a bad apple, but rather as a hero. He was not a fall guy since he didn't take a fall. In fact, there were "Rally for Cally" gatherings held throughout the US.

By contrast, Hugh Thompson, the soldier who rescued as many villagers as he could, was denounced by U.S. Congressmen, received hate mail, and death threats.

My point was, Calley was (IIRC) the only person convicted for participating in just one of many crimes of imperialism in that war (although many were punished for refusing to participate). Regardless of whether his punishment was sufficient or not (it wasn't), the episode was part of writing a "bad apple" narrative of the war in Vietnam in the history books. And it is something that we're seeing again in Iraq and Afghanistan, with people like Lynndie England getting short bits of jail time (which was more than deserved) and Donald Rumsfeld not being prosecuted for anything.

[x359594]

...the episode was part of writing a "bad apple" narrative of the war in Vietnam in the history books...

Only ex post facto. The "bad apple" narrative is something of recent vintage. And you're absolutely right about Lyndie Englund and the other ratings punished while the people at the top of the command chain got a pass.

For anyone who's served in the US military, this is routine and a matter of course; it was like that 40 years ago and it's like that today.

Also, I apologize for my overheated response. It's that I hate officers, even looeys, and I get incensed when they don't get what's coming to them. Calley got a slap on the wrist when he should have gotten life at hard labor (preferably in the stockade at Ft. Shafter.)

[El Rojo]

damn fucking right he did

maybe next time he could consider not killin CIVILIANS instead? no chance, coz he was a fucking fascist

[Pawn Power]

But those 500 were part of of those 400,000,000.

Three too many zeros. If that many people were killed in Vietnam, it would have been like over a tenth of the worlds population at the time.

[JimmyJazz]

Three too many zeros. If that many people were killed in Vietnam, it would have been like over a tenth of the worlds population at the time.

400 million was indeed a typo. But three less zeros would be 400,000. You don't think only 400,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed?


South Vietnamese civilian dead: 1,581,000*[6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#cite_note-aaron-5)
Cambodian civilian dead: ~700,000*
Vietnamese civilian dead: ~2,000,000[11] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#cite_note-afp1995-10)
Laotian civilian dead: ~50,000*

That's just over 4 million civilian dead. So, two too many zeros.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

He was indeed following orders, he is a criminal, yes he is, but he is just some low-ranking lieutenant who followed the orders of the upper command in Washington, which is killing as much Vietnamese as possible.

[mikelepore]

It's probably true that Lt. Calley was following the orders of Capt. Medina to kill everybody in the village, and not, as Medina claimed, that his crime was in failing to "notice" that the people under his command were "out of control."

People should remember that the 1991 U.S. war in Kuwait and Iraq was the first time in history that the U.S. adopted a policy of trying to miss the nearby civilians when attacking soldiers. Starting in 1991, the U.S. still killed civilians but usually it was while aiming close to them, not while aiming directly at them. Before 1991, U.S. military policy had always been to annihilate everyone and everything within some perimeter on the map. The policy change wasn't so much because George Bush the elder was a humanitarian, but because laser guidance technology suddenly gave the planners the option of destroying individual buildings and vehicles.

This is what made the right wing critics of John Kerry's presidential campaign so starkly hypocritical. They attacked Kerry for "alleging" that some U.S. personnel had targeted civilians in Vietnam, when there was never any doubt that this was done routinely.

During the 1960s it was not unusual at all for us to hear conservative commentators in panel discussions on TV say that the bombing of children and babies in Vietnam was acceptable in various locations because, considering to the particular villages that they were living in, "they probably would have grown up to become communists." Most people in those days didn't consider such comments to be shocking.

[Dimentio]

Calley Apologizes for 1968 My Lai Massacre

http://www.democracynow.org/images/story/00/18000/calley-new-web.jpg
Over forty-one years after the My Lai Massacre, when US troops killed more than 500 men, women and children in Vietnam, the former Army lieutenant who was convicted for his role in the killings has publicly apologized. William Calley was the only US soldier held legally responsible for the slayings. He was convicted on twenty-two counts of murder, and his sentence was later commuted by President Reagan. Last week, William Calley publicly apologized for the first time, saying, “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai." He added that he had been following orders.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/24/calley_apologizes_for_1968_my_lai

Strange that he was commuted. That is a quite rotten signal really. But similar things have happened recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Truth is that the international order still is an anarchy built on strength and brute force.