Dak Son massacre

[Rafiq]

What's up with that?

[PhoenixAsh]

The Montagnards, or Higland tribes, collaborated with occupational forces. First the French and later the US against the Viet Minh and later the Viet Cong...they allowed special force camps in their regions and were trained and equiped by them to assist in the war.

In fact they collaborated to such an extend that they made up the largest part of the troops involved in the Highland areas of "the Ho Chi Minh trail" for the US....and were known for making punitive exepeditions to villages supportive or sympathetic to the VC and, earlier, Viet Minh. Thousands of VC and civilians were executed by them or handed over to CIA and other intelligence services for questioning often involving torture. Several tens of thousands of Montignard tribes men were recruited...so we are talking a very sizeable contingent of auxillary and primary forces.

The Dak Son massacre was a retalliation by the VC. In a popoluted area 250 (12% of the population) or so Montignards (women, children and men) were killed by setting fire to their houses or execution....it was quite systematic and horrible. Several hundred VC took part in the very coordinated and delibirate action.

[Spartacus.]

The Montagnards, or Higland tribes, collaborated with occupational forces. First the French and later the US against the Viet Minh and later the Viet Cong...they allowed special force camps in their regions and were trained and equiped by them to assist in the war.

In fact they collaborated to such an extend that they made up the largest part of the troops involved in the Highland areas of "the Ho Chi Minh trail" for the US....and were known for making punitive exepeditions to villages supportive or sympathetic to the VC and, earlier, Viet Minh. Thousands of VC and civilians were executed by them or handed over to CIA and other intelligence services for questioning often involving torture. Several tens of thousands of Montignard tribes men were recruited...so we are talking a very sizeable contingent of auxillary and primary forces.

The Dak Son massacre was a retalliation by the VC. In a popoluted area 250 (12% of the population) or so Montignards (women, children and men) were killed by setting fire to their houses or execution....it was quite systematic and horrible. Several hundred VC took part in the very coordinated and delibirate action.


After the WWII Nazi collaborators were routinely shoot in France and many other countries... including mine. There is nothing horrible in it. Those people were helping US imperialists in their conquest of Vietnam and as such they were no better than Nazi collaborators. To pity them is a disgrace to millions of innocent civilians that were butchered by US troops and their collaborators. It would be practically the same as pitying SS guards in Nazi death-camps killed by Soviet troops. You are just turning a minor incident into something worth mentioning...



More than 30 years later, report details widespread U.S. war crimes in Vietnam


Korea to Vietnam to Iraq, atrocities an official U.S. war policy
On the heels of revelations about war crimes and massacres committed by the U.S. military in Iraq, including the grisly rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the subsequent murder of her family, a recent report released by the Los Angeles Times details widespread atrocities committed by the U.S. military against the people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the 1960s and 70s.
The biggest war crime of all goes unmentioned in the report—the genocidal U.S. invasion, bombing and occupation of



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The U.S. military committed countless war crimes during the Vietnam war, including the 1968 My Lai massacre.
Vietnam and the surrounding region, which killed more than 4 million Vietnamese people and hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and Laotians.

Of south Vietnam’s 15,000 villages, two-thirds were destroyed by U.S. military action between 1965 and 1972. In the north, all six of the industrial cities and 4,000 of 5,800 agricultural communes were badly damaged. Twenty-one million gallons of Agent Orange herbicide was sprayed on the country, mostly in the south. This destroyed vast areas and caused a huge rise in birth defects and cancer.
Also unmentioned is the deadly, CIA-organized Phoenix Program, a clandestine war that assassinated as many 50,000 south Vietnamese who were considered to be members or sympathizers of the National Liberation Front. The vast repression and outright genocide committed by the U.S. military machine was still not enough to defeat the communist-led resistance of the Vietnamese people. The last U.S. soldier had to flee what was then Siagon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in April 1975.
Despite its glaring omissions, the Aug. 6 LA Times report is useful for its detail and candor. It resulted from a review of 9,000 pages in a once-secret government archive containing investigative files, sworn statements by witnesses to the crimes, and status reports for top military brass. They were compiled by a Pentagon task force—dubbed the "Vietnam War Crimes Working Group"—in the early 1970s. These documents were all declassified in 1994, but went largely unnoticed for over 10 years.
The "working group" that compiled the data in the 1970s was formed to review U.S. Army investigations and to give reports to the White House and military brass of all reported war crimes being committed in Vietnam. There were many.
In March 1968, the most infamous mass killing of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. forces happened in the village of My Lai. More than 500 people were brutally murdered, many after being tortured and humiliated. This prompted the formation of the "working group," which was approved by the U.S. military commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland.
The mission of the Pentagon group was not to determine how to prevent war crimes or to prosecute the criminals, but to give Westmoreland and Washington notice of war crimes allegations so they could have more time to deny them outright, cover them up, or manage internal fallout among the mostly working-class rank-and-file soldiers who were unhappy with the war and the daily atrocities they witnessed.
What’s in the archive sheds some light on the terrorizing and wanton killing of Vietnamese people by the U.S. military. But the archive’s records are far from complete. They were compiled by the Pentagon to serve the interests of imperialism, not to be a correct accounting or indictment of its horrendous crimes. As the people of Southeast Asia know all too well, the magnitude of U.S. war crimes in Vietnam was, in reality, far greater.
War crimes the norm, not the exception
The report reveals that Army investigators looked into and substantiated 320 war crimes committed by the U.S. military in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It did not include the My Lai massacre.
The LA Times notes that the "records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese—families in their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing." Hundreds of soldiers, in interviews with investigators and letters to commanders, described violent troops who "murdered, raped and tortured with impunity."
Among the cases in the archive were seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians were http://www2.pslweb.org/images/content/pagebuilder/15095.gifmurdered by U.S. soldiers; 78 other attacks on civilians in which at least 57 people were killed, 56 wounded, and 15 sexually assaulted; and 141 instances in which U.S. troops tortured civilian detainees or Vietnamese soldiers with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock.
For example, on March 16, 1968, the same day as the My Lai massacre, soldiers from the same division killed 80 to 90 civilians. Platoon leader Lt. Thomas K. Wilingham was charged with murder, but the charges were later dropped. No other suspects were pursued.
On May 18, 1971, a U.S. helicopter "hunter-killer" team attacked a village in Cambodia with rockets and machine-guns, killing eight civilians and wounding many more. The team then left the wounded without treatment and ransacked the village, stealing the victims’ personal property.
On Feb. 8, 1968, after rounding up 19 civilians in a Quang Nam province village, Army soldiers in the 4th Infantry Division were ordered by their commander to "kill anything that moves." The soldiers complied. It was just days after the Tet Offensive was launched by the Vietnamese resistance.
According to eyewitness Jamie Henry, who was then a 20-year-old U.S. Army medic, the soldiers pulled a teenage woman who was naked from a hut and threw her to the ground on top of a pile of huddled Vietnamese civilians. The U.S. troops then opened fire with machine-guns, killing everyone.
Henry reported the incident once he returned to the United States, although Army legal officers told him to keep quiet. He held a press conference in 1970 denouncing the war and the massacre and joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
No one was ever charged in the Feb. 8, 1968, massacre.
Thousands more unreported
In addition to the 320 cases "substantiated" by army investigators, hundreds of reported atrocities were left uninvestigated. The archive contains material related to more than 500 war crimes that were discounted by the U.S. military. Thousands more war crimes that were committed are not mentioned in the archive at all.
Of those that are mentioned, but were not investigated, one anonymous sergeant wrote a letter to Westmoreland in 1970 describing the mass killing of civilians by members of the Army’s 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta. The letter blamed the killings, in part, on pressure from superior officers to generate high body counts.
The letter reads: "‘A battalion [sic] would kill maybe 15 to 20 [civilians] a day. With 4 batalions in the brigade that would be maybe 40 to 50 a day or 1,200 to 1,500 a month, easy. If I am only 10% right, and believe me it’s lots more, then I am trying to tell you about 120-150 murders, or a My Lay [sic] each month for over a year.’"
The U.S. Army never acted on the letter, although internally they determined that it was "sincere" and "forceful." The military brass only wanted to make sure that the push for verifiable body counts did not "‘encourage the human tendency to inflate the count by violating established rules of engagement.’" They also wanted to find the letter’s author to prevent his complaints from reaching politicians or the public.
Killing with impunity
Despite the relatively small scope of the investigations in the archive, the records show that investigators determined that evidence against 203 soldiers accused of war crimes was strong enough to warrant formal charges. As usually happens in "internal" prosecutions, very little happened. Only 57 of the 203 ultimately were court-martialed and just 23 convicted.
Fourteen of the convicted got prison sentences ranging from six months to 20 years, but nearly all sentences were
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Vietnam Veterans Against the War march: "Fight the rich, not their wars!"
reduced drastically on appeal. The longest amount of time served was seven months for a military intelligence interrogator convicted of "committing indecent acts on a 13-year-old girl in an interrogation hut in 1967," the LA Times reported.
Most of the war criminals just received a letter of reprimand. The U.S. Army did little to prosecute anyone for known atrocities. And once the war was over in 1975 after the Vietnamese victory, all pending war crimes cases and investigations were dropped completely.
The few soldiers punished for Vietnam war atrocities were rank-and-file troops. The true war criminals—those sitting in the White House and the Pentagon—were never charged or punished for their crimes.
Vietnam then, Iraq now
More than 30 years after the end of the Vietnam war, the bourgeois press is paying attention to some of the massive war crimes committed by the U.S. military in Vietnam. The capitalist media wasn’t covering U.S. atrocities in any meaningful way during the war.
Now, with increasing regularity, the media is reporting on U.S. war crimes in occupied Iraq. But the leopard hasn’t changed its spots. Although we hear of some, we should know that the capitalist media won’t cover the true extent of massacres and atrocities committed in Iraq by the U.S. imperialist army and its allies.
The ones that have been uncovered are awful enough. First, the torture and killing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. More recently, U.S. marines massacred 24 civilians, mostly women and children, in Haditha and then covered up their crimes. And now the world knows about the terrible rape and murder of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. U.S. soldiers not only murdered her, but also her mother, father and five-year-old sister. Military hearings currently are underway to determine if the five U.S. soldiers involved should be court-martialed.
These heinous crimes are only the tip of the iceberg. When the media reports these incidents in isolation, the implication is that something unusual happened when the atrocities were committed by the U.S. military.
That is pure fiction. Massacres, killings, torture and humiliation at the hands of the occupying imperialist army is the norm. These things are happening to Iraqis every day.
The war crimes that make it into the media spotlight will be "investigated" by the Pentagon, just as they were during the Vietnam war and the Korean war before it. But no matter what the "investigations" turn up or who is convicted as a result, they will never reveal the truth—that the mass killing and torture of an occupied people is an official U.S. war policy.
The logic behind war crimes
There was a military rationale for killing the civilians in Vietnam. The U.S. soldiers could not tell whether the civilians were sympathetic to the Vietnamese communists or whether they would permit Viet Minh or National Liberation Front soldiers into their midst.
The Geneva Conventions expressly prohibit the targeting of civilians under any circumstances. But the Pentagon had a
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A new crop of war criminals: Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. John Abizaid.
bigger political concern than adhering to international law.
The fundamental fear of the Pentagon and the White House in Vietnam, as before in Korea, and during the first and the current war against Iraq, was that public opinion at home would turn against the imperialist adventure and tie the hands of the war makers. The logic of their political calculus was that U.S. public opinion would turn against the war if large numbers of U.S. soldiers died.
This thought took them to the next murderous conclusion: If civilians pose even a remote risk to U.S. soldiers, it is better to shoot the civilians first and ask questions later. Dead Korean or Vietnamese or Iraqi civilians will not be as politically damaging back home as dead U.S. soldiers.
There is one more side to the logic of war crimes. If the civilian population is sympathetic to the resistance fighters, it is necessary to terrorize the civilians as punishment for providing aid or shelter to a guerrilla army. The U.S. military imbues soldiers with racism against the occupied civilian population to facilitate this goal.
Terrorizing civilians is not a new story. The Japanese wiped out whole villages and most of some cities in China as a warning against aiding the communist-led resistance during World War II. The Nazis’ policy in Serbia was to kill 100 Serbs for every German soldier killed by the resistance. And under the direction of John Negroponte, current director of U.S. intelligence services, the Salvadoran military carried out large-scale massacres of peasant communities that were considered supportive of FMLN resistance fighters in El Salvador during the 1980s. The list goes on and on.
The recent report on war crimes in Vietnam coupled with the disclosure of more atrocities against Iraqi civilians are opportunities for anti-imperialist forces to reflect on history and bring the realities of U.S. occupation to broader layers of the working class. Let’s use these opportunities to build real solidarity with the Iraqi people, who—like the Vietnamese before them—are fighting heroically to rid their country of imperialist occupation and domination.


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[PhoenixAsh]

After the WWII Nazi collaborators were routinely shoot in France and many other countries... including mine. There is nothing horrible in it. Those people were helping US imperialists in their conquest of Vietnam and as such they were no better than Nazi collaborators. To pity them is a disgrace to millions of innocent civilians that were butchered by US troops and their collaborators. It would be practically the same as pitying SS guards in Nazi death-camps killed by Soviet troops. You are just turning a minor incident into something worth mentioning...


Bla, bla, bla

Get one thing straight...if you go into a village and indiscriminately start torching defenceless women and children and men to death by setting fire to their houses, throwing grenades in them or summary executing them then you are scum. I don't care who you are.

Defending such actions and trying to somehow justify them by saying that condemning such heinous actions is a disgrace to millions of innocent civilians...and ignoring the fact that most of these were innocent as well is complete ignorance.

But kuddo's for you in trying to justify massacres of civilians by pointing out the age old dictum of the kindergarten by pointing and shouting: "but they did it too". What are you? Five?

O...and nothing horrible about them? Here are a few pictures of your humanist intervention in Dak Son:

warning...extremely graphic



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/DakSonMassacre2.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/DakSonMassacre3.jpg




O...and I bet this one was guilty too

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Infant_victim_of_Dak_Son_massacre.jpg/157px-Infant_victim_of_Dak_Son_massacre.jpg

You can just see that this one was a no good imperialist apologist who surely deserved to get burns over 50% of his body. I bet he was just about to betray his country or commit some other heinous crime.

:sneaky:

Its to bad I can't flame you...or I will get infracted. But I am seriously tempted to take that penalty.

And the rest of your post...don't even get me started on how much horse shit your little comparisson of innocent women and children to nazi death camp guards is. Its vile, its loathsome and it is deranged in its comparison....and that is not even mentioning the huge strawman you are making there.

Yes, on the scale of the wars in Vietnam its a minor event...but if you perhaps have noticed the title of the thread...its exactly what this thread is about: the dak son massacre. And it was just that. Now the fact that the Viet Cong did that might make you jizz your pants in mistaken ritheous revolutionary spirit and want to brush the little fact that this was a horrible massacre of civilians under the carpet of nicely made up and wrongly applied blanket statements of everything is allowed as long as its anti-imperialist....but in no way does that NOT make this a massacre or a horrible crime.

So when you try to put words in my mouth that I am somehow pittying nazi deathcamp guards for being executed...you better be prepared because next time I will come down on you like a ton of briks and gladly take the infractions to say exactly what I think of you and paint you exactly for what you are. Are we crystal fucking clear on that?

[PhoenixAsh]

But for all your righteous virtue,...you are perhaps overlooking one small tiny little detail...

The reason the Montagnards...or Degar tribes...because they are really a collection of ethnically and culturally linked tribes who lived in the mountainous regions for centuries mostly because the Vietnamese and Cambodians invaded their lands and pushed them there...chose to rally against the Vietnamese is because the Vietnamese...to which they are NOT related in any way shape or form other than living within the borders of Vietnam...infringed on their autonomy and started moving into their territories and break up the enthic tribal communities by surplanting the Vietnamese homogenous cultural traditions and cultivating land and changing it into plantations. Land on which these tribes lived and were now expelled from. Ghey were denied access to political representation; they were not getting the same monetary compensations; they did not get access to education. So for all intents and purposes the Degar tribes were really oppressed minorities in Vietnam. To put an end to that they unified in the FULRO...which basically means they represented the oppresed minorities and begain to organise against the encraochment of the Vietnamese. Much like they had done against both the French, initially, and the Viet Minh. To no avail. There were 3.5 million Degar in the Highlands during the Vietnam war...there are now only 1 million left.

Now...I am not big on national liberation. But that sounds pretty imperialist to me.

[Spartacus.]

Bla, bla, bla

Get one thing straight...if you start collaborating with American imperialists in their genocide against Vietnamese people, providing troops for their genocidal wars, commiting massacres with them (AND THEY DID IT), then you are scum. I don't care who you are.

Defending such actions and trying to somehow justify them by saying that condemning such heinous actions is a disgrace to 250fucking "civilians"...and ignoring the fact that most of these weren't really innocent is complete ignorance.

But kuddo's for you in trying to justify imperialist massacres of civilians by pointing out the age old dictum of the kindergarten by pointing and shouting: "but they did it too". What are you? Five?

As to the pictures you have shown, if I started posting literally thousands of pictures of Vietnamese children butchered by imperialists, this place would be to small for that, so basically I don't understand what have you tried to show with them????? That Viet Cong is bad????

In war in which the imperialists have butchered millions of innocent woman and children, putting pictures of a minor incident in which a couple of hundreds collaborators were shot is a fucking joke... You are a fucking joke!

""And the rest of your post...don't even get me started on how much horse shit your little comparisson of innocent women and children to nazi death camp guards is. Its vile, its loathsome and it is deranged in its comparison....and that is not even mentioning the huge strawman you are making there.""


After the WWII in Italy and France woman collaborators or even the "innocent" woman of collaborators were regularly raped, exiled or shot. I wouldn't shed even one tear for them. They deserved it. I may sound as a cruel and unemotional person, but I don't give a fucking damn what some liberal kidd is going to "think" about me... They helped to carry on one of the worst genocides in human history and they DESERVED IT! Those bastards that you are pitying also helped US imperialists to carry yet another monstrous genocide, so basically they also DESERVED IT!
You may f*** o** with your silly emotional and childlish arguments that try to reduce one of the worst genocides in recent history by talking about a minor incident in which a couple of collaborators got shot, allong with few "innocents".


""but in no way does that NOT make this a massacre or a horrible crime.""

It was not a crime. It was just a shooting of collaborators of US fascist imperialist aggressors. It was done in any war of liberation and as such it should deserve no special mentioning anywhere. Your pathetic crying over a few "victims" of VietCong is similar to Neo-Nazis emphasizing of "crimes" commited over German "civilians" which is used to obscur monstrous Nazi bestialities and to help in rehabilitation of war criminals. There is a great difference between crimes commited by imperialists and "crimes" commited by those fighting for their freedom and survival. During the Warsaw Getto Uprising the Jews that fought for their very existence allegedly shot 147 German prisoners that have been captured during combat. Why don't you make a thread in which you would describe that massacre and a horrible crime, the same way that you have described a "crime" commited by VietCong fighting for the very survival of Vietnamese people against US imperialist aggression and their puppet collaborators? But I suppose it is easy to condemn "crimes" commited by liberation forces while sitting in imperialist Netherlands, not having to witness the horrors through which the Vietnamese people went. If you had lived through that hell, I'm certain you would have approved the shooting of every person that collaborated with American imperialists.


""But for all your righteous virtue,...you are perhaps overlooking one small tiny little detail...

The reason the Montagnards...or Degar tribes...because they are really a collection of ethnically and culturally linked tribes who lived in the mountainous regions for centuries mostly because the Vietnamese and Cambodians invaded their lands and pushed them there...chose to rally against the Vietnamese is because the Vietnamese...to which they are NOT related in any way shape or form other than living within the borders of Vietnam...infringed on their autonomy and started moving into their territories and break up the enthic tribal communities by surplanting the Vietnamese homogenous cultural traditions and cultivating land and changing it into plantations. Land on which these tribes lived and were now expelled from. Ghey were denied access to political representation; they were not getting the same monetary compensations; they did not get access to education. So for all intents and purposes the Degar tribes were really oppressed minorities in Vietnam. To put an end to that they unified in the FULRO...which basically means they represented the oppresed minorities and begain to organise against the encraochment of the Vietnamese. Much like they had done against both the French, initially, and the Viet Minh. To no avail. There were 3.5 million Degar in the Highlands during the Vietnam war...there are now only 1 million left.

Now...I am not big on national liberation. But that sounds pretty imperialist to me. ""


During WWII in my country, the Ustashe (Croatian fascist movement), under the banner of fighting for national liberation and against Serb oppression (which was real), collaborated with Nazi Germany and participated and were greatly responsible for more than one million people of my country that perished in their death-camps. After the war, some 20 000 of these criminals were shot by the socialist government under Tito's leadership at place called Bleiburg. They deserved it.

Also, during the same war, the Chetniks (Serb equivalent of the Ustashe), commited similar, hideous crimes under the banner of "preservation" of Serbian people from Communists, Muslim and Croat threat. After the war many of these criminals were also shot by the same government. They deserved it.

The fact that someone was "nationally oppressed" doesn't justify someone's collaboration with imperialism and fascism and support of and participation in imperialist crimes. Your argument is worthless and similar to fascist apologists that are trying rehabilitate their "idols" in both Croatia and Serbia.


""So when you try to put words in my mouth that I am somehow pittying nazi deathcamp guards for being executed...you better be prepared because next time I will come down on you like a ton of briks and gladly take the infractions to say exactly what I think of you and paint you exactly for what you are. Are we crystal fucking clear on that?""


You are free to write whatever you want about me, considering the fact that our disscussion is over and you have been added to my ignore list. Don't even bother to write an answer, because I will not read it. I have no time and patience to "argue" with anarcho-fascist that is pittying collaborators of US imperialist regime that commited genocide over people of Vietnam and who thinks that a few hundreds fifth-columnists deserve a separate topic that would describe their "suffering" and which bashes the heroic struggle of VietCong guerrillas for freedom, that has inspired hundreds of millions people worldwide. You are basically nothing but a hypocrite, who thinks that he is proggressive by condemning every movement that doesn't fitt into his illusion of perfect justice and humanity and who fails to differentiate between genocide and minor incident, and believes that both deserve equal condemnation.


Cheers and all the best, this is our last disscussion, my dear Anarcho-Fascist friend :)

[JustMovement]

what the fuck is this? The women of collaborators deserved to be raped and shot? What sickness do you have in your brain?

Completely innocent women and children were massacred and they deserved it? They were collaborators? What the fuck is wrong with you?

[Per Levy]

@spartacus: wtf? first of all what is up with you making a rant about the wwii? this is a thread about the "dak son massacre", not about the crimes the facists did during wwii. second of all, you put children and women of a small village in the same category as ss troops :cursing:, and because you put them on this level they totally "deserved" to get shot, burned and what not. that is such a terrible strawman argument.


Anarcho-Fascist

allright, hindsight condem a massacre on civillians and you call him facist, thats a great logic. you cant deal with other opinions is it that?


Cheers and all the best, this is our last disscussion, my dear Anarcho-Fascist friend

so you put everyone on you ignorlist that dont share opinion? the fuck? this is a discussion board if you cant deal with other opinions gtfo. oh and feel free to put me on your ignorlist as well.

[PhoenixAsh]

As to the pictures you have shown, if I started posting literally thousands of pictures of Vietnamese children butchered by imperialists, this place would be to small for that, so basically I don't understand what have you tried to show with them????? That Viet Cong is bad????

No that you have no soul no morals and most of all cannot distinguish bad from good....but then again....I saw you were a maoist. And given the fact that some of your misguided non-real maoists seem to have the same problems as you seem to have I am seriously wondering if their standards haven't dropped in the last decades or so.



In war in which the imperialists have butchered millions of innocent woman and children, putting pictures of a minor incident in which a couple of hundreds collaborators were shot is a fucking joke... You are a fucking joke!I am a fucking joke? :laugh: When you are apollogising the rape of women? Rape as a punishment? Your a mysogenist bastard. I don't feel any need to justofy myself against such a low life scum as you.





After the WWII in Italy and France woman collaborators or even the "innocent" woman of collaborators were regularly raped, exiled or shot. I wouldn't shed even one tear for them. They deserved it.Reported for rape apologism....bye bye.




I may sound as a cruel and unemotional person, but I don't give a fucking damn what some liberal kidd A kid? Seriously? Well...ok...:laugh:

You on the other hand seem to have serious value issues and are not aware of what revolutionary politics are. In fact I think you are a mysogenist bastard and a poser.

But since you definately qualify as a rape apologist...you will probably have a short life span on this board.






They helped to carry on one of the worst genocides in human history and they DESERVED IT! Those bastards that you are pitying also helped US imperialists to carry yet another monstrous genocide, so basically they also DESERVED IT!Yes...because lets ignore the cultural genocide against them ;-)


You may f*** o** with your silly emotional and childlish arguments that try to reduce one of the worst genocides in recent history by talking about a minor incident in which a couple of collaborators got shot, allong with few "innocents". It was not a crime. It was just a shooting of collaborators of US fascist imperialist aggressors. It was done in any war of liberation and as such it should deserve no special mentioning anywhere. Your pathetic crying over a few "victims" of VietCong is similar to Neo-Nazis emphasizing of "crimes" commited over German "civilians" which is used to obscur monstrous Nazi bestialities and to help in rehabilitation of war criminals. There is a great difference between crimes commited by imperialists and "crimes" commited by those fighting for their freedom and survival. During the Warsaw Getto Uprising the Jews that fought for their very existence allegedly shot 147 German prisoners that have been captured during combat. Why don't you make a thread in which you would describe that massacre and a horrible crime, the same way that you have described a "crime" commited by VietCong fighting for the very survival of Vietnamese people against US imperialist aggression and their puppet collaborators? But I suppose it is easy to condemn "crimes" commited by liberation forces while sitting in imperialist Netherlands, not having to witness the horrors through which the Vietnamese people went. If you had lived through that hell, I'm certain you would have approved the shooting of every person that collaborated with American imperialists.Yes...you made it perfectly clear what kind of human being you are. A mysogenist rape apologist who think rape is a valid way to get back at women. Not only the guilty ones...but the innocent ones as well.

And you have the GUTS top call yourself a revolutionary leftist. Your whole argument is pointless....because the buck stops there. You have no clue. I sincerely pitty you. Pathetic.




You are free to write whatever you want about me, considering the fact that our disscussion is over and you have been added to my ignore list. Don't even bother to write an answer, because I will not read it. I have no time and patience to "argue" with anarcho-fascist that is pittying collaborators of US imperialist regime that commited genocide over people of Vietnam and who thinks that a few hundreds fifth-columnists deserve a separate topic that would describe their "suffering" and which bashes the heroic struggle of VietCong guerrillas for freedom, that has inspired hundreds of millions people worldwide. You are basically nothing but a hypocrite, who thinks that he is proggressive by condemning every movement that doesn't fitt into his illusion of perfect justice and humanity and who fails to differentiate between genocide and minor incident, and believes that both deserve equal condemnation. The reason why I shouldn't be bothered is because you will be banned soon. You mysogenist rape apologist. I don't have to make an argument against you...because you yourself are doing a fine job of making yourself ridiculous.

But I will respond for everybody else who will read this thread....the fact that this topic is about a specific incident makes everything I write about that incident be in the light of the question of OP. You seem to have no grasp of that simple fact.

And the fact that some crimes are committed by revolutionaries or anti-imperialists does not lessen the fact that these are still horrible acts. Acts which you have made abundantly clear you do not care about. You do not care innocent women and children are slaughtered, burned to death and blown up in their own houses without so much as a trail or a second thought because some of the ethnic group they belong to have fought against the Viet Cong. The very same group which wanted to destroy the cultural and ethnic identity of these people.

Now the fact that we sympathise with anti-imperialist and revolutionary groups everywhere does not make every single action these groups undertake ok. Sometimes they commit horrible, horrible crimes and make horrible horrible mistakes. THese crimes and mistakes are not lessened and not justified by the fact that others committed them too. That is completely irrelevant. And such mistakes and crimes are allowed and need to be analysed and criticised so repeat can be avoided. THAT is the only logical and revolutionary way.

Now what is NEVER EVER EVER ok is apologising rape or condoning rape as a weapon or as a punishment. I lost every need to flame you when you stated that women deserve to get raped. Because quite evidently...you are a mysogenistic rape apologist. And that is not a revolutionary nor left wing position to take.

So you can amount all the accusations of me being a liberal kid...of me being anarcho-fascist...or not truely revolutionary. That doesn't change the fact that out of us both...you are the one who seems to have no clue about what being a communist really means.


Cheers and all the best, this is our last disscussion, my dear Anarcho-Fascist friend :)You and I are not friends, never were, never will be. I simply do not like people who think rape is ok and that women deserve that. No room for them in my life at all. And yes...bye, bye.

[Dean]

It's one thing to be ambivalent about the often vague moral standards used in war. Its quite another to willingly support rape and murder of innocents, especially when they are targeted for their status as ethnic minorities.

What is most disturbing is that Spartacus doesn't appear to be joking at all here. This sounds like a perfect example of someone who appears to haven taken up the notion that to be a leftist, you have to defend racist murder so long as it is committed by leftist archetypes. I doubt that they will be leftist for much longer.

[W1N5T0N]

War's most prominent feature is that it never really ends...

[khad]

Indeed, restraint is in order, even when dealing with collaborators. I recall when the USSR put down the Kengir Prison uprising, only a few dozen were killed. The tanks that smashed the camp fences were only armed with blanks.

Mind you, the people in that prison were predominantly those affiliated with the UPA, an insurgent party/army that was responsible for the murders of hundreds of thousands of Jews and other ethnic minorities in Ukraine during the Nazi occupation. I'm sure that more than one Soviet soldier entertained ideas of killing them all, so I would caution people against being so confident in their moralizing, because if you or I had undergone the brutality of such an occupation, there would be no telling what that would do to our psyches.

Occupations are nasty and people want revenge. Punishment is also often warranted. However, it is the job of socialist authorities to keep the people from sliding into the barbarism of indiscriminate killing.

[PhoenixAsh]

I think all of us understand and know intimately the emotions of vengeance and revenge. I think it is rare to find anybody who has not entertained these emotions at one point or another in their lives. That does not mean that acting on them is justified or understandable in all or, perhaps, any situation especially when these emotions are, as you say, carried out indiscriminately and in an barbaric way.

I think we can all agree that punishment has its merrits and can be justified against groups who actively work against us in some cases. But when that punishment becomes collective in nature without an effort to discern betwee guilt and innocence they become by their very nature opposed to communist and socialist ideology.

Attrocities were common in the Vietnam War and in the preceeding colonial period. As such the Dak Son massacre does not stand out in any special way. Just as much as we criticise other attrocities we are obligated to critically analyse them without practicing historic falsification by belitteling their impact on the victims, nor by being partisan merely on the basis of ideological allegiance of the ones carrying them out. Rather within the construct of our own ideological and historical goals and their meaning.

Objectively speaking the events at Dak Son served no other purpose than revenge and anger. The campaign was entirely punitive in nature and did not serve a military, strategic, territorial or objective purpose from its conception to its execution other than these emotions. It was carried out on the basis of ethnic and cultural relations of those people with others who did actively work against the VC.

Given the context of the events the emotions are very understandable but they were directed at the wrong people and for the wrong reasons. They were also counter productive. Rather than pacification and diminished fighting capacity the direct results of the Dak Son massacre had the opposite effect. Degar tribes who were neutral or ambivalent in their support now became more beliegerant, assertive and more entrenched and determined in their opposition to the Vietnamese.

Just as much as we criticise these acts in others we should not hesitate to critically analyse our own conduct of the conduct of comrades in the past. Not only to learn from these situations but also to find ways to prevent them. Self criticism and evaluation is a duty, in my opinion, of every movement and induvidual in order to help us refrain from dogmatism and blind entrenchment...and in order to more flexibly react to situations.

Especially...when the situations are extremely complex and not so clear cut as at first glance might appear. I will adress this issue in a seperate post to answer why the burtality of the occupation by colonial and imperialist forces is not a one sides factor.

But I wholeheartedly agree that it is the job of socialists and communists to keep people from committing such and other acts which do not serve any other purpose than base emotions, however understandable they are.

[Queercommie Girl]

Revenge is generally wrong but it would also be wrong to "demonise" the desire for revenge intrinsically. It's always relatively easy to completely dismiss revenge as "morally bankrupt" when one is from a relatively privileged background and riding one's moral high horse and don't personally know what it is like to be ultra-oppressed and ultra-exploited.

Revenge is wrong, but also very human and very understandable in many situations.

[Aspiring Humanist]

After the WWII Nazi collaborators were routinely shoot in France and many other countries... including mine. There is nothing horrible in it. Those people were helping US imperialists in their conquest of Vietnam and as such they were no better than Nazi collaborators. To pity them is a disgrace to millions of innocent civilians that were butchered by US troops and their collaborators. It would be practically the same as pitying SS guards in Nazi death-camps killed by Soviet troops. You are just turning a minor incident into something worth mentioning...





http://www2.pslweb.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr005=uiovjsanw1.app7b&page=NewsArticle&id=5508&news_iv_ctrl=1261
You think setting fire to women and children is morally equivalent to shooting nazi collaborators?

This is why people don't take the left seriously

[PhoenixAsh]

Below I want to adress the historic context of the Degar which in my opinion is extremely relevant to understand the reasons behind their opposition to the Vietnamese and the struggle for independence in Vietnam and why their grievances were justified in their origin.


The Montagnard is a term for the indiginous people of Vietnam. It was given to the collection of Degar tribes by the French for those groups which lived in the central highlands of Vietnam and Cambodia.

It is important to understand that the Degar are a seperate ethnic entity from the Vietnamese and Cambodians and are completely seperate from them. They have no cultural, religious or ethnic common background or heritage with them.

These Degar tribes did not always live in the highlands. They were forced there by invading, what we know now, Vietnamese and Cambodians who drove them from their original dwellings somewhere during the 8th century.

The Degar tribes retreated to the Central highlands which is located in Southern Vietnam and eastern Cambodia and remained a seperate, induvidual and most of all autonomous entity. Though indiscriminate border establishment meant that they "officially" belonged in either Vietnam or Cambodia....practically they were independent.

Since that time there has been centuries of cultural and ethnical tensions between the Degar and the Vietnamese and Cambodians which often lead to fighting which more often than not was either a result of disputes over land ownership or resulted in loss of land/territory by the Degar. Though there were periods of mutual coexistence; inter marriages and cooperation and trade the general position of the Degars in the minds of both the Cambodians and Vietnamese was on of cultural and ethnic minority which lived on lands belonging to their repective nations and officially subservient to them.

They were cut off from political influence or status; did not receive any financial benefits or compensations and were more often than not structurally discriminated against. Mainly because of the cultural and ethnic backgrounds and because they are physically very distinctive from the ethnic Vietnamese.

Culturally speaking the Degar consist of several different tribes which share some common cultural practices. Degar society within each tribe consists of autonomous villages. Villages consist of several family structures or households which cooperate rather than compete and are governed by a system of council operating on the basis of paris inter paribus according to factors of size, status in the village, age of the representatives of the house hold, and practical experience of the persons involved....and not necessarilly in that order. Decissions were taken on the basis of the greater good and the continued existance and prosperity of the village.

Society is matrilenear. Men married into the family and tribe of the woman becomming part of their households and taking their family names. There were distinct gender roles...though they were valued differently from what you might expect. Women were responsible and had as their primary task the operation of the house hold and that meant they were the title holders of all family property and finances and were the sole mangers of these. Men did not have property.

The husband of the eldest woman in the household was considered head of the family in the sense that he represented the household in all external affairs and if the eldest woman was either unmarried or a widow that role was fullfilled by the eldest non married male relative in the household. They were also tasked with gathering and aqcuiring food working either the land or hunting. And they were responsible for the safety of their own household and the village performing military tasks.

Though divorce was not common...in the case it did happen...the man was ousted from the household and had either return to his own house/family and or tribe or
had to remarry into a new house or family.

Keep in mind that regional differences may have existed from tribe to tribe. But this was by and large the general structure of the Degar.

The religion was animalistic in nature.

These very distinct cultural practices differ greatly from the Cambodian and Vietnamese cultural practices. The Degar do not consider themselves to be Vietnamese nor do they consider themselves to be Cambodian....they never have and never will.

They have always resisted the continued encroachment on the territories and the increasing loss of their land and attempts at cultural assimilation or dominaton by both the Vietnamese and Cambodians.

They also resisted those attempts by the French colonial powers. Which resulted in the French taking a duplicit approach to the Degar. On one side they encouraged both Vietnamese and Cambodians to cultivate lands or move into Degar territories and on the other they tried to convert the Degar to christianity...and attempt which was aimed at pacification but was entirely unsuccesful.

After the French colonial era ended in the Geneva accords. the South Vietnamese government issued sevral measures which further institutionalised the discrimination of the Degar and took measures to stimulate further annexation of the central highlands to bring them underf direct control by ensuring migration and the seizure of lands for plantations.

The centuries of tension between the three cultures and the continued ethnic and cultural repression of the Degar eventually culminated into the formation of a united front by the main Degar tribes in the formation of Bajaraka. This organisation was formed with the goal of liberating the oppressed minorities and establishing an independent Degar nation in 1958 and to resist the increased imperialist efforts by both the Vietnamese and Cambodians and requested the United Nations and both the French and USA in the aid to gain government support for these goals.

Repression against them was swift. Most leaders were arrested and remained incarcerated untill the arrival of the US and the coup against Diem. Some of them did join the VC however. But given the overall policy and practice of the VC to continue the advocacy of Degar assimilation and their status as ethnic minorities and attackes on some villages they were not very successful in convincing them to join their cause.

Neither were the North Vietnamese very succesful in their attempts since they emphasized the continued situation of the Degar being Vietnamese and belonging in Vietnam/Cambodia and advocated cultural assimilation.

As opposed to the Americans who released the Bajakara leaders, gave the Degar poitical power, influence and positions in government...rescinded several laws against the Degar and promised them independence (state documents indicate this was a genuine promise) in return for their support. In the meantime they helped the Degar in protecting them from both South Vietnamese and VC attacks as well as supporting them in military assistance with setting up defence initiatives against the Cambodians...and later keeping the ARVN out of the higlands.

Opinions were split on how to behave. Most advocated peaceful resistance....but a small faction advocated violent resistance. Those became the 40.000 Degar soldiers who fought against the VC. This is 40.000 out of 3 million Degar.

The Degar always considered the Vietnamese and Cambodians the real imperialists given the historic development and the continued expansion and attempts at domination by them. They never considered themselves Vietnamese or Cambodian.,...and they had to deal with very real and institutionalised racism against them. even those who did manage to get an eduication were always considered second rate citizens. The Degar had very real fears of being destroyed as a culture.

This is illustrated because the Vietnamese government stil adopts and implements laws against them. Not only do they break up and relocate villages or take away their rights to own property but they also refuse to recognize the cultural practices, customs and any rights for the Degar including marriage.

In 2001 there was a massive protest of Degars. It was the largest protest in Vietnam since the war....it was heailly repressed with the use of force. The Vietnamese government accused the former FULCO (those 40.000) of organising the attempt and even stated US involvement of Degar who fled there after the war. There is no evidence provided for these claims. In the meantime the Degar face religious and ethnic repression, forceful relocation and resettlement and prevention of their return to their ancestoral lands, face increased settlement of ethnic Vietnamese on their ancestoral lands, have no way to obtain land use certificates, can not own land and have to provide for themselves often by illegally cultivating lands and they have the highest povert and illiteracy rates in Vietnam being rarely able or allowed to follow education programs.

I think it is fair to say...that considering these backgrounds...one might ask if what the Degar did was support for imperialism or their own fight against it.

[PhoenixAsh]

Revenge is generally wrong but it would also be wrong to "demonise" the desire for revenge intrinsically. It's always relatively easy to completely dismiss revenge as "morally bankrupt" when one is from a relatively privileged background and riding one's moral high horse and don't personally know what it is like to be ultra-oppressed and ultra-exploited.

Revenge is wrong, but also very human and very understandable in many situations.


The emotion is nothing wrong with....and the desire for revenge is nothing wrong with either. What I consider wrong in many, many cases is acting on it.

And in this case I think there is ample reason to denounce the acts of the VC....as both racists, misdirected, misguided, anti-Socialist and a continued agenda of ethnic and cultural repression and a continuation of Vietnamese imperialism of the indiginous people of the Central Highlands.

[Queercommie Girl]

The emotion is nothing wrong with....and the desire for revenge is nothing wrong with either. What I consider wrong in many, many cases is acting on it.

And in this case I think there is ample reason to denounce the acts of the VC....as both racists, misdirected, misguided, anti-Socialist and a continued agenda of ethnic and cultural repression and a continuation of Vietnamese imperialism of the indiginous people of the Central Highlands.

Actually I was making more of a general point. In this particular case I don't actually believe "revenge" was the sole motivator. It would actually have been better if it was, but in this case more "traditional" racism probably played a role as well.

I didn't say revenge is correct, I said it is an understandable desire in many situations even though it isn't correct.