Here’s a link to a Boston Globe article on the 40th anniversary of the My Lai massacre of 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians by US troops led by Lt William Calley & Captain Ernest Medina on March 16, 1968.
http://www.boston.com/news/wor…
Also, here’s a 2006 interview of Lawrence Colburn by Amy Goodman.
http://www.democracynow.org/20…
I was surprised to read that Specialist, 4th class, Lawrence Colburn was only 19 years old at the time. He was a member of the 3 man helicopter crew (pilot Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, navigator Specialist Glenn Andreotta, door gunner Specialist Lawrence Colburn) who risked their own lives to intervene to stop the massacre at My Lai and who helped rescue an 8 year old boy still clinging to the body of his dead mother in a bloody ditch.
I note Lawrence Colburn’s actions because the now middle-aged and more mature of us sometimes tend to forget the remarkable bravery and achievements of those in the 18-25 age bracket, including some of our own generation.
and we’re also at the 5th anniversary of the start of our current illegal war. / sigh / i don’t even know what to say, except perhaps whereas we had Lawrence Colburn then, we do have have Ehren Watada and Suzanne Swift now. Nothing ever seems to change, either the good or the bad…
How is the war illegal?
“Illegal war” is a phrase that I generally ignore, but for some reason this time I stopped to wonder what was so illegal about it. Since I posted the question, I remembered about France and the UN.
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p>I think of the venture as ill-planned, poorly executed, perhaps unwise, but 100% legal, inasmuch as “international law” doesn’t really exist. Indeed, I thought that John Kerry’s perceived willingness to surrender sovereignty to the UN to be a near deal-killer. It was only the general crappiness of Bush– and the theory of the unitary executive– that rescued my vote for Kerry.
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p>An argument for a diffrerent day.
i call it an illegal war because it was authorized after bush deliberately lied to get congress’s cooperation. i don’t know whether any written law was broken by bush lying, but he broke the american trust by lying to the entire nation. and thus the war is illegal. i’m using a moral definition of illegal. sniff at the term all you want, but what he did was wrong, wrong, wrong.
No sniffing. It is a fair point that the casus belli was a bit, um, oversold. I always thought that tyhe flouting of the inspection regime was enough all by itself, without the need for there to be actual WMD there. Nevertheless, I won’t argue with your choice of words.
This is a very moving story, actually. Thank you for pointing me to it.
…when we get to Vietnam the deep seeded anger driven by hurt of a generation of boys always stirs to the surface. Vietnam played out on the nightly news, in the massive casualties reported, the high school and college campuses I attended, the constant protests I marched at and on every birthday as you waited to see what your draft number might be. There is no comparison to Iraq as far as experiencing it the way Vietnam played out across my generation. In that era the flag draped coffins where front page, above the fold.
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p>Charles Rangel of New York wanted a draft instituted for the Iraq war so everyone could feel the pain as we all know how sanitized the news coverage can be, since on one level how distant we may actually feel from that pain, unless you know one of our 4000 as happened to a friend of mine’s son.
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p>Mi Lai maybe the poster child for that madness 40 years ago and but all war is madness and as you watch some nightly news cast’s memoriam for dead soldiers you realize it is always fought by boys, so even those action that are genuinely heroic are still the actions of boys.
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p>I shake my head in amazement that some could have so causally allow this to happen again.
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But to others, Colin Powell lost his credibility in Vietnam over the My Lai massacre.
Because he was in the army, and performed a cursory investigation when he had no idea what the heck he was supposed to be investigating. Gotta love The Nation.
Objectivity?
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p>lol
because he probably knew he’d find something bad if he actually dug up the truth. So he went with the institutional line.
Much as with his preparation to speak to the UN before the Iraq War, Powell knew not to explore his own doubts because that might mess up his public image goals.
If you want to convince me that preserving public image is more important than figuring out the truth, I’d like to read your argument.
Oct 1966 I was in boot camp. June 1968 I was twelve miles south of the DMZ in Quang Tri province, Republic of South Vietnam.
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p>Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy et al were witnessing the spread of communism and its crushing consequence to human dignity and freedom. In the spirit of America’s dedication to freedom, and undoubtedly some less honorable and altruistic reasons, America committed the US militray to assist in the aid and defense of S. Vietnam just as we saved S. Korea from the monstrosity to the north.
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p>Coincidentally, a malignancy of unknown origin swept America’s colleges and universities then metasticized to the general population. Drugs and anarchy swept the nation. We had a nation of indolent, foolish, drug addled malcontents who refused responsibility for just about every facet of life.
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p>Political repression and mass murder was someone elses problem. Let the S. Vietnamese boys fight their own battles. It’s a civil war. The North means no harm. I’ve heard all the excuses. The Killing Fields of Cambodia and the Gang of Seven in China would prove otherwise. It is a very sad state of affairs that so many Vietnamese and American lives were lost simply because the “Anti-War Crowd” in USA gave succour to the enemy when they were on the eve of an armistice and peace. General Giap and Ho Chi Minh placed their bets on the rabble in USA and won. Many of my fellow friends remain in Vietnam for eternity because of this. They who sacrificed all, so that others may live.
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p>The catastrophe at Son My/Mai Lai four happened. I will offer no excuse, but I will state that I understand how it can happen. War and armed conflict brings out the best and the worst of all people. Unless you have been in the grips of close combat and instant and continuous death it is impossible to explain. At some point the human brain is unable to distinguish between friend and foe and everyone becomes a potential threat or an enemy.
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p>Never lose sight of the fact that there is evil in this world and there are those who mean you no good.Whether an imminent threat or somewhat abstract, the only thing that stands between you and “them” is the armed forces of the United States of America. How and when they are employed and deployed sits upon the shoulders of the commander in chief. God grant him/her the infinite wisdom to use them
properly and humanely.
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p>I noted last night that the Jeruselem Post had an article about draft evasion in Israel. Young people in Israel who feel it is neither their duty nor their responsibility to aid in the defense of their fellow jews and countrymen.
Apparently the concentration camps and ovens are now ancient history?
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p>Sometime it’s just time to step up to the plate.
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May I remind the historical revisionists among us that “South Vietnam” was not supposed to be a country. According to the Geneva Accords of 1954, there was to be a withdrawal of the Viet Minh to the northern part of the country. This was to be followed by elections in 1956 that were to include all of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was expected to win handily.
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p>It wasn’t to stop aggression that Eisenhower and Kennedy first intervened.
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p>It was to stop an election.
to MCRD
Thank you for bringing some reason to this blog. There are some people who will never accept the historical truths involved.
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p>Let me say that I appreciate your comments. I don’t agree you on your retelling of our national history, I don’t share your perspective on who was responsible for the US failure in Vietnam, or which country finally stopped the genocide in Cambodia (Vietnam) while every other nation stood silent, or what the state of American campuses were like during the time, but I do believe that you have a perspective that is relevant and truthful, that comes from your experience and I respect that. I am told by friends and relatives who made it back from combat that it was unlike anything they could ever have expected or ever wished again in their lifetimes.
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p>I can’t speak for the officers and men who massacred those unarmed civilians, I understand that there are things about war that I have not personally experienced and may never understand. The point of my diary was to honor Lawrence Colburn, a boy really, as most of you were, just boys, who, with 2 other young men all under 25, was able to do the right thing, the American thing, in that madness, disbelief and confusion, and save innocent lives, at their own mortal peril. The point of my diary was to recognize how young we all once were and what great burdens were placed upon those boys, like you, who served. Glenn Andreotta, the helicopter navigator, was killed in combat in Vietnam shortly after My Lai, he never made it home.
It was an interesting turning point in my life as when I arrived home and was at my home with my many siblings, my father announced to everyone in attendance that he was very proud of his oldest son who had gone to Vietnam and participated in the wholesale slaughter of innocents as he handed me the New Yorker.
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p>My youngest sister shortly thereafter joined the “peace movement” enjoyed many hits of acid, and permanently damaged her central nervous system. Another brother evaded the draft.
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p>I came from the pentultimate liberal (now “progressive”)household. An interesting dichotomy as I observe everything from dual prisms.
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p>The helicpter crew you noted conducted themselves courageously—and they richly deserve credit.
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p>Just as an FYI: helicopter crews in H-1’s consist of a pilot, co-pilot, crewchief and gunner. The crewchief also
had a gun (M-60’s internally mounted). There was no need for a navigator as the Huey’s range in the heat and altitude was very limited. The Army Huey’s utilized USAF radar sites for bearing/azimuth guidance to destination whereas, USAF and USMC used what is known as TACAN which is bearing azimuth and distance measuring equipment (DME).
I aplogize, I just couldn’t let that go by in the interest of accuracy.
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p>As for your observations on my post. I was finishing my degree in Boston when John Kerry and his ilk of liars, frauds were parading up and down Comm. Ave spewing their seditious venom. The hatred that was heaped on me and many of my fellow veterans who refused to bend knee at the vaunted altar of liberalism/anti war crowd, at my and other colleges and universities was unimagineable. I had instructors who would, in the middle of class, single us out for ridicule and scorn. Aforementioned experience had genuine and longlasting affect on my perception and expectations of large cross sections of our population.
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p>I’m an old man now, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I am not back in Quang Tri Province. War is an unfortunate part of the history of mankind. It will not go away, likely as long as mankind treads the earth. Always remember that the same people who are capable of much good are just as capable of much evil—and guard against it.