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Thu 11 Nov, 2004 04:15 pm
On March 16, 1968 the angry and frustrated men of Charlie company entered the village of My Lai on a search and destroy mission and were ordered to "kill everyone" As a solider you are taught to obey orders without question. Had you been at My Lai on that day what would you have done? Remember that failure to follow orders is a violation of military law. Also remember that during this war it was very hard to distinguish friend from foe. Often times when soldiers would enter village children would run up to them asking for candy but also holding a live bomb and would blow themselves up as well as kill many soldiers. What would you have done?
Re: My Lai Massacre
brokenxdoll wrote:Often times when soldiers would enter village children would run up to them asking for candy but also holding a live bomb and would blow themselves up as well as kill many soldiers. What would you have done?
Do you have any testimony about this. I seem to remember nothing similar.
No offense, but what exactly is your point here? My Lai is seriously old news that is well documented. If you are trying to draw a parallel to what is happening in Iraq, please make that clear.
My point of this whole post is what would you have been at my lai on that day when soldiers or other people killing eachother. What would you do differently?
brokenxdoll- Damned if I know, never having been in a situation like that.
And what would YOU have done?
I would like to think that I would have been Ron Ridenhour.
Honestly I don't know what I would have done. But if it was military or army orders then I would have obiously had to kill everyone like they said to do so.
But I need other people's opinion so I can finish this project I'm doing about the lai massacre.
As a member of the military all i can say is this: you can only hope that the values you were raised with hold up during armed conflict. Not everybody does. One will never know how they will react to a situation until it arises.
Any soldier killing unarmed people during a conflict, whether ordered to do so or not, is a war criminal.
If your superior officer orders you to fire on civilians, you do NOT have to follow that order. Everyone has their own responsibility and claiming you commited an atrocity under orders does not exonerate you. The concentration camp guards in WWII were also acting under orders, does that make them innocent of the crimes they committed, methinks not!
Whatever the practical difficulties in refusing may be, you are not supposed to follow illegal orders. Calley should have received the death penalty.
You might look (ie search) for law perhaps using the phrase "defence of superior orders" and see what you come up with. Essentially what has been said is correct - it's not a very useful defence to a war crime.
Valid point paasky. There are other things to remember, and these are of critical importance. The first is called mob mentality. And please forgive me for i do not remeber the actual sociological term that is used. Whe people are together they will not always do whats right. The actions of the violent or wrong normally(not always) but normally win out. The second issue is what confronts police officers on a daily basis when they encounter violence. If you have some one who acts violently towards one of your own, you may stereo type and revolt in anger to the first person who LOOKS like the offender. Very much the same way the vietnamesse acted violently towards American piolots, even if the piolot had not bombed their area. Another arena that must be looked at is the discipline of the military. wether we agree with them or not, the military MUST be highly disciplined. If the soldiers are allowed the oppertunity to debate orders it takes away the effectiveness of the military. I am not talking blind obidience either.
The Mai Lai masacre is not a complete cut and dry debate. If you have an opportunity, please read Four Hours in Mai Lai. there are many other areas that can be observed. My personal opinion is that LT. Calley was a scape goat and his actions - or inactions- we caused by an inept company captain who constanly belittled and degraded th Lt in front of his own men.
Broxendoll, you might broaden you treatment of the My Lai massacre in your paper by comparing it and its aftermath to atrocities of similar size and nature, like the massacres in Sant'Anna di Stazzema (near La Spezia, Italy, 560 victims) and Oradour-sur-Glane (France, 642 victims) carried out by super-disciplined SS troops in 1944 in alleged retaliation for resistance activity in the areas.
There is plenty of information about these massacres to be found on-line. The court case against three former SS-officers responsible for the La Spezia massacre was recently concluded in Italy.
MY Lai
A book titled 'Four Hours in My Lai"
The following is an excerpt from one critics commments on the book:
" But the picture painted here is not totally without redemption. There were members of Charlie Company who refused to obey when ordered to shoot down unarmed villagers. There was Hugh Thompson who intervened his helicopter between soldiers and their would-be victims and threatened to fire on the soldiers. There was General Peers, whose thorough investigation and no-holds-barred report was in the best tradition. In the end my question is this. After more than 30 years, two careers, and a family
after being witness to subsequent outstanding and honorable performance by the military
after taking great pride in some of the accomplishments of the United States
why do I - who have never seen the village called My Lai 4 - still feel dirty?"
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