Friday, March 16, 2007
A not so happy anniversary :-(
I'm sure those of us in History 388 are soon going to learn what happened this day in 1968. It is the anniversary of the American troop massacre of the My Lai village. Here is a good overview from PBS's American Experience. This event was not a high point in American History.
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2 comments:
yes, that's a very sad day in american history. it's one of those things that comes with the territory of occupation and assymetrical war...people sneak up on you, mortar your friends in the middle of the night, you are stricken with grief and take it out on locals. also, of course, you encounter situations where rifle fire or hostile action comes from some unexpected direction, and you thrash over there, and there are a bunch of people in a village who don't know anything...you become enraged, and bad things happen. you saw a lot of this stuff in ireland with the british army in catholic neighborhoods. occupation is terrible, corrosive and destructive of occupier and occupied.
the bottom line: AVOID occupation and war wherever possible, because bad, nasty, ugly things like this always happen when you enter into an occupation and war.
i have a dumb question on this matter. since i am sympathetic to some of the losers who have have been unjustly accused of war crimes, did any of these participants get a trial on the world stage or was it attempted to be quietly taken care of by the american military?
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