At least 347 and up to 504 civilians, almost all women, children and elderly men, were murdered by U.S. Army soldiers. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children as young as 12.
only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., the leader of 1st Platoon in C Company, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after his sentence was commuted.
Research has highlighted that the My Lai Massacre was not an isolated war crime. Nick Turse places it within a larger pattern of American atrocities enabled by deliberate policies from commanders, such as “free-fire zones” and “body counts”, as well as widespread racism amongst American military personnel. Many other atrocities were also covered up by commanders.
Why you should know about this: It is important to know about history so that we can learn from it, avoid the mistakes and atrocities of the past, and know which institutions have a history of performing atrocities, trying to cover them up, etc. and what that looks like.
For a long time, I assumed that veterans who didn’t want to talk about their time served were doing so because they witnessed difficult things or felt shame about what they had to do in combat situations.
These days, I wonder if it’s because anyone they talked to would see them for the monster they are.
Well, the US did more than that in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Vietnam, Somalia, Nigeria, and a lot of other countries!
The reality is the USA is the real example of a terrorist country… spreading fear, killing innocent people and ruining their lives.
Don’t forget Cuba, which is an actively ongoing event. Innocent people are being starved and deprived of medicine and other essentials, purely because the ruling class want to demonstrate how socialism is a failure. Such a failure that the US has needed to ruthlessly oppress and terrorize them for decades, and yet despite it all Cuba has still made incredible medical breakthroughs such as vaccines for alzheimers and lung cancer, which aren’t even available under capitalism… I wonder how they did it if they didn’t have innovation, such a mystery
War and rape go hand in hand; you can’t dehumanize people and respect them simultaneously.
Not to mention that a lot of soldiers are amped up on drugs and/or alcohol. Many of them don’t want to even be there.
What those in authority don’t want to tell us is that this is exactly what they expect in war. They want our soldiers to be so horrific that the other side quits. That’s the goal of EVERY leader who starts a war. Any hand-wringing or regret later is just theater.
The only sin is letting the Civilians hear about it.
It’s historically the only effective way to fight an insurgency and every military since ancient times knows it. Basically anytime you hear a modern military is enacting a “counter insurgency” it’s either code word for doing death squads, or it’s a tacit admission that they are out of ideas and have found themselves in an unwinnable quagmire.
The only way to defeat an insurgency is to do massive amounts of crimes against humanity…or avoid creating one in the first place.
And between the two options you presented, even when the latter is surprisingly easy to pull off, for “some reason” we just keep diving head-first into war-crime territory.
It’s the same mentality that got the DNC fighting their own guy who was turbo-winning in NYC. Anything is preferable to building a strong, sustainable, cooperative future as far as these kinds of people are concerned.
It’s a tale as old as time, no one wants to fight for a future that doesn’t advance their own personal positions.
How would a center right politician afford a vacation home in the hamptons if we actually regulated their corporate relationships? What good is a general if there isn’t a forever war?
Valid.
Yeah, you’re right of course, this is why we should get rid of all rulers, now and forever, and ensure that they never return. We do not need a ruling class to order us around. We can build a new society where all are equal, and where decisions are made by consensus, rather than by diktat or decree.
Yeah. So stop equating them with Germans. Please
The only reason why my Lai is known today is because one helicopter pilot had a conscience and ordered his door gunner to open fire on their own troops if they were to approach another group of Vietnamese civilians that he decided to protect
Had he not, likely nobody would have known what happened
And only because this has gone public, they had to award Hugh Thompson Jr. with the Distinguished Flying Cross. Otherwise military court.
“You should know: [totally horrible political sexual abuse thing with absolutely no kind of warning on it at all]”
…no, I really, really didn’t need to know that, thanks
– Frost
The warning is implied, don’t you realize that? If what happened at My Lai and the subsequent legal outcome was justice, then that justice can be done to you as well.
| Sentence | Life imprisonment; commuted to three years’ house arrest by President Richard Nixon |
Fucking hell Nixon …
“Protect the children and women” Except from my murderous rapist soldiers apparently.
Interesting how this narrative keeps getting used to justify our colonialism. “These are backwards savages and we are agents of progress and feminism” and then, in the course of the conflict, women and girls are raped, killed, and bombed while women’s rights are stonewalled or even stripped away back home
The police protect women,
WHICH WOMEN!?
I’m a little confused did I say the police protect women? I don’t think I did. Fuck the police.
it’s a quote from a song, sorry. i was in agreement with you
Nixon is dead, we will never know.
Reminds me of Trump pardoning that disgusting war criminal from Iraq
It is important to know this because when the military is turned on you, you should know they’ll obey. If you think there are enough that would so no, you’re wrong.
What no one ever considers is what is happening right now in real time. They are actively pushing out the troops that would object morally to bad orders. The administration doesn’t care if they are left with inferior troops, as long as the ones they have left will follow orders blindly and without question.
As a former member of the US military, please go fuck yourself.
Democrats and Republicans want to murder each other NOW, they’re not even in the military. Why would GIs be any different?
In a civil war, all will be armed, the armed forces will split as they did before.
I’ll accept that.
But it’s all about the crowd and momentum. The crowd gets hyped the crowd is gonna do some shit an individual won’t.
That and it’s beat into you to do what you’re told.
you seriously think none of your fellow service members would listen to violent orders?
I never said that. There are plenty of stupid people in any crowd. But dismissing it as entirely full of people who would target US citizens is insulting. That would not stand.
Shut up and follow orders.
it’s sad when I don’t even know which massacre is being discussed, or even which theater of war or era - there are just too many examples
And that is the very few we know of, the more you learn about these, the more clear it becomes they cover them up unless they definitively can’t. What we know barely scratches the surface of American terrorism and atrocities.
Initial reports claimed “128 Viet Cong and 22 civilians” had been killed in the village during a “fierce fire fight”. Westmoreland congratulated the unit on the “outstanding job”. As relayed at the time by Stars and Stripes magazine, “U.S. infantrymen had killed 128 Communists in a bloody day-long battle.”
Melvin Laird the Secretary of Defense discussed them with Henry Kissinger who was at the time National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon. Laird was recorded as saying that while he would like “to sweep it under the rug”, the photographs prevented it. “They’re pretty terrible”, he said. “There are so many kids just laying there; these pictures are authentic”.
Inside the White House, officials privately discussed how to contain the scandal. On 21 November, Kissinger emphasized that the White House needed to develop a “game plan”, to establish a “press policy”, and maintain a “unified line” in its public response. The White House established a “My Lai Task Force” whose mission was to “figure out how best to control the problem”, to make sure administration officials “all don’t go in different directions” when discussing the incident, and to “engage in dirty tricks”.
I have a rule of “the stuff we know is never as bad as the stuff we don’t, and we’ll never know most of the stuff we already don’t” for things like this.
The military had a sex trafficking and drug trade during the Iraq war.
That sounds like something that We Should Know about.
Read The Fort Bragg Cartel if you want more info on this.
Why do I have that feeling that they’ll do it in Iran as well…
Is that what the Denzel Washington-Russel Crowe movie, American Gangster was based on?
Idk but the book was released in 2025 so if the movie is older than that then no
Sorry trying to find article. I think it was US contractors doing it. Either way.
Afghanistan too.
US soldiers also raped thousands of French women during WW2.
I’ve read about this too, and the US blamed the problem on black soldiers. Maybe that’s something that deserves its own post?
Yup. They burned my grandma’s city to hide the looting.
Did they harm your grandma?
No the women were hiding in the country side. But her dad was a fireman and he was among the first on scene
That’s just one village.
"According to the Information Bureau of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG), a shadow government formed by North Vietnam in 1969, between April 1968 and the end of 1970 American ground troops killed about 6,500 civilians in the course of twenty-one operations either on their own or alongside their allies. "
“Tiger Force, a reconnaissance unit of the 101st Airborne Division, probably murdered hundreds of civilians during a 6-month period in 1967”
and from bombing:
“Estimates for the number of North Vietnamese civilian deaths resulting from U.S. bombing range from 30,000 to 65,000.[35][4] Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000.[36] American bombing in Cambodia is estimated to have killed between 30,000 and 150,000 civilians and combatants.”
Edit: I haven’t done extensive research and as was pointed out the actual numbers might be much higher, and my figures don’t include deaths and damage from Agent Orange chemicals
The US murdered over a million civilians in Iraq.
Robert MacNamara stated that the US killed 3-4 million civilians during the Vietnam War. Since he was the Secretary of Defense during that time, he wouldn’t have exactly benefited from exaggeration of the total.
Yeah, and those were “woke” wars according to the psychos in charge now.
after learning of the massacre, he wrote in his memoir that it was “the conscious massacre of defenseless babies, children, mothers, and old men in a kind of diabolical slow-motion nightmare that went on for the better part of a day, with a cold-blooded break for lunch”.[
yo what the fuck
For context “he” here is General Westmoreland.
War. What is it good for. Absolutely nothing.
Other than fulfilling the desires of sociopaths under the guise of being a patriot
I suppose many of the perpetrators who were there are still alive today. I wonder if they sleep soundly in bed at night.
Vietnam vets are not necessarily famed for coming back and having a great time.
Someone who lacks enough empathy to brutally gang rape women and children are rarely people who feel remorse for hurting others. They unfortunately probably laugh themselves to sleep at night knowing they committed some of the sickest shit imaginable and will never be punished.
Of course they do. People thank them for their service. These brave brave war heroes
