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I was surfing through various news sites this morning and over at McClatchy, I see this headline
For those who are too young to know or were asleep during the late ’60s/early ’70s, the My Lai massacre was a slowly unfolding example of the US Army covering up atrocities by soldiers (and where have we heard of this happening recently?). William Calley was the only person convicted during the various trials, although there were others in his command chain who were charged and acquitted, including his company commander, Capt Ernest Medina. Charges were even brought against the commander of the Americal Division, Maj Gen Samuel Koster (charges against Koster were later dropped and he lost a promotion to Lt Gen and was instead demoted to Brigadier before retiring in ’73).
Among the various investigations of the massacre were ones conducted by a young Army major by the name of Colin Powell and a young investigative reporter named Seymour Hersh. The My Lai investigation was actually Hersh’s first major expose and resulted in a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
So here we are, forty plus years after the massacre where former 2nd Lt Calley is quoted
"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai," Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus, [GA] on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."
And as always, there are two or three relatively anonymous heroes in this story, most especially Warrant Officer One, Hugh Thompson, Jr, who led a helicopter crew that confronted Lt Calley and his men.
One man (and his crew) stood up for what is right. One man "followed orders" and was convicted (officially of 22 murders although the death toll reported ranged from 347 (the official US Army number) up to 504). No other convictions of anyone at any level. Cover-ups at multiple levels. The victims were all "VC" or "guerrillas."
Over forty years for the one man convicted to apologize.
I do hope folks aren’t holding their breaths waiting for George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and all the others to apologize for their atrocities.
And because I can:
36 Comments
No, I’m not holding my breath. To get an apology from these bastards would mean they admit to having done something wrong or, heaven help us, illegal. Galileo got a better deal from the Church than we’ll ever get from the Bushniks.
Hey, dakine, you forgot to mention that Colin Powell’s investigation was an Army WHITEWASH of the massacre, and of the other similar massacres that had been ongoing in that area for a while. Why else mention Powell, dakine, unless you were going to expose him for what he was and still proved to be under Bush II?
Yes, Powell’s investigation was a cover-up. That’s why he started getting promoted up the chain of command! Because he was a suck-up genocidal coward. All hail, Colin Powell, whose name and character rhymes with your bowel (full of shit).
By that logic she would also have to relate the story of how Seymour Hersh latched on to the story. The post is about Calley, not Powell.
Yeah, I thought it was fairly obvious by mentioning that there were Army cover-ups and that Powell had conducted an Army ‘investigation’ while Hersh won a Pulitzer, that I was showing the difference.
Guess some folks just don’t do subtle.
In 2050, Bush would be 104 years old. Of course, his crimes are timeless.
I guess I forgot the snark tag on the title.
I can’t wait to hear what Colin Powell has to say about this.
Hi Teddy,
Nothing, would be my guess.
And dakine- TY for this post.
This is the absurd absolute failure of the All volunteer Military, so fat ass’ like Limpballs never defend their America on the front line.Of course if you are a fat ass warmonger supporting the murder by woman, in place of the chicken hawks on the battlefield, this is great just great.
Nobody’s sorry this time out in our advanced civilization.
that reptile brained bush will never apologize for anything .. after all “gawd anointed him”..aincha heard ??
please don’t insult the reptiles.
Bush = 400+ vacations
Obama = 9 days
Shit storm against Obama……..
BTW the threat level is STILL at Threat Level ORANGE
how long has it been stuck on TL Orange?
Today’s threat level report:
Until you mentioned it, I had forgotten that we still were doing this nonsense.
We’ve all stopped paying any attention to it. (I think I stopped paying attention about the second day. It was clearly a useless measure.)
This brings to mind Buffy Sainte-Marie’s song,”Universal Soldier”.
Of course he won’t ….he couldn’t recall he had made any mistakes….
You don’t see the day when a cowardly, sniveling, peeing his pants coward is led to the gallows just like that man in Iraq ,who was hung? Their legs would be Jello because they are all cowards and have NO redeeming values to mankind.
Rendition> Torture> Murder> Treason> Punishment / failure.
Thanks vert much dakine.
God/Nature/Science/Whatever Bless Hugh Thompson, Jr. (RIP)
Does Calley have a terminal illness perchance, or has the culture of Columbus, GA so changed that he can tell the truth now instead of feeding the local hero myth?
Bush is going to apologize in 2050? I’ll go ahead and mark that on my calendar.
Thank you for this, Dakine.
”The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.”– Harold Pinter, English dramatist
Universal Soldier
We as a nation should be ashamed that this song is still relevant.
Some lines from a poem I wrote at the time:
“There was a little boy walking toward us ion a daze . . . He’d been shot in the arm and leg. He wasn’t crying or making any noise. The GI fired three shots into the child. The first shot knocked him back, the second shot lifted him into the air. The third shot put him down and the body fluids came out.”
LORD HAVE MERCY
on the children of the age,
on the chldren everywhere,
for they are all
our children,
all unknowing,without grasp
of the primeval
hate
that propels man to fear the innocence of child,
and find the resolution in the exacting
business of doling out cold death,
yes
even as were death a present that given,
must bridge the gap of cultures,
without pity,
without feeling
all without tears,
all in one vulgar act,
one orgiastic moment
leaving us befouled
in our ability to continue life
and makjing of us witness
to the triumph
of our lust.
Now weep
For childhood,
sugared tears for southern childhood
of gentility and manners,
brutal honor and a sense of the polite.
Patriotic attributes of manliness
mask the horror underneath,
Lieutenant William Calley Jr., growing,
rising up
in muted mists of winter
to march off as a gentleman
and practice arts of war,
white man Calley gone to war to
kill
the enemy,
to find
the ENEMY!
in
broken body
of ten year old child impolitely
seeking to shelter smaller brother
or
was he only trying to hold escaping life,
child to child?
We do not know what ethic children might embrace.
They die,
and in a strange perversion
we die, and cannot die.
Humanity, improbable blend of bone and mind,
go find your fallen star of destiny
that crashing brings to earth blind gods
and blinder men.
Find refuge in your litanies of progress
and the blessings of the age.
Nameless woman, nameless child
buffeted by blindest rage,
Peace.
Little sons, little daughters, in your blood
our lives
continue.
Simpson, Medina, Calley, America’s children,
American dream, caught up in macabre ballet
of death
democracy
and brotherhood
of Blood Spangled Banner,
Peace.
The brutal culture that was your strength
looks for expiation.
There is none.
We retrench to conjure explanation,
ponder virtue lost in blood,
holding child in tightened grasp
lest furies wrest him from our breast.
The living have become the dead
and prophet blindly seeks the spirit,
which, with our gods,
has fled.
Mercy.
It seems like it was yesterday, and I can still feel the rage as I wrote. Old men and women, children, babies, damn. 500 or so. They were only gooks.
I take offense at that phrase. It’s unnecessary.
That phrase is from a news report and is a direct quote from a soldier when the news of the massacre broke.
I would be happy to start with an apology from Lynndie England. Ain’t gonna happen though. She insists–rightly–that she did precisely what she was told. And I suspect that until the people who DON’T live in trailer parks apologize, she will believe she did right.
I know this is tangential, but Tim O’Brien has a great novel about this tragedy called In the Lake of the Woods. It’s a great blending of fictional and historical characters, and Calley has a prominent role in the book. I teach the book every year and will do so again this year–it never fails to hit me hard, and O’Brien, a Vietnam Vet himself, makes no excuses. The book is also about a problematic politician, so it’s relevant all around.
we killed over one million Vietnamese in that illegal war for profits.
I protested that war and the same language I hear now about support our troops in iraq and afghan I heard during the vietnam war.
and we need to win over the villages and the people
how quickly we forget how quickly
while protesting the iraq war with the ladies in pink at a college campus not one college student joined in.
no draft no interest with the college crowd.
we are truly an imperialist nation even on our college campuses.
true patriots the ladies in pink
the rest imperialists and dont have a clue they are by doing nothing to stop these senseless wars for profits.
and a book is coming out entitled america no need to apologize for our greatness. how arrogant a country we are.
indeed how great we are with all that blood on our hands.
Truth is we are not great when “criminals” rudely reduce reason while rationalizing retarded policies relegating people to rat status, while raping the region of resources and riches. America has allowed criminals to exact a tremendous wealth from the governed. “Capocrats” have leveraged the political system designed to protect the interests of the nation and the governed. Corporate Identity’s power to pervert fundamental constitutional law, under the color of law was a fear vehemently expressed by Jefferson and Madison during the crafting of the “Bill of Rights.” From Slavery to Corporate Servitude?
The truth is, everything played out today is a continuation of a struggle for human rights and dignity versus the desire for profit and power of corporations. It was a King and his status quo cohorts and corporations whose cash flow and profit trumped the god given right of the colonist. This is the reality and perspective forgotten in America today as “conditioned minds,” instilled with nonsense are manipulated. Tonkin was a lie. WMD is a lie. Mai Lia followed sure as reported and unreported atrocities occurred in Iraq. Fuck Ups perpetuate fuck ups and the perpetual path of fuck-up-isms has extracted vast quantities of Liberty, treasure and most important the blood and lives of duty bound Americans placed in harms way, by fuck-ups, in fucked up situations to then commit fucked up acts, while the policy makers are “unscathed?” We have seen all this shit before Colin… Problem is America, an “”oil addict”" is in a state of denial, while the corporate interests continue to brainwash America into “Corporate Servitude,” Slavery by another name?
I remember this from when I was a kid. That, and the one where the South Vietnamese general summarily executed the Viet Cong. And the one where the little girl was running naked down the street (maybe partly on fire or the village was on fire.)
When I read about it years later, it turned out that the helicopter guy really deserved a commendation. Had he not swooped down and cut off the massacre, it would have been worse. And probably, more covered up.
There are two main schools of thought on the Vietnam War:
1) that it was a waste and a disaster
and
2) that it showed the “free world” resolve to fight regional wars against Communist aggression. So that, while a defeat for America in the end, was actually a “victory” in the sense that it contained Chinese aggression in Asia during the period.
It’s like the people who argue history here in Japan. You can find strong points in either one or two. But I think most of them are found in Number one.
People pick what they want out of the Calley story. But to me, whatever angle people argue, it shows the eternal ugliness of war. Modern technology basically made Calley the symbol for something that has been going on in humanity for generations.
My Two Cents: Pinkville Revisited
Hugh Thompson exemplified why we are proud to be Americans. He did the decent and honorable thing at risk to his own life, and he waited far too long to be honored eventually. I place Thompson in the pantheon of true heroes.
Calley, on the other hand, has yet to visit the Hell that awaits him. Fuck. Him.
Not holding my breath either.
Bush would have to be a decent human being to apologize. Thus, we’ll probably see it from his great-grandsons, a hundred years from now.
Bush was the decider, and our Countries first dictator, people like this don’t ever apologize. As long as He has thousands of slimeballs out there to defend Him, why should He ever even think of doing that.