The essay below is about the My Lai Massacre. Any academics out there, feedback is welcome. also if you want to proof it that'd be cool. I'm not turning it in untill 9am
( Read more... )
Ron Ridenhour exposed what might have been the worse worst atrocity of the Viet Nam conflict. His letter sent to top officials in the government, told of an eerie tale of the slaughter of civilian men, women, and children, by American soldiers. The true horror of this lies not in the fact that there was an atrocity committed. but? People of other countries are senseless killers, not Americans. Unfortunately this is not the case, and the slayings of close to 500 Vietnamese people, on March 16 1968, were committed by US troops. A closer look is necessary so that we might learn what circumstances could have lead to such a massacre, because armed with this knowledge, it might be possible to keep an act of such inhumanity from readily happening again. My Lai: A Brief History with Documents gives us the look at this event needed by providing a number of primary and secondary sources. From careful consideration of the evidence, we learn that the circumstances another word besides circumstances? it's been used a lot of
( ... )
The hate and frustration is directly linked to the trend of US solders to dehumanize the South Vietnamese, in their minds. move to beginning of sentence The second document examined is a Testimony to the Peers Commission in 1970, by Michael Bernhardt. Bernhardt was a rifleman with the 2nd Squad of the 2nd Platoon who did not take place in the killing of the day. In his testimony to the commission, Bernhardt, describes the attitudes of the average GI. According to him, the root of the problem is rooted in language, because, “…a person loses a certain aspect for being valued as a human being if you cannot understand them…” He goes on to say, “…since the Vietnamese were speaking something that we could not understand, [US soldiers] felt that they weren’t communicating with anyone.” With such attitudes being the norm among soldiers, atrocity is was to be expected. If you don’t consider someone human, it opens the gates for murder, rape, and brutality towards them, a well observed fact from the African-American experience in America. Such
( ... )
So why did a massacre occur on the morning of March 16, 1968? One theory is that the military situation, (faceless enemy and their tactics), and the dehumanization of the South Vietnamese created an environment in which the massacre was inevitable. It is important to parallels between then and now. Now We are in a military situation now very similar to Vietnam. We are facing a faceless enemy that blends into the local populace, and uses similar guerilla tactics like those used by the VC, in a war that knows no borders. The prison scandle at Abu-Grav, shows that American forces have dehumanized the enemy. If the US Army didn’t learn its lesson in Vietnam, it might get its second chance soon.
Comments 3
Ron Ridenhour exposed what might have been the worse worst atrocity of the Viet Nam conflict. His letter sent to top officials in the government, told of an eerie tale of the slaughter of civilian men, women, and children, by American soldiers. The true horror of this lies not in the fact that there was an atrocity committed. but? People of other countries are senseless killers, not Americans. Unfortunately this is not the case, and the slayings of close to 500 Vietnamese people, on March 16 1968, were committed by US troops. A closer look is necessary so that we might learn what circumstances could have lead to such a massacre, because armed with this knowledge, it might be possible to keep an act of such inhumanity from readily happening again. My Lai: A Brief History with Documents gives us the look at this event needed by providing a number of primary and secondary sources. From careful consideration of the evidence, we learn that the circumstances another word besides circumstances? it's been used a lot of ( ... )
Reply
Reply
hope this helps ;)
Reply
Leave a comment