After my helicopter crashed, I was falsely accused of sabotaging it by my sergeant who had switched places with me. He had survived the crash and the pilots plus a new guy door gunner died or would die later in the hospital. So I was put in charge of the battalion garbage route. I drove a 5-ton truck with a trailer and I didn't have to handle the trash drums but I did and I cleaned up the trash collection points and improved them. I was given young Vietnamese teenage boys to help me. We ate lunch outside my company's mess hall. One day, I was assigned a really young and small boy. I just let hang him around with the rest of us. I worried that he was an orphan. At lunch, I finished eating so I decided clean my M-16 rifle. While I first began cleaning the rifle, the kid picked it up and started to disassemble the parts to clean them. I let him take over cleaning and putting the M-16 back together. I inspected it and he had done a perfect job. I was amazed then I wondered how he had learned to clean an Army assault rifle. He was just a little boy. Where had he got his hands on a M-16!! I realized the kids in Vietnam were not innocent farm boys.
Are there really always alternatives to war? I'm as sickened by wanton brutality as Hersh, but with all due respect, people have had to confront the moral conundrum of war throughout human history, and the moral justification for it is usually the same in every instance: Sometimes, a 'peaceful' situation can be more evil than the terrible circumstances of war. Can moral evil always be responded to peacefully? Very few people can honestly answer yes to that question. What about the helicopter pilot who trained his guns on his fellow Americans at My Lai, ordering the gunner to shoot them down if they tried to kill the villagers he'd decided to save? Was he wrong to do that? The whole tragedy of war, for me, is right there in that noble action which the pilot took. He used his weapons for good. The American Company there had lost its moral compass. That doesn't condemn war, it condemns those soldiers who'd descended into pure immoral savagery. Eugene McCarthy was a pacifist through and through, and in that respect was at odds with the Catholic Church which has never been absolutely pacifist. It recognises the principle of just war. The Vietnamese communists certainly believed that justice was on their side, and considered life under market economy to be an evil peace. If Hersh wanted to address that question he should have first addressed the entire context in which world communism had already killed many tens of millions of people and held half of Europe hostage.
Just to add, I think General Westmoreland's entire counter-insurgency strategy where infantry operations were typically just 'search and destroy' missions, was the principal factor that drew so many of his troops down into the terrible demoralisation seen at My Lai and other places during that war. Unfortunately, the trauma of it led to a general US disillusionment with the war and with its own political-cultural identity, and because of that, lessons weren't learnt from it. This allowed a repetition of some of America's most serious mistakes there, which were seen in the war in Iraq.
Wow, I just read massive lump of convoluted diatribe. Your comments drip with ignorance, exceptionalism, unintentional racism and chauvinism. Who TF gave Americans the right to decide another country's fate? what!? The Vietnamese are too stupid to understand? They need daddy American to spank them into the correct Mindset? For the Vietnamese it was never about communism, it was about independence, which capitalist countries denied. Should a foreign country meddle with US elections because candidate A will kill less people than candidate B? Afghanistan - 70k+ civilian deaths Iraq - 300k+ (conservative, more likely 1M+) Vietnam - 405k By your own logic, it is the moral duty of EVERY country in the world to WIPE OUT the US from existence, lest it it continues (which it will) to wage more wars.
The Americans always love to play the role of victims. They love critics and hate self-critics. Only others peoples always inflicted and inflict horrible things to them - but they always remain on the side of the angels. They have astonishingly a long and good memory about the crimes indicted to them. But they forget their own ones against their own Indians, Jews, Negroes and Hispanics or the Germans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Koreans, Muslims... They remember well the incidents Lusitania, Pearl Harbour, 9.11 ....but they forget easily their own My Lai, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Phoenix program, Christmas bombing, Dresden bombing, Hiroshima, Nagasaki ... Or simply they just granted themselves their most generous pardons and believe to remain Jesus´soldiers. May their God bless America as they always sing -again and again...
Are the British any different?. The IRA let off a bomb and kill people, the British never forget it..The British bomb people (Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq etc)..They forget about it straight away...
plenty of americans are against those war crimes that you listed. Don't over-generalize. The Federal Government doesnt equal the will of the American people. Its just a legal fiction.
Hey huu-ban vu, what about the massacres the viet cong committed at Hue? Hundreds I believe, found in mass graves. You going to try and tell me it's all lies? Got nothing to say about that? Or does the North vietnamese government forbid you to say anything about Hue? Pointing the finger at us. The nerve of you people.
For the most part, Americans tried to co-exist with the Indians and Mexicans. The worst part was land grabs which grew America but shrunk other nations.
Is Hersh drunk. Why the circumlocution - the tedious attemptes at humour - the beating around the bush - asking the audience of kids to imagine what he actually did.. Why? God knows.
After my helicopter crashed, I was falsely accused of sabotaging it by my sergeant who had switched places with me. He had survived the crash and the pilots plus a new guy door gunner died or would die later in the hospital. So I was put in charge of the battalion garbage route. I drove a 5-ton truck with a trailer and I didn't have to handle the trash drums but I did and I cleaned up the trash collection points and improved them. I was given young Vietnamese teenage boys to help me. We ate lunch outside my company's mess hall. One day, I was assigned a really young and small boy. I just let hang him around with the rest of us. I worried that he was an orphan. At lunch, I finished eating so I decided clean my M-16 rifle. While I first began cleaning the rifle, the kid picked it up and started to disassemble the parts to clean them. I let him take over cleaning and putting the M-16 back together. I inspected it and he had done a perfect job. I was amazed then I wondered how he had learned to clean an Army assault rifle. He was just a little boy. Where had he got his hands on a M-16!! I realized the kids in Vietnam were not innocent farm boys.
Great discussion.
Excellent lecture 😊
Are there really always alternatives to war? I'm as sickened by wanton brutality as Hersh, but with all due respect, people have had to confront the moral conundrum of war throughout human history, and the moral justification for it is usually the same in every instance: Sometimes, a 'peaceful' situation can be more evil than the terrible circumstances of war. Can moral evil always be responded to peacefully? Very few people can honestly answer yes to that question. What about the helicopter pilot who trained his guns on his fellow Americans at My Lai, ordering the gunner to shoot them down if they tried to kill the villagers he'd decided to save? Was he wrong to do that? The whole tragedy of war, for me, is right there in that noble action which the pilot took. He used his weapons for good. The American Company there had lost its moral compass. That doesn't condemn war, it condemns those soldiers who'd descended into pure immoral savagery. Eugene McCarthy was a pacifist through and through, and in that respect was at odds with the Catholic Church which has never been absolutely pacifist. It recognises the principle of just war. The Vietnamese communists certainly believed that justice was on their side, and considered life under market economy to be an evil peace. If Hersh wanted to address that question he should have first addressed the entire context in which world communism had already killed many tens of millions of people and held half of Europe hostage.
Just to add, I think General Westmoreland's entire counter-insurgency strategy where infantry operations were typically just 'search and destroy' missions, was the principal factor that drew so many of his troops down into the terrible demoralisation seen at My Lai and other places during that war. Unfortunately, the trauma of it led to a general US disillusionment with the war and with its own political-cultural identity, and because of that, lessons weren't learnt from it. This allowed a repetition of some of America's most serious mistakes there, which were seen in the war in Iraq.
Wow, I just read massive lump of convoluted diatribe.
Your comments drip with ignorance, exceptionalism, unintentional racism and chauvinism.
Who TF gave Americans the right to decide another country's fate? what!? The Vietnamese are too stupid to understand? They need daddy American to spank them into the correct Mindset?
For the Vietnamese it was never about communism, it was about independence, which capitalist countries denied.
Should a foreign country meddle with US elections because candidate A will kill less people than candidate B?
Afghanistan - 70k+ civilian deaths
Iraq - 300k+ (conservative, more likely 1M+)
Vietnam - 405k
By your own logic, it is the moral duty of EVERY country in the world to WIPE OUT the US from existence, lest it it continues (which it will) to wage more wars.
The name of the village is MY LAI!
My Lai was pronounced Me Lie.
@@davidcockrill7115 Yes. But the spelling is My Lai.
What's Hersh drinking ? 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷
Plum Brandy with cocaine chasers?
Well that's how a very fast thinking mind operates I guess...😅
I'm not making this up
The Americans always love to play the role of victims. They love critics and hate self-critics. Only others peoples always inflicted and inflict horrible things to them - but they always remain on the side of the angels. They have astonishingly a long and good memory about the crimes indicted to them. But they forget their own ones against their own Indians, Jews, Negroes and Hispanics or the Germans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Koreans, Muslims... They remember well the incidents Lusitania, Pearl Harbour, 9.11 ....but they forget easily their own My Lai, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Phoenix program, Christmas bombing, Dresden bombing, Hiroshima, Nagasaki ... Or simply they just granted themselves their most generous pardons and believe to remain Jesus´soldiers. May their God bless America as they always sing -again and again...
Are the British any different?. The IRA let off a bomb and kill people, the British never forget it..The British bomb people (Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq etc)..They forget about it straight away...
@@kailashpatel1706 They aways remember what the IRA did to them, they never remember what they did to Ireland
plenty of americans are against those war crimes that you listed. Don't over-generalize. The Federal Government doesnt equal the will of the American people. Its just a legal fiction.
Hey huu-ban vu, what about the massacres the viet cong committed at Hue? Hundreds I believe, found in mass graves. You going to try and tell me it's all lies? Got nothing to say about that? Or does the North vietnamese government forbid you to say anything about Hue? Pointing the finger at us. The nerve of you people.
For the most part, Americans tried to co-exist with the Indians and Mexicans. The worst part was land grabs which grew America but shrunk other nations.
'McNamara's Morons'? As they were charmingly named.
My rack?
AMERICAL DIVISION -- not American.
Do you jobe ❤📕✒⚖
This guys opinions should not be a part of the report. Alot of false, unneeded information
Is Hersh drunk. Why the circumlocution - the tedious attemptes at humour - the beating around the bush - asking the audience of kids to imagine what he actually did.. Why? God knows.
Agreed...could have used that time to expand on the story
Are you drunk?
Hersh is as boiled as an owl.
FREE JOSE VEGA