My Lai

Interesting thing...We're reading a book in class about the 'My Lai Massacre' in Vietnam. American soldiers basically went in and killed everything that moved: men, women, children, animals, and completely obliterated the village. This kind of behaviour from men who were described as normal and the kind of people who would put their lives on the line for you. So, America is not all righteousness and noble knights coming to save the day after all. In one incident in the village, two American soldiers were eating a meal and saw a fellow that looked suspicious to them, so they beat the shit out of him and shot him and then went back to eating. It's only fair that we take into account the signicance of the paranoia and fear at the time. For an American soldier, not only were the Vietnamese seemingly alien and misunderstood, but they were also viewed as an insidious enemy. Soldiers were trained that anyone could be an enemy, even a small child holding out a lolly pop was only thinking about killing you. Eventually, after so many of their comrades were killed, to the Americans, the Vietnamese were no longer human, they were sub-humans. American commanders were now using words like 'sterilize' and 'sanitize' to describe operations involving the destruction of entire villages. In their minds they were cleansing the land of a disease. Now there was no attempt to win over the civilian population, no attempt to take villages in one piece, no attempt to show any mercy. Why did the Americans lose the war in Vietnam? Because they were using the wrong tactics. Blowing up entire villages and killing thousands of innocents only strengthened the will of the people to resist defeat and only swelled the ranks of the Vietcong. Violence can never solve problems, it only creates problems. The massacre at My Lai was the culmination of all the attitudes the Americans had which were unwilling, indeed, unable to understand a culture and a people which were so different from them. The Vietnam war seems to have an echo of Iraq in it. There too Americans are fighting a hard battle against a determined enemy, but how long before they give in and 'pull out'? America has an image of itself as a knight in shining armor and those who stand against that knight represent all that is evil and wrong with the world. While that knight may indeed be shining, there are chinks in his armour, and these chinks run deep. While he may appear to do good, his logic is twisted and sometimes the refusal of others to follow along with his ideals causes him to snap.