Mastodawn

YSK: The US massacred hundreds & raped children as young as 12 in one day. Only one perpetrator was convicted and only received three years of house arrest

https://pawb.social/post/41558649

YSK: The US massacred hundreds & raped children as young as 12 in one day. Only one perpetrator was convicted - later commuted by President Nixon. - Pawb.Social

> 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.

dandelion Mar 23

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

bearboiblake Mar 23

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.

RaoulDuke Mar 23

The military had a sex trafficking and drug trade during the Iraq war.

bearboiblake Mar 23

That sounds like something that We Should Know about.

ComradeSharkfucker Mar 23

Read The Fort Bragg Cartel if you want more info on this.

The Fort Bragg Cartel - Wikipedia

Why do I have that feeling that they’ll do it in Iran as well…

hyperencabulator Mar 23

Is that what the Denzel Washington-Russel Crowe movie, American Gangster was based on?

ComradeSharkfucker Mar 23

Idk but the book was released in 2025 so if the movie is older than that then no

RaoulDuke Mar 23

Sorry trying to find article. I think it was US contractors doing it. Either way.

dylanmorgan Mar 23

YSalsoK that Colin Powell was instrumental the attempt to cover up My Lai.

TheReanuKeeves Mar 23

War. What is it good for. Absolutely nothing.

Other than fulfilling the desires of sociopaths under the guise of being a patriot

workerONE Mar 23

That’s just one village.

"German historian Bernd Greiner mentions the following atrocities reported and/or investigated by the Peers Commission and the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group, among other sources:

Seven massacres officially confirmed by the American side. My Lai (4) and My Khe (4) (collectively the My Lai Massacre) claimed the largest number of victims with 420 and 90 respectively, and in five other places a total of about 100 civilians were executed. Two further massacres were reported by soldiers who had taken part in them, one north of Đức Pho in Quảng Ngãi Province in the summer of 1968 (14 victims), another in Bình Định Province on 20 July 1969 (25 victims).[citation needed] 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.”

FlyingCircus Mar 23

The US murdered over a million civilians in Iraq.

ChickenLadyLovesLife Mar 23

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.

Skankhunt420 Mar 23

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

My Lai massacre - Wikipedia

FundMECFS Mar 23

For context “he” here is General Westmoreland.

nucleative Mar 23

I suppose many of the perpetrators who were there are still alive today. I wonder if they sleep soundly in bed at night.

TheReanuKeeves Mar 23

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.

FatVegan Mar 23

Of course they do. People thank them for their service. These brave brave war heroes

Chaotic Entropy Mar 24

Vietnam vets are not necessarily famed for coming back and having a great time.

acockworkorange Mar 23

Rule 2.

bearboiblake Mar 23

I’ve edited the post to contain an explanation for why learning about history is important.

acockworkorange Mar 23

You could have linked this this to what we can expect in Iran, but I guess that counts.

SkunkWorkz Mar 23

US soldiers also raped thousands of French women during WW2.

bearboiblake Mar 23

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

glitching Mar 23

them vets are the main foment vector for what we now know as the white supremacy movement. not that the sentiment wasn’t prevalent, but it was disjointed groups, churches, cults, klan, militias, prison gangs, etc., each pushing their own thing with only limited local reach.

the influx of large swaths of radicalized and trained MAMs was the igniter. all those power squabbling groups started coming together under one banner and they had a new tool - computers.

early on, they realized you can reach a whole lotta more folks with the new tech than the usual zines and the like. so they formed armored truck robbing gangs, and used the proceeds to buy home computers for establishing a network of BBS all over the country. I mean, if that’s not a michael mann movie, I don’t know what is…

for more, kathleen belew - bring the war home, available at anne’s site or wherever your pirate your shit.

FundMECFS Mar 23

| 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.

Life imprisonment in the United States

The D Quuuuuill Mar 23

The police protect women,

WHICH WOMEN!?

FundMECFS Mar 23

I’m a little confused did I say the police protect women? I don’t think I did. Fuck the police.

The D Quuuuuill Mar 23

it’s a quote from a song, sorry. i was in agreement with you

postmateDumbass Mar 23

Nixon is dead, we will never know.

bestagon Mar 23

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

quick_snail Mar 23

This is bad. What Japan did to China was worse.

SocialMediaRefugee Mar 23

You can always find something worse. Doesn’t make it acceptable.

Aceticon Mar 23

“We’re not as bad as the worst of the worst” isn’t the gotcha you seem to think it is.

Sure, you should make a thread about that.

dickalan Mar 23

ok are you a three letter operative bro

What Japan did to China was worse? Ok. So what? What relevance does that have?

Is that how your approach everything in life? Your mother is raped and mutilated, that’s bad, but what Japan did to China was worse. So… stop complaining I guess? (Obvious sarcasm but I genuinely fear you won’t catch that)

quick_snail Mar 23

Your comment can be summarized in one word:

“Whataboutism”

Yes, good job! Proud of you.

GuyIncognito Mar 24

Then the US absorbed Japan as an imperial vassal, didn’t mete out sufficient justice for the perpetrators, and went on to use Japan for logistics support during its attack on Vietnam. These two things are actually part of one greater whole, one that is still happening to this day.

Modern_medicine_isnt Mar 23

The issue here is humans. In large groups humans do terrible things. Usually in small group interactions they are pretty decent. It’s very odd. But probably the result of evolution. Other branches of “human” that didn’t act this way were probably wiped out by those that did.

bearboiblake Mar 23

While I understand what you’re trying to get at - that humans in a group can do terrible things they wouldn’t do alone - what you wrote is simply not true in and of itself - large groups of humans do not necessarily conduct massacres, it’s far more of a function of the society and the conditioning of the people - these atrocities were conducted because those in the US military saw the Vietnamese as subhuman, and thus had no empathy for them. The reason they felt that way was because of societal conditioning.

You may be surprised to learn that humans are actually the most co-operative animals on the planet - the scope, scale, and variability of human cooperation greatly exceed that of other animals. Our species is the only one we know of which demonstrates an innate willingness to help others we have nothing in common with.

Some of the greatest accomplishments in human history have been achieved by humans working together to accomplish a larger goal. The ruling class divides and atomizes us to turn us against our best interests and our better natures so that we may be more readily exploited to their benefit.

Modern_medicine_isnt Mar 23

So both are true. Humans are the most co-operative. But if you look at the achievements, most are done to better one group of humans over another. Rarely is something done for the good of all humans. I’m actually struggling to think of even one thing that was done for the good of all humans. There must be a few, but I just can’t think of any.

bearboiblake Mar 23

Yeah, I get it. The most modern examples I can think of are probably things like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. I guess you can make the argument that those ultimately benefit those in power too, which I would understand.

You are basically right that the problem we have is that we allow our society to elevate some people over others, which is why I am an anarchist. I believe that we should abolish all unjustifiable hierarchies, and make all humans equal, through a social revolution. If you’ve not encountered this philosophy before, I’d encourage you to check it out. I think it is a very comprehensive analysis of the problems we have, and the only ideology I’ve encountered which actually takes into account human nature to take advantage of any power they have to gain benefits over others.

Section A - What is Anarchism?

Modern_medicine_isnt Mar 27

I finally had a chance to take a look. But I didn’t last long on the first link. Lots of fancy words, but it wasn’t really coherent. At the same time as it talked about removing the hierarchy, and not necessarily listening to the experts, it was spending a lot of time name dropping and raising people up on a pedestal. They only real path forward is to stop idolizing individuals.

The second link was much better. I correctly identified that the issue isn’t the hierarchies themselves, but the people drawn to them and such. And there in lies the rub. You can’t just change the instincts of all humans on the planet. It would take hundreds or thousands of years, assuming there was any pressure to change. But their isn’t. So right now, through luck of mutation, some people are born who don’t want to idolize a powerful leader and such. But those people are at a disadvantage currently. So they are essentially selected against.

A change is needed, but I don’t think we can make it happen. Something external would need to do that. In the mean time, I think we should simply try to ensure noone gets selected against. That way at least the pressure to be more authoritative is removed.

Overall, I support much of what anarchists support in general. But I don’t think tearing down the hierarchy is going to do anything but make room for a new hierarchy. And that will probably happen naturally anyway. It seems to have in the past, it probably will again. The quesion at hand is mainly about if we will cause our own extinction before it does.

bearboiblake Mar 27

it was spending a lot of time name dropping and raising people up on a pedestal. They only real path forward is to stop idolizing individuals.

I can understand that an Anarchist FAQ’s writing style is aimed more at leftists than the general population and is kinda unapproachable, I totally get that. It’s meant to be a reference work with cited references, a bit like an Anarchist Wikipedia I guess, the quotations and so on are from a very broad range of writers, building on their work, not idolizing anyone in particular.

You can’t just change the instincts of all humans on the planet.

This isn’t something which is in our biology, this is a social issue. Human cultures very different from our own exist, we were raised in one culture and thus we have one set of cultural beliefs, but the existence of another culture doesn’t mean those people are genetically different from us. Societies can and do change. It’s not something we need mutations for, it’s something that can change in the time span of a human life.

I was born in an extremely conservative area to conservative parents. I used to support the military, heck at one point I was borderline neo-nazi. Now, I am an avowed anti-fascist and anarchist. For your claim to be correct, I would have needed to somehow evolve, to change my innate instincts, while still living. Sorry, but on the face, it’s an absurd claim. Obviously these are socially constructed beliefs and values which can change.

Overall, I support much of what anarchists support in general. But I don’t think tearing down the hierarchy is going to do anything but make room for a new hierarchy.

Again, you are fundamentally missing the point of a social revolution. The entire basis of it isn’t to “tear down the hierarchy”, it is to build a system from the ground up that makes hierarchies irrelevant, so that they just collapse under their own weight.

I feel like you might get more out of a more accessible format - there’s a pretty fun video series called Q&Anarchy by Thought Slime, maybe check that out instead.

Intro to Anarchism-- Q & Anarchy Episode 0

YouTube

Modern_medicine_isnt Mar 29

While there are plenty of cultures on the planet, they all seem to trend towards authoritative leaders. There are probably some very small cultures that are exceptions. But it seems to me if you get a group big enough, it goes that way.

As for you personally. I mentioned mutations. You had some differences that allowed you to escape the societal pressure to be a conservative. And likely without that pressure, you wouldn’t have come so far to the other side. The issue is that not enough people are born able to do that. And often they end up persecuted for even trying. So the mutation doesn’t propagate as much as those without it.

bearboiblake 6d ago

No, I’m sorry, but you are wrong about this.

It’s not an issue of biology, it’s an issue of society. Humans have constantly resisted and struggled against unjust rule. The drive for freedom is innate, and nearly impossible to fully quench.

The major issue is that the systems of oppression we are in are so complex that their true nature is hard to grasp, and it feels nearly impossible to fight against. That’s the problem - not that humans somehow “evolved” over maybe a hundred generations to be subserviant - and it can be solved through education and by building an optimistic movement focused on growth and incremental achievable goals.

Humans did not evolve to form hierarchical societies, that’s completely and absolutely ridiculous, I’m sorry. The structures of society we have now are very modern and would be completely unrecognizable (and much, much less free) to someone even a short thousand years ago. Evolution does not happen over that kind of a timespan.

Not to mention that evolutionary psychology is a bullshit quack discipline almost exclusively practiced by extremely racist people to justify their eugenics and race science.

Modern_medicine_isnt 6d ago

You are very confident about things that are easy to prove wrong.

Hierarchical societies have been around a long time. A very large variety of animals today have hierarchical concepts in their socialization. So you can use your inflamatory statements to try and hide how little basis the things you say have in facts. But it doesn’t make them any less false.

The more "I’m sorry"s, “ridiculous”, “bullshit quack…”, and association of the opposing view with racists and such you do. The more obvious you have no real logical arguments. Just like the people who talk louder to get noticed because they have nothing to say that people are interested in.

bearboiblake 6d ago

I have literally studied ancient human civilizations. Please, I am begging you, go educate yourself about early human societies, how they were structured, what the average daily life of someone living in those societies was like, what their relationship to authority, power and hierarchy were, and the history of nation states. I can’t provide an education to you over the Internet, but you can at least learn for yourself instead of repeating whatever brainwashing has been instilled in you.

I’d recommend the book “A History of World Societies”, it’s kind of written as a textbook for students, but it’s pretty engaging and I’m sure you’d learn a lot from it.

I can lead you to water, whether you drink or not is up to you.

Modern_medicine_isnt 6d ago

Look back at your own comment history, then look at the comment with all the drama. It stands out a lot. Normally you are level and making logical points, but in the one with ridiculous and such, you aren’t.

Can’t seem to find that book available on libby, so will have to do some extra digging. My info comes from mainly articles, not books. So I will take a look, as sometimes articles can misrepresent the people they are quoting or the work those experts have done. But usually that is done to sensationalize things. Not much of that happening in the area of ancient societies.

Please tell me you’re not trying to excuse the rape of civilians as “it’s just what humans do”.

It has nothing to do with evolution. These were angry men, taking out their frustration and anger of being drafted, watching their friends die for nothing in a jungle, on the local population. Rather than the government that sent them there in the first place.

The source of their anger fueling their ruthlessness is not evolutionary. It’s manufactured by the ones that sent them there in the first place.

Neither of which justifies rape or mutilation in any way. But it’s why they were capable of doing what they did. Anger and hate.

Modern_medicine_isnt Mar 23

I’m not excusing it in any way.
I wish I had a way to advance our evolution past this point so that we didn’t have a significant portion of the population that are monsters.

Evolution. You keep using that word. But I don’t think it means what you think it means. Because this has nothing to do with evolution. Why are you trying to make this into some kind of evolutionary instinct?