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New Friends and Old Massacres

Sleepless at 4 AM this morning (these hospital visits have wreaked havoc on my ability to sleep — I get home at night and am just too wound up to rest properly), I turned on the TV and caught the American Experience (PBS) documentary on the My Lai Massacre, which I had missed earlier in the week due to another hospital visit. I was familiar with the incident, of course, but watching the film was greatly disquieting. Some of the things that have been done in our name, that is, in the name of the United States, for no good reason, are very difficult to live with–and I don’t just mean the massacre, but that entire war. It was very difficult to suppress the feeling that we’re repeating the experience to some degree in Afghanistan, spilling both civilian blood and the blood of American soldiers in pursuit of a moving target that we can never fully conquer.

Unlike Vietnam, unlike Iraq II, our cause is just and we have a good reason to be there, at least I think so. Unfortunately, the reasons have little to do with whether or not our goals are achievable.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “New Friends and Old Massacres”

David in Cal Says:
April 28th, 2010 at 10:18 am
Steven, I agree that the Vietnam War was a giant screw-up by the US. The My Lai Massacre seems like an apt symbol. However, two additional points should be made:

1. The My Lai Massacre was an aberration for us. That sort of massacre was standard operating procedure for the Viet Cong. If a town resisted them, they would routinely massacre the townspeople. That doesn’t excuse our behavior, of course.

2. Although the Vietnam War was a cock-up, it was part of successrfuil and praiseworthy resistance to Soviet expansion. Starting with President Truman, the US led the West in resisting the Soviet Union’s efforts to dominate the world with their totalitarian regime. I grew up during the Cold War. There was a very real risk of a nuclear war that would destroy civilization.

Yet, we persisted over decades, avoided nuclear disaster, and eventually prevailed over the Soviet Union, allowing millions of people to finally live in freedom. Americans should be very proud of our country’s role in leading this effort.
Steven Goldman Says:
April 29th, 2010 at 2:32 am
David:

Something like five million Vietnamese civilians were killed during the war. How many of those were attributable to us, how many to the North Vietnamese I don’t know. Given some of the indiscriminate bombing and such that we did, I doubt we were wholly innocent. I think part of the problem, and this has shown up in Afghanistan to some degree, is that when you can’t tell who is who because you’re fighting an enemy who doesn’t wear uniforms or line up on a battlefield, it’s pretty easy to mistake any gathering, like a rural hamlet or a wedding or a bowling league for an aggregation of bad guys.

As to your second point, the strategy of containment was indeed successful in winning the Cold War, and I was around too — the threat of nuclear war was indeed real. However, the Vietnam war was a sideshow that we deceived ourselves into believing was a main event, and had far more to do with the history of that country under various occupiers. It had nothing at all to do with avoiding nuclear war; the threat of mutually assured destruction was a far larger deterrent than anything that happened in Southeast Asia.
David in Cal Says:
April 29th, 2010 at 8:53 am
Steven, one cannot prove what would have happened if we hadn’t intervened in Vietnam. But, IMHO that our intervention in Vietnam may have prevented the Soviet Union from taking control of Laos, and perhaps other Asian countries.
Gary in Chevy Chase Says:
April 29th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Steve, thanks for adding your last paragraph. I think that Viet Nam was totally different that the current conflict.
Ian Says:
May 4th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Steve:

Would you please give yourself a break and watch something funny and light at 4AM when you are thinking about your father? Try ‘Kentucky Fried Movie’ or professional wrestling. Seriously, you need to take care of yourself and My Lai will still be there when things settle down.

Ian

New Friends and Old Massacres

5 Responses to “New Friends and Old Massacres”

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