Having been a teenager with two baby sisters in the house and done more than my fair share of babysitting, I thought I knew what a piteous wail sounded like until I heard young, homesick draftees in their basic training barracks after lights out.
Yeah, before we lay on our moral outrage, we'd do well to think of Operation Ranch Hand in Vietnam and the use of 2,4 D (Agent Orange) a chemical defoliant that saw 20,000 sorties flown between 1961 and 1971 - the Vietnamese are living with the effects of this herbicide to this day. Lots of people (the best and the brightest) were involved in decision-making in Vietnam, and they lied to us (about outcomes and victories just out of reach for years) the way Putin is lying to his conscripts now. I'm outraged by the Ukrainian war and its senselessness. I'm glad we're doing whatever we can to end it. But I'm fresh out of outrage after our latest 20 year wars and the people we left behind (betrayed) just as in Vietnam.
I was fortunate enough to spend a good deal of time with President General Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower and it's worthwhile to repeat his feelings about war: "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
There is no magic treatment that we can administer to soldiers to free them from war's horrors before they come home so they the don't afflict their spouses and children with their pain. The evil comes home with them and often gets passed on to their children and their children's children. I can even see signs of it in my brother's children and grandchildren, a legacy from our war-damaged father.
I checked....one of the guys actually did, but nobody important. it must have been just wishful thinking, or a dream or some kind of combination thereof.
By that logic, the U.S. should be invaded, because there is a significant percentage of NeoNazis in this country as well, some of whom are in Congress.
And they will be causing some level of problem everywhere IMO... What I am wondering is by heavily arming Ukraine now, what might be the future consequences of these neo Nazi led battalions w/a lot of weaponry in a destabilized area. But I support the arming up now. It also looks like time to start sending missile defense systems to ukraine
Devastating article, Lucian. Calley took the fall for bad policy, but the policy itself dated from at least the 1898 invasion of the Philippines.
A civilian observer name Clarence Clowe wrote to Senator Hoar:
"At any time I am liable to be called upon to go out and bind and gag helpless prisoners, to strike them in the face, to knock them down when so bound, to bear them away from wife and children, at their very door, who are shrieking pitifully the while, or kneeling and kissing the hands of our officers, imploring mercy from those who seem not to know what it is, and then, with a crowd of soldiers, hold our helpless victim head downward in a tub of water in his own yard, or bind him hand and foot, attaching ropes to head and feet, and then lowering him into the depths of a well of water till life is well-nigh choked out, and the bitterness of a death is tasted, and our poor, gasping victims ask us for the poor boon of being finished off, in mercy to themselves. All these things have been done at one time or another by our men, generally in cases of trying to obtain information as to the location of arms and ammunition.
Nor can it be said that there is any general repulsion on the part of the enlisted men to taking part in these doings. I regret to have to say that, on the contrary, the majority of soldiers take a keen delight in them, and rush with joy to the making of this latest development of a Roman holiday."
The orders came from on high, including this one from Major Littleon Waller:
'I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn: the more you kill and burn, the better you will please me,' and, further, that he wanted all persons killed who were capable of bearing arms and in actual hostilities against the United States, and did, in reply to a question by Major Waller asking for an age limit, designate the limit as ten years of age. ... "
General Jacob H. Smith, however, sought to punish the entire civilian population of the Samar province. General Smith instructed Major Waller to 'kill and burn' and 'make Samar a howling wilderness." His orders stated that "he wanted everybody killed capable of bearing arms, and that he did specify all over ten years of age, as the Samar boys of that age were equally as dangerous as their elders."
It's estimated that as many as half a million Filipinos died at the hands of American soldiers, shot and raped and tortured.
So no clean hands here. As Philip Caputo wrote, “Before you leave here, Sir, you’re going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.”
Yeah, before we lay on our moral outrage, we'd do well to think of Operation Ranch Hand in Vietnam and the use of 2,4 D (Agent Orange) a chemical defoliant that saw 20,000 sorties flown between 1961 and 1971 - the Vietnamese are living with the effects of this herbicide to this day. Lots of people (the best and the brightest) were involved in decision-making in Vietnam, and they lied to us (about outcomes and victories just out of reach for years) the way Putin is lying to his conscripts now. I'm outraged by the Ukrainian war and its senselessness. I'm glad we're doing whatever we can to end it. But I'm fresh out of outrage after our latest 20 year wars and the people we left behind (betrayed) just as in Vietnam.
I was fortunate enough to spend a good deal of time with President General Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower and it's worthwhile to repeat his feelings about war: "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
There is no magic treatment that we can administer to soldiers to free them from war's horrors before they come home so they the don't afflict their spouses and children with their pain. The evil comes home with them and often gets passed on to their children and their children's children. I can even see signs of it in my brother's children and grandchildren, a legacy from our war-damaged father.
please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Calley eventually commit suicide?
Last I heard, he was selling real estate in Floriduh.
I checked....one of the guys actually did, but nobody important. it must have been just wishful thinking, or a dream or some kind of combination thereof.
I know that one of those guys did the garage thing...could it have been Medina? I'll check....
Thank for this perspective... So many useless wars and unnecessary suffering... To me though this doesn't quite seem beleivable:
For a lie, that they are ridding Ukraine of Nazis who do not exist
There is a not insignificant neo Nazi faction in Ukraine which I am sure we will be hearing about for many years into the future.
By that logic, the U.S. should be invaded, because there is a significant percentage of NeoNazis in this country as well, some of whom are in Congress.
Nowhere did I say the invasion was justified
I figure there are not insignificant Neo-Nazi factions in every country in Europe. and elsewhere....
And they will be causing some level of problem everywhere IMO... What I am wondering is by heavily arming Ukraine now, what might be the future consequences of these neo Nazi led battalions w/a lot of weaponry in a destabilized area. But I support the arming up now. It also looks like time to start sending missile defense systems to ukraine
Devastating article, Lucian. Calley took the fall for bad policy, but the policy itself dated from at least the 1898 invasion of the Philippines.
A civilian observer name Clarence Clowe wrote to Senator Hoar:
"At any time I am liable to be called upon to go out and bind and gag helpless prisoners, to strike them in the face, to knock them down when so bound, to bear them away from wife and children, at their very door, who are shrieking pitifully the while, or kneeling and kissing the hands of our officers, imploring mercy from those who seem not to know what it is, and then, with a crowd of soldiers, hold our helpless victim head downward in a tub of water in his own yard, or bind him hand and foot, attaching ropes to head and feet, and then lowering him into the depths of a well of water till life is well-nigh choked out, and the bitterness of a death is tasted, and our poor, gasping victims ask us for the poor boon of being finished off, in mercy to themselves. All these things have been done at one time or another by our men, generally in cases of trying to obtain information as to the location of arms and ammunition.
Nor can it be said that there is any general repulsion on the part of the enlisted men to taking part in these doings. I regret to have to say that, on the contrary, the majority of soldiers take a keen delight in them, and rush with joy to the making of this latest development of a Roman holiday."
The orders came from on high, including this one from Major Littleon Waller:
'I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn: the more you kill and burn, the better you will please me,' and, further, that he wanted all persons killed who were capable of bearing arms and in actual hostilities against the United States, and did, in reply to a question by Major Waller asking for an age limit, designate the limit as ten years of age. ... "
General Jacob H. Smith, however, sought to punish the entire civilian population of the Samar province. General Smith instructed Major Waller to 'kill and burn' and 'make Samar a howling wilderness." His orders stated that "he wanted everybody killed capable of bearing arms, and that he did specify all over ten years of age, as the Samar boys of that age were equally as dangerous as their elders."
It's estimated that as many as half a million Filipinos died at the hands of American soldiers, shot and raped and tortured.
So no clean hands here. As Philip Caputo wrote, “Before you leave here, Sir, you’re going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.”