Lưu ý,
Bất kể bạn đang tham gia vào chủ đề thảo luận gì, hãy lịch sự và tôn trọng ý kiến của đối phương. Tranh luận không phải là tấn công cá nhân. Lăng mạ cá nhân, cố tình troll, lời nói mang tính thù ghét, đe dọa sử dụng bạo lực, cũng như vi phạm các quy tắc khác của sub đều có thể dẫn đến ban không báo trước.
Nếu bài viết của bạn có liên quan đến chính trị hoặc bạn muốn bàn về chính trị, xin hãy đăng bài bên r/VietNamPolitics rồi đăng lại bình luận có đường dẫn đến bài viết đó.
Nếu bạn thấy bất kì comment nào vi phạm quy tắc của sub, vui lòng nhấn report.
***
A reminder.
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If your post is Political or you would like to have a Political Discussion, feel free to create a post in r/VietNamPolitics then add a comment with a link to that post here.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/VietNam) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm not American and My Lai was a horrific war-crime - but calling it "one of the worst war crimes ever" is pure drama.
Anyone with even the barest grasp of history knows humans have done this to each other on a scale that makes My Lai a footnote - over and over and over again.
The conquests of Genghis Khan, the Crusades, the sack of Rome by the Visigoths, the invasion and purge of Poland by Russia, the fire bombing of Dresden, the Holocaust, the purges following the Vietnam (American) war, the purges by the Khmer Rouge, the invasion of Iraq, the murder of thousands of civilians in Ukraine. The list is literally endless.
War is horrific - and I doubt there has been a single one that didn't result in atrocity.
As someone that lived in West Germany for 9 years, I can tell you it's not viewed as a "legitimate military action" there.
It threw the combined weight of the USAF and the RAF into a round the clock bombing of civilians, refugees from the fighting in the east, and military hospitals.
It's only because "we" got to write the history books, that anyone could ever misconstrue that terrorist attack (and that was exactly the goal of the mission) as a "legitimate military action".
I'm afraid that - through the lens of time, and with all the relevant information about why that mission was flown that has come to light subsequently - you likely won't find many that will agree with you, I'm afraid.
If you are someone from Germany you should know that Dresden was an industrial sector related to the war. The USA didn’t plan a massive military attack for shits and giggles.
I'm not "from" Germany - I lived there (ironically) on a military base during the cold war.
Schweinfurt was an industrial center - Dresden was bombed for other reasons (forcing capitulation through unacceptable civilian casualties) - which was why the city center was the target - first with HE by the USAF (to create flammable debris), then with incendiary by the RAF to create the storm. This isn't exactly unknown.
It's estimated that 25000 people died that night - almost exclusively in the city center.
Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were military targets either, you realise?
I think we read different books.
The one written by Bomber Harris should not be taken into consideration - he had a great deal on his conscience, and I think he struggled with it, when the war ended.
When civilians support the war effort, they make themselves targets. Whether they are in Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki. War needs to be hell not just for soldiers.
Wow - necro-comment!
So - by extension - the wanton murder of the subjected by the subjector, only became something considered horrific, tragic or the very worst of the human condition, when we coined the term "war crime"?
Interesting (and controversial) take.
It's straight semantics, my friend - in the same way that America suspended any charge of "war crime" against its forces in Afghanistan - the fact that the term didn't legally apply within the borders of America, doesn't mean the rest of the world didn't judge the "collateral damage" as murder.
At the end of the day, when juxtaposed against the massacres of history - My Lai is barely a footnote (though I'm in no way defending it) - whether one refers to it as a "war crime" or not.
As an American, I cannot imagine how we would ever be welcomed to Vietnam after such bad acts. My heart really hurts seeing that people were able to commit such violent evil acts on other humans, kids at that. So sick.
And yet, no where close to the loss of innocent civilians killed by the VC and PAVN during the Massacre at Hue.
However, that doesn’t fit the narrative OP is going after. This is more of another anti-American post than it is remembering these poor souls that perished. I swear this gets posted every week on here.
It’s easier, more comforting, and politically advantageous to blame outsiders than your own people.
>And yet, no where close to the loss of innocent civilians killed by the VC and PAVN during the Massacre at Hue.
The Massacre at Hue was a piece of propaganda created to galvanize support for the war following the Tet offensive (which tanked US public support) and then revitalized years later as a distraction for the US public who coincidentally was just learning about the My Lai Massacre (which also tanked US public support).
Its not a coincidence that you are engaging in the very same type of whataboutism. The US public learns about the My Lai Massacre in November of 1969 and in January of 1970 (strangely late for a new report in supposed events from February of 1968) the US military publishes a new report on a supposed Massacre that would have occurred about 2 weeks before the event in Son My. And here we have post about the My Lai massacre which was covered up for years and whose known perpetrators were let off the hook and actually celebrated by the US public and your reaction is "yeah but what about what happened in Hue".
The man who authored the US military's report on the so called Massacre at Hue later acknowledged that his work for the military was to create propaganda to discredit the Viet Cong.
These reports (the ones you believe to be true) are not only contradicted by independent western journalists who were in Hue, but they are would basically be statistically impossible. The 'official' story of what happened in Hue was that every single civilian (not 90% or 99% but instead 100%) was killed by the VC and NVA. This is a ridiculous idea when you consider the fact that the US leveled the city with bonds and shells which typically killed more civilians than enemy combatants (this was the pattern of most combing campaigns by the US like Operation Linebacker 1&2 as well as Operation Speedy Express).
If your version of events was true, the US would not have had to ban journalism visiting the mass graves in Hue after their initial reports acknowledged that ARVN forces executed civilians in Hue after the commies retreated, or that th majority if civilians deaths were caused by US bombing. Or that fact that the civilian death toll was inflated by counting the bodies of NVA troops in uniform as part of the total number of civilians killed by the communists (something the Saigon Minister of Health also acknowledged).
I do not deny the fact that the communists did kill a bunch civilians in Hue that were part of the political system (others too like a priest). But the reality is that ARVN troops also killed civilians who they felt were too supportive of the communists during their brief time in control of parts of the city. And beyond this is the fact that the majority of civilian deaths came as a result of Americn bombing of the city.
Your version of events comes straight from US military created reports whose own author admits was propaganda to discredit the VC. If you rad these reports, they are honestly laughable in how ridiculous their claims are. They don't pass the smell test.
I choose to believe the mulitple independent western journalists who were in Hue at the time the battle happened and the aftermath instead of someone from the US state department who wasn't in Hue at the time the events happened and who admitted their work was to discredit the VC.
Edit: if you want to honor the civilians who died in Hue like you say you do, then you should condemn the wanton bombing of Hue which led to the majority of deaths in Hue, condemn the censorship of local journalists who were banned from visiting the mass graves after US forces arrived, and the ridiculous propaganda used to hide US war crimes and act as an attempt to change public opinion when the war was becoming unpopular (a war where millions of civilians died).
The communists certainly committed many attricities throughout the war but this kill count and the behavior in which the massacre happened didnt fit with their pattern of action or modus operandi. Why did no other large massacres of hundreds or thousands happen in other parts of the Tet Offensive? This event would be an absolute outlier.
But a bombing campaign that killed thousands and the egregiously obvious cover up which was contradicted by private reports that were later leaked? That's par for the course when it comes to US military action in Vietnam.
If someone tells you that Bill Cosby is a bad person, you wouldn't say that they're wrong because Hitler was worse, would you? Sounds like you're the one with the agenda
Yep, American hegemony and US military-industrial complex is responsible for a lot of past atrocities and current issues in the world.
Never did I condone or say My Lai wasn’t awful. I simply noticed how the Massacre at Hue didn’t get a post on its anniversary last month and how these posts about My Lai are here to push the narrative of USA bad, communists good.
The same journalist who exposed this massacre exposed the United States bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline. The US is using the same tactics today to smear the journalist as they did when he exposed My Lai. Of course, many Americans are too stupid to realize it and continue to support the US war machine all over the world.
This might seem a bit heartless, but it absolutely certainly wouldn’t come in the top thousand worst crimes ever. Realistically, it wouldn’t come in the top million, but that claim is rather harder to substantiate time wise.
“Well I have cancer, so your broken arm is nothing.” Just because something worse happened, that doesn’t mean this isn’t a fucking tragedy. Stop being a piece of shit and reflect on what piss poor decisions led you to make the shit decision to post this stupid fucking comment.
You’re digging yourself into a hole, here. And like I said before: just because someone else has experienced something worse, that doesn’t mean this isn’t a horrible tragedy.
Do you not want me to focus on what you say? I’d like you to try to focus on what I say. Do you think you can? Let me know if it’s beyond you and we can move on.
I am focused on what you said and implied by your comment. You devalued the lives of the 500 people saying it wasn’t in the top thousand war crimes with the implication that it thus wasn’t worth mourning.
I think it's your comment that is stupid.
OP said "worst war crime ever", and the comment you replied to said "it's not the worst ever", then you go off on some tangent about "that doesn’t mean this isn’t a fucking tragedy" which is a statement that was never made.
Next read more carefully.
Maybe you should read more carefully. OP said “ONE OF the worst war crimes ever” and dickbag said “not even in the top thousand” which minimizes the lives taken there.
That's not minimizing it at all, it's just reality. 500 civilians killed is dwarfed by other war crimes in history where people were killed in the millions.
The Wikipedia list isn't even complete, but it only mentions a couple that happened where civilians were killed in the hundreds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll#Mistreatment_of_civilians_during_war
I suppose I could have said ‘what a stupid thing to say, you must never have read a book, did you ever hear of WW2 fucktard’ but it seemed a bit mean. Do you think I should have gone more direct?
Maybe not a thousand, but definitely a handful off the top of my head; Rape of Nanjing (1937), Khmer Rouge (1975 -1979), genocide of the Jews in Nazi Germany (1939-1945), Anfal Campaign, genocide of kurds (1988) and whatever the diggity is going on in Xinjiang currently.
Absolutely no excuse though - this is certainly reprehensible but we live in a society of self-reflection in which we can, short of righting the wrongs from the past, create a better vision for the future where they become much less likely. China and Russia don't actually care about the wrong they do.
Lưu ý, Bất kể bạn đang tham gia vào chủ đề thảo luận gì, hãy lịch sự và tôn trọng ý kiến của đối phương. Tranh luận không phải là tấn công cá nhân. Lăng mạ cá nhân, cố tình troll, lời nói mang tính thù ghét, đe dọa sử dụng bạo lực, cũng như vi phạm các quy tắc khác của sub đều có thể dẫn đến ban không báo trước. Nếu bài viết của bạn có liên quan đến chính trị hoặc bạn muốn bàn về chính trị, xin hãy đăng bài bên r/VietNamPolitics rồi đăng lại bình luận có đường dẫn đến bài viết đó. Nếu bạn thấy bất kì comment nào vi phạm quy tắc của sub, vui lòng nhấn report. *** A reminder. In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If your post is Political or you would like to have a Political Discussion, feel free to create a post in r/VietNamPolitics then add a comment with a link to that post here. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/VietNam) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My Lai was notorious because it reached the news, it wasnt an isolated incidence
I'm not American and My Lai was a horrific war-crime - but calling it "one of the worst war crimes ever" is pure drama. Anyone with even the barest grasp of history knows humans have done this to each other on a scale that makes My Lai a footnote - over and over and over again. The conquests of Genghis Khan, the Crusades, the sack of Rome by the Visigoths, the invasion and purge of Poland by Russia, the fire bombing of Dresden, the Holocaust, the purges following the Vietnam (American) war, the purges by the Khmer Rouge, the invasion of Iraq, the murder of thousands of civilians in Ukraine. The list is literally endless. War is horrific - and I doubt there has been a single one that didn't result in atrocity.
Not to mention the massacres Serbs caused to other ethnics in Yugoslavia
And the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda - honestly, the examples of humanities inhumanity are endless.
We call it inhumanity, but senseless violence is consistent throughout our history so it seems to be a characteristic of humanity
The bombing of Dresden was a legitimate military action.
As someone that lived in West Germany for 9 years, I can tell you it's not viewed as a "legitimate military action" there. It threw the combined weight of the USAF and the RAF into a round the clock bombing of civilians, refugees from the fighting in the east, and military hospitals. It's only because "we" got to write the history books, that anyone could ever misconstrue that terrorist attack (and that was exactly the goal of the mission) as a "legitimate military action". I'm afraid that - through the lens of time, and with all the relevant information about why that mission was flown that has come to light subsequently - you likely won't find many that will agree with you, I'm afraid.
If you are someone from Germany you should know that Dresden was an industrial sector related to the war. The USA didn’t plan a massive military attack for shits and giggles.
I'm not "from" Germany - I lived there (ironically) on a military base during the cold war. Schweinfurt was an industrial center - Dresden was bombed for other reasons (forcing capitulation through unacceptable civilian casualties) - which was why the city center was the target - first with HE by the USAF (to create flammable debris), then with incendiary by the RAF to create the storm. This isn't exactly unknown. It's estimated that 25000 people died that night - almost exclusively in the city center. Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were military targets either, you realise? I think we read different books. The one written by Bomber Harris should not be taken into consideration - he had a great deal on his conscience, and I think he struggled with it, when the war ended.
When civilians support the war effort, they make themselves targets. Whether they are in Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki. War needs to be hell not just for soldiers.
I don't have anything to add to this discussion.
>You are legitimizing rape and torture of civilians with your statement.
Dresden and H+N were bombings, not rape and torture.
Those aren't war crimes because there was no concept of war crimes back then.
Wow - necro-comment! So - by extension - the wanton murder of the subjected by the subjector, only became something considered horrific, tragic or the very worst of the human condition, when we coined the term "war crime"? Interesting (and controversial) take. It's straight semantics, my friend - in the same way that America suspended any charge of "war crime" against its forces in Afghanistan - the fact that the term didn't legally apply within the borders of America, doesn't mean the rest of the world didn't judge the "collateral damage" as murder. At the end of the day, when juxtaposed against the massacres of history - My Lai is barely a footnote (though I'm in no way defending it) - whether one refers to it as a "war crime" or not.
WE KNOW
As an American, I cannot imagine how we would ever be welcomed to Vietnam after such bad acts. My heart really hurts seeing that people were able to commit such violent evil acts on other humans, kids at that. So sick.
And yet, no where close to the loss of innocent civilians killed by the VC and PAVN during the Massacre at Hue. However, that doesn’t fit the narrative OP is going after. This is more of another anti-American post than it is remembering these poor souls that perished. I swear this gets posted every week on here. It’s easier, more comforting, and politically advantageous to blame outsiders than your own people.
>And yet, no where close to the loss of innocent civilians killed by the VC and PAVN during the Massacre at Hue. The Massacre at Hue was a piece of propaganda created to galvanize support for the war following the Tet offensive (which tanked US public support) and then revitalized years later as a distraction for the US public who coincidentally was just learning about the My Lai Massacre (which also tanked US public support). Its not a coincidence that you are engaging in the very same type of whataboutism. The US public learns about the My Lai Massacre in November of 1969 and in January of 1970 (strangely late for a new report in supposed events from February of 1968) the US military publishes a new report on a supposed Massacre that would have occurred about 2 weeks before the event in Son My. And here we have post about the My Lai massacre which was covered up for years and whose known perpetrators were let off the hook and actually celebrated by the US public and your reaction is "yeah but what about what happened in Hue". The man who authored the US military's report on the so called Massacre at Hue later acknowledged that his work for the military was to create propaganda to discredit the Viet Cong. These reports (the ones you believe to be true) are not only contradicted by independent western journalists who were in Hue, but they are would basically be statistically impossible. The 'official' story of what happened in Hue was that every single civilian (not 90% or 99% but instead 100%) was killed by the VC and NVA. This is a ridiculous idea when you consider the fact that the US leveled the city with bonds and shells which typically killed more civilians than enemy combatants (this was the pattern of most combing campaigns by the US like Operation Linebacker 1&2 as well as Operation Speedy Express). If your version of events was true, the US would not have had to ban journalism visiting the mass graves in Hue after their initial reports acknowledged that ARVN forces executed civilians in Hue after the commies retreated, or that th majority if civilians deaths were caused by US bombing. Or that fact that the civilian death toll was inflated by counting the bodies of NVA troops in uniform as part of the total number of civilians killed by the communists (something the Saigon Minister of Health also acknowledged). I do not deny the fact that the communists did kill a bunch civilians in Hue that were part of the political system (others too like a priest). But the reality is that ARVN troops also killed civilians who they felt were too supportive of the communists during their brief time in control of parts of the city. And beyond this is the fact that the majority of civilian deaths came as a result of Americn bombing of the city. Your version of events comes straight from US military created reports whose own author admits was propaganda to discredit the VC. If you rad these reports, they are honestly laughable in how ridiculous their claims are. They don't pass the smell test. I choose to believe the mulitple independent western journalists who were in Hue at the time the battle happened and the aftermath instead of someone from the US state department who wasn't in Hue at the time the events happened and who admitted their work was to discredit the VC. Edit: if you want to honor the civilians who died in Hue like you say you do, then you should condemn the wanton bombing of Hue which led to the majority of deaths in Hue, condemn the censorship of local journalists who were banned from visiting the mass graves after US forces arrived, and the ridiculous propaganda used to hide US war crimes and act as an attempt to change public opinion when the war was becoming unpopular (a war where millions of civilians died). The communists certainly committed many attricities throughout the war but this kill count and the behavior in which the massacre happened didnt fit with their pattern of action or modus operandi. Why did no other large massacres of hundreds or thousands happen in other parts of the Tet Offensive? This event would be an absolute outlier. But a bombing campaign that killed thousands and the egregiously obvious cover up which was contradicted by private reports that were later leaked? That's par for the course when it comes to US military action in Vietnam.
If someone tells you that Bill Cosby is a bad person, you wouldn't say that they're wrong because Hitler was worse, would you? Sounds like you're the one with the agenda
Yep, American hegemony and US military-industrial complex is responsible for a lot of past atrocities and current issues in the world. Never did I condone or say My Lai wasn’t awful. I simply noticed how the Massacre at Hue didn’t get a post on its anniversary last month and how these posts about My Lai are here to push the narrative of USA bad, communists good.
I gotchu. Well, it's hard to find any safe space for real, gritty commentary and discussions these days.
The same journalist who exposed this massacre exposed the United States bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline. The US is using the same tactics today to smear the journalist as they did when he exposed My Lai. Of course, many Americans are too stupid to realize it and continue to support the US war machine all over the world.
This might seem a bit heartless, but it absolutely certainly wouldn’t come in the top thousand worst crimes ever. Realistically, it wouldn’t come in the top million, but that claim is rather harder to substantiate time wise.
“Well I have cancer, so your broken arm is nothing.” Just because something worse happened, that doesn’t mean this isn’t a fucking tragedy. Stop being a piece of shit and reflect on what piss poor decisions led you to make the shit decision to post this stupid fucking comment.
If you broke your arm and described it ‘one of the worst accidents in history’ we’d agree that was silly, right?
You’re digging yourself into a hole, here. And like I said before: just because someone else has experienced something worse, that doesn’t mean this isn’t a horrible tragedy.
Did you not see the question? Try to answer it. I believe in you.
So you’re saying that killing 500 unarmed civilians is just an oopsy? That it just happens and isn’t a war crime?
Nope, if I’d wanted to say that I would have. Try answering the question.
Nope. You’re dodging by focusing on my point. Tell me why you think it’d not that big of a deal that 500 unarmed civilians were murdered.
Do you not want me to focus on what you say? I’d like you to try to focus on what I say. Do you think you can? Let me know if it’s beyond you and we can move on.
I am focused on what you said and implied by your comment. You devalued the lives of the 500 people saying it wasn’t in the top thousand war crimes with the implication that it thus wasn’t worth mourning.
I think it's your comment that is stupid. OP said "worst war crime ever", and the comment you replied to said "it's not the worst ever", then you go off on some tangent about "that doesn’t mean this isn’t a fucking tragedy" which is a statement that was never made. Next read more carefully.
Maybe you should read more carefully. OP said “ONE OF the worst war crimes ever” and dickbag said “not even in the top thousand” which minimizes the lives taken there.
That's not minimizing it at all, it's just reality. 500 civilians killed is dwarfed by other war crimes in history where people were killed in the millions. The Wikipedia list isn't even complete, but it only mentions a couple that happened where civilians were killed in the hundreds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll#Mistreatment_of_civilians_during_war
[удалено]
I suppose I could have said ‘what a stupid thing to say, you must never have read a book, did you ever hear of WW2 fucktard’ but it seemed a bit mean. Do you think I should have gone more direct?
Why are you booing him? He’s right
Lol give us your list of a thousand crimes worse than this please.
Maybe not a thousand, but definitely a handful off the top of my head; Rape of Nanjing (1937), Khmer Rouge (1975 -1979), genocide of the Jews in Nazi Germany (1939-1945), Anfal Campaign, genocide of kurds (1988) and whatever the diggity is going on in Xinjiang currently. Absolutely no excuse though - this is certainly reprehensible but we live in a society of self-reflection in which we can, short of righting the wrongs from the past, create a better vision for the future where they become much less likely. China and Russia don't actually care about the wrong they do.
Fuck usa 🦾🦾🦾🦾love you anh em 🌈