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Examples Of Innocent In Vietnam War

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The Innocents in War How would one describe the meaning of “innocent”? To be innocent is to be guiltless and harmless. In war, can anyone be innocent? During the Vietnam war in the 60’s, a mass killing happened in the small village of My Lai. American soldiers marched into the village and brutally raped and murdered over 400 unarmed civilians. There was only one reason in their minds for doing this heinous act… America and Vietnam were at war. They weren’t at war with the My Lai Village, but they were at war with Vietnam, which placed hatred in the hearts of the American soldiers and in a moment of rage, they killed anyone who was Vietnamese, which caused outrage all over the world. During the late 60’s, the United States of America was at war with Vietnam. U.S soldiers would march through South Vietnam causing destruction and problematic …show more content…

There is American Indian or Alaska Native. Black or African American. Asian, such as Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and of course, Vietnamese. Discrimination is widely known in these areas of the world. Discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex. You can clearly see that the American Troops targeted the My Lai village because of their race and where they came from. While at war with an enemy, you are going to hate anyone associated with that enemy and U.S soldiers didn’t care that the My Lai village were unarmed people, not at war with them. “They also condemned what the National Review described as the "uncontrollable impulse not to blame the particular criminal, but rather to vilify America generally.” (Flamm). There shouldn’t be a blame put on a single “particular criminal” but the crime was committed by an entire group of soldiers and should’ve taken full responsibility. Although, they were under orders, they were still grown men that know what is right from

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896 Words | 4 Pages

The official version of My Lai made the massacre sound as if it was an effective search-and-destroy mission that had killed suspected enemy soldiers of the Vietcong. “[Leader of the operation, Lieutenant Colonel Frank] Barker said to his superiors in his combat action report, noting that the ‘operation was well planned, well executed and successful.’” (Gorn et al 2010) In reality this was a massacre of over 500 innocent

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1522 Words | 7 Pages

Reading Response Two In the village of My Lia in Vietnam on March 16th 1968 roughly five hundred innocent Vietnamese villagers were executed by, an enraged United State army called Charlie Company which, after decades of being covered up and buried to keep the United States Armed forces images polished will go down in the annals of war history as the My Lia Massacre. Sgt. Ron Haeberle a photographer with Charlie company snapped pictures of burned homes littered with charred villagers and corpses strewn through the dirt paths along with other war photos, which Haeberle published to Life and Time magazines in November of 1969 catapulting the crimes committed to national as well as international spotlight.

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951 Words | 4 Pages

and i did not take the time to think about who i was killing in terms of age or gender”. Calley did not speak of doing “what he was commanded to do” with any errors of judgement. he only stated how he was following orders. So in other words he thinks no wrong in his actions. In Calley’s mind he believes that him and his soldiers faced constant attack after attack by guerrilla fighters , so there was no distinction between enemies and civilians.

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1289 Words | 6 Pages

On March 16, 1968, US Army soldiers from the Company C of the 23rd Americal Division marched into the village of My Lai in Vietnam on a search and destroy mission. Although the US soldiers intended to conduct a “combat assault”[ Michal R. Belknap, The Vietnam war on Trial (Lawrece, Kansas: the University Press of Kansas, 2002), 57] on the village which was thought to be the location of the 48th Vietcong Battalion after a tip off, it turned into a mass-killing of hundreds of innocent civilians and noncombatants. After the slaughter at My Lai, the Americal Division deemed the event a success[ Belknap, 78], however once word got out of the massacre a year later, it was met with outrage by the public. Although the killing of civilians during

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1185 Words | 5 Pages

U.S. soldiers are trained to follow orders, which is exactly what they did as hundreds of villagers were indiscriminately killed in the My Lai Massacre. Even if the soldiers were acting under confusing orders, that is a failure of the chain of command, and even if the killings were orchestrated by a few incompetent officers, those officers never should have been placed in leadership roles. The real tragedy of My Lai represents an entire system of willful negligence and lack of accountability on the part of the military. Thus the responsibility for the massacre lies with the men involved, but also with the military chain of command that gave the order and then tried to cover it up.

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937 Words | 4 Pages

In A Viet Cong Memoir, we receive excellent first hands accounts of events that unfolded in Vietnam during the Vietnam War from the author of this autobiography: Truong Nhu Tang. Truong was Vietnamese at heart, growing up in Saigon, but he studied in Paris for a time where he met and learned from the future leader Ho Chi Minh. Truong was able to learn from Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ideas and gain a great political perspective of the conflicts arising in Vietnam during the war. His autobiography shows the readers the perspective of the average Vietnamese citizen (especially those involved with the NLF) and the attitudes towards war with the United States. In the book, Truong exclaims that although many people may say the Americans never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam — it is irrelevant.

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1376 Words | 6 Pages

The period from 1960’s to 1970’s was a hardship time for Americans because of Vietnam invasion. In an attempt to contain and defeat communism, the United States, oblivious of the enemy capability and filled with pride, invaded Vietnam at a cost of large financial expense and human lives. North Vietnamese military supported by forces of China and the Soviet Union fought the American force ferociously and was able to force America to end its invasion in 1975. As with most other third world countries, Vietnam also has a long history of colonization by European powers.

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436 Words | 2 Pages

All the killing and torturing of prisoners, the massacre of My Lai and etc. was not right. This is not how people should treat other human beings. One soldier in the documentary said he wonders about the families of the Vietnamese he just killed. He felt that the Vietnamese was fighting to reunify

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855 Words | 4 Pages

"There is not involved day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai, I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry. " Former lieutenant William Calley spoke these words at a Kiwanis Club, where he gave a public apology to the audience for his part in the My Lai Massacre 40 years overdue. A while after the massacre he was sentenced to life imprisonment, which was later commuted. Even though President Nixon reduced Calley’s sentence, the decision was unjustified because the jury found him guilty and he also confessed to the crime.

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702 Words | 3 Pages

The Vietnam War was a long battle of seventeen long years. There were many causes leading up to this traumatic event. The U.S. got involved because of the spread of communism throughout Asia. The novel, The Things They Carried is about how morality can change both how a soldier thinks and feels. In Tim O’Brien’s historical fiction novel, The Things They Carried, both the physical and geographical surroundings shape the psychological traits of the characters during the following events: Mary Anne’s disappearance, the death of Curt Lemon and Mitchell Sander’s unbelievable story.

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112 Words | 1 Pages

The My Lai Massacre was a significant event in the Vietnam War. Hundreds of innocent villagers were murdered by a portion of the Charlie Company. Most of the victims were elderly, 70-80, and children, as young as three. They also raped women, clubbed people, executed them (then most likely dumped into a mass grave), and carved C’s into their chests. A cover-up was created but it was no use, the American people found out.

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496 Words | 2 Pages

It is quite difficult to compare two wars that happened 180 years apart from each other, the Vietnam war 1955 to 1975, and the American Revolutionary war 1775 to 1783. Yes, both wars are all that different from each other, in fact I would say that they were the two least similar wars in American history. These wars are very similar because they both used guerilla warfare, a form of irregular warfare that uses tactics such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, and mobility to fight a larger less mobile military force. However a major difference in the wars was that the Revolutionary war was fought to gain independence, while the Vietnam war was fought to maintain independence. Another difference is that the U.S. were ‘Victors’ in the Revolutionary war, and were not so in the Vietnam war.

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1592 Words | 7 Pages

The soldiers initiated a ruthless and unobservant killing spree. To the soldiers everyone was an enemy. They killed old men, women, and children. Without a second thought they murdered women with babies wrapped tightly in their arms. Not only did they kill but also soldiers raped younger women in the village or mutilated innocent citizens bodies.

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755 Words | 4 Pages

Vietnamese tactics stunned countless American soldiers to the point of committing deranged offenses out of sheer paranoia. One of these offenses known as the My Lai Massacre is the most infamous atrocity of the Vietnam War. In March of 1968, a group of U.S. troops killed hundreds of innocent Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai. Following the massacre, several of the troops were placed on trial but only one man was ever convicted. The guerilla warfare and cunning war tactics that VietCong used during the Vietnam War caused paranoia and heightened aggression throughout the

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765 Words | 4 Pages

The Vietnam War was a war the United States should have never been involved in. The “Domino Theory” was a direct cause of the war. The war resulted in much death; innocent civilians and young Americans were killed. The Vietnam war also resulted in rioting, distrust for the United States government, and the loss of many lives. 58,000 Americans were killed and 300,000 were wounded.

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