ipl-logo

My Lai Massacre Speech

903 Words4 Pages

The sound of a weapon that snatches the life of an innocent person. The worry of a mother to knows that his son will not return home. The tears of the children when they saw how the soldiers killed other people mercilessly. It would be better if we decide to change the racial hatred for the compression, the luxuries for humility, the missiles for helping the people who live in poverty. All these terrible things we can prevent by means of a passive dialogue. Consecutively, one of the worst conflicts in the history of the United States was My Lai Massacre. The responsible for the spilling of innocent blood is from the soldiers called Charlie Company. My Lai was a Village with about 700 inhabitants in Vietnam. After this massacre was over, only …show more content…

Hugh Thompson was one of the biggest hero in the My Lai massacre when he tried to stop the massacre. For instance, when they arrived at the village of My Lai. Thompson saw how the people were running and trying to hide from soldiers. Suddenly, Thompson realized what they were doing was wrong of shooting children, women, and old people who posed no threat. As a result, Thomson decided to challenge the orders of his superiors and start doing what he thought was right. “Thompson and two other crewmembers landed their helicopter in front of U.S. troops firing on Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai. They pointed their guns at their fellow service members to prevent more killings and helped evacuate the villagers.” (www.democracynow.org). Notwithstanding, after this great heroic feat that Hugh Thompson did. He and Lawrence Colburn were taken to the martial court to testify their misbehavior by not following the orders of their superiors. Thompson testified that his teammates were not to blame for what happened in My Lai. The only culprit was Thompson for not following the orders of his superiors. “Thompson, on the other hand, was shunned for years by fellow soldiers. He received death threats and was once told by a congressman that he was the only American who should be punished over My Lai.”

Show More
Related
417 Words | 2 Pages

When a trooper captured my husband, Timothy, I said with my fiery temper: “I wouldn? na been taken by the likes of you.” When Timothy was acquitted, our marriage was disintegrated. After that, I was left to raise my 6 children alone. I was a brave woman who sewed the flag, survived the tough times and assisted with the amputation of Peter Lalor’s arm.

Read More
151 Words | 1 Pages

This commemorative coin was based off of the Capitol building in Colonial Williamsburg. The Capitol was where Patrick Henry gave his speech Caesar Brutus. This speech was very inspirational and important to the colonists. This is why on the front side of the coin Patrick Henry’s face is shown along with his famous words “Give me liberty, or give me death!” These very inspirational words are a sign of liberty which is why on the back is the Grand Union Flag.

Read More
368 Words | 2 Pages

In The things They Carried, by Tim O’brien in that field there are two people that take responsibility for Kiowa’s death, whether it be directly or indirectly, they truly had not no control of what would happen that night. Jimmy Cross blames him self for the death of Kiowa because he chose the position and listened to the orders from the top. He could have lied and change their location to protect his men but he did not. The other solider who took responsibility was the young boy that was never named. The boy had been distracted and had a lapse in his judgment.

Read More
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.

Read More
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.

Read More
831 Words | 4 Pages

Tim O’Brien can’t wrap his head around the idea that people are dying for no reason. A significant part of the atrocity in My Lai Massacre was the desperation and lack of leadership behind the mission. America was not professional in how they handled the situation and did not take it seriously. As a result, they have made improvements and adjustments to make sure another tragedy like this will never happen again.

Read More
764 Words | 4 Pages

“Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.” Curt Lemon, Norman Bowker and Tim O’Brien have their own stories about how they were cowards and courageous during the war. These three men knew if they did not do what they did, they would have been cowards. It would have made them feel embarrassed. The first story is about Curt Lemon during a visit with the dentist (O’Brien, 82-84).

Read More
674 Words | 3 Pages

On April 4, 1967 Doctor Martin Luther King Jr gave the speech, “Beyond Vietnam-A time to Break Silence.” In this powerful speech Dr. King addresses his followers, and explains why the same people who are advocating for civil rights, should also protest the war in Vietnam. Dr. King’s main appeal is towards pathos because he is explaining his reasons, most of which are moral in some way. Dr. King develops the central claim of the speech by explaining how the war is taking away resources from the poor, how the soldiers are disproportionately poor people, and lastly how the war is completely against his morals. His central claim of the speech revolves around war being an enemy of the poor.

Read More
992 Words | 4 Pages

These individuals had to follow their orders and ignore their own moral laws to prevent disobeying the law. This shows how people need to focus more on following their

Read More
1205 Words | 5 Pages

It was not Tim’s sense of nationalist loyalties that caved him; rather, it was helplessness and his reputation that was at risk. Tim O’Brien longed to be that “secret hero” or “Lone Ranger” in order to impress those around him. However, he ends up learning that courage does not come in finite quantities. He finds himself resenting authority, “If you support a war, if you think it’s worth the price, that’s fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line”. No matter how much he may find the law cruel and inhuman, he has is too prideful and decides to comply with the rules.

Read More
1101 Words | 5 Pages

The Vietnam war took a major death toll in Vietnam, United States, South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia. Just in the U.S., “more than 58,000 American soldiers were killed while more than 150,000 others wounded”. On both sides, there were almost 2 million civilians dead and 1.1 simply on the Vietnamese side. The My Lai Massacre, where soldiers brutally killed Vietnamese children and mothers, presents an example where the war mentally changed the soldiers in the war in a very horrendous way. On the other hand, the United States took brutal losses in the Tet Offensive, where the Vietcong slaughtered over 100 towns and twelve United States air bases.

Read More
645 Words | 3 Pages

Answering the call to serve causes enough moral conflict and killing for the war only adds to it. Tim O’Brien struggles to make sense of his thoughts after killing a Vietnamese man while outside of My Khe. O’Brien writes “The Man I Killed” detailing how the man’s disfigured appearance looks repetitively, and dreaming about what the man’s life must of been like before his death. Afterwards O’Brien reflects saying, “It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy…”

Read More
1275 Words | 6 Pages

On the 30th anniversary of robotic exploration of Mars, NASA selected the name "Sojourner" for the first rover slated to explore the Red Planet, naming it after Sojourner Truth (“NASA Names,”1997). Sojourner Truth was an African-American escaped slave and women's rights activist who rose to prominence as an abolitionist leader and to be a testament to the humanity of enslaved people. The slaves freed before her were not bold enough to do what she has done in her lifespan. Freed African Americans wanted to keep their freedom, so they accepted less than they deserved. I argue, by standing strong in her Christian faith, Sojourner Truth was one of the most instrumental voices changing slaves’ perception of their status and the perception of a

Read More
1236 Words | 5 Pages

Every time he spoke in defense of himself, he claimed that he just simply followed the order from his superiors. Obedience is the vocation of a solider, but it does not mean solider must carry out unethically inhuman order without any thinking. Blind obedience in this case caused a huge massacre to

Read More
465 Words | 2 Pages

One day in the dugout in no man 's land, the English soldiers are commanded by Sergeant Hanley to attack the German trenches. Charlie disobeys this command since he wants to stay and help Tommo who is injured. This leads Charlie to face a court martial for cowardice. When Charlie attends the court martial, the only witness he has to speak for him is Sergeant Hanley as the other soldiers have been moved to another sector, and the judges believe Tommo’s statements would be biased, being Charlie’s brother. (Morpurgo, 185~194)

Read More

More about My Lai Massacre Speech

Related Topics

Open Document