The war crime that stood out to me the most was the My Lai Massacre. I'm not going to lie, I didn't really know anything about the My Lai Massacre. I don't know whether it's me just being forgetful, or if it's actually just the lack of coverage of it in history books. The fact that American officials wanted this to be done to other human beings is beyond me. It makes it worse that, when a unit member was told to "kill everything in the village" and then to "kill everything that moves", was just as confused as us reading (Turse, 2). He had no idea why they had to massacre all these innocent people. They murdered hundreds of old men, women and children. They killed anyone and everyone, people who were just minding their own business, and people who just wanted to get through their day. The worst part: only one person who partook in this murder spree was ever convicted (Turse, 4). There is no justice and I am upset that it took so long for me to learn about this.
I feel like a huge part of the blind eye towards these crimes is the fact that these people are SEA. Nobody really cared about what happened to them as long as America was okay. Americans were so okay with ravaging their lands and killing their people because it wasn't their own and that is just disgusting. I'm sure that just like the My Lai Massacre and other war crimes committed during the Vietnam War, there are many things about the war in the Middle East that we don't know about. The root cause: probably to keep our opinions of America consistent and approving.Question: How do atrocities and war crimes like the ones given in the reading just slip through the media? Is there anything that can be done to remove the filter used to detain information from the viewer?
Sources
Turse, Nick. Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. A Metropolitan Book, 2014.
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