Hi cnyndwllr; Re: "I agree that humans are prone to exaggerate the dramatic. It does not follow, however, that such tendencies actually increased the "noise level" of the Vietnam atrocities. Kerry has been criticized for decades for simply saying that such acts were committed. I suspect that a decent percentage of those who served and who criticize him know that he was right. Their criticism has more to do with the fact that he broke the code of silence than with their disagreement with his statement. When you consider that the men who did commit atrocities and then came back to the "world," would not likely be reporting their "inhuman" acts and that, if they did, it's not likely that anyone wanted to act on such information, and when you consider that the military "strongly discouraged" such reports and found ways to classify civilian deaths of any nature as "enemy KIA," then the thesis about the rumors of atrocities being amplified by "gossipy" talk has a counter thesis that the talk of such acts would be much less than the reality."
What's particularly interesting about the above is that your post subtly contradicts its own logic. You claim that those who witness or are aware of atrocities are unlikely to report on them, but then you provide Kerry and yourself as contradictory evidence, LOL. On the one hand you're claiming that soldiers don't talk about atrocities because they don't want to be punished, but here Kerry did it quite openly and became a f'ing senator. Not only that, but other soldiers who wanted to admit their, or other's misdeeds would have found welcome arms among a substantial percentage of this polarized country.
All this oral "evidence" of widespread atrocities is common to the experience of the Allies against Germany in 1914. There were accusations of atrocities by German soldiers against allied civilians, the Belgians in particular. And just as in the present case, there were reports, after the war, from German soldiers who claimed that they personally were involved in atrocities. Undoubtedly some of them were. Where Vietnam and Belgium differ is not in the perception of the soldiers that the civilians were out to get them, but in the ability of historians to later count up the exact totals.
Both the oral reports of widescale atrocities in Vietnam and in Germany have to be placed in the historical context of those times. The simple fact is that in a situation where a substantial percentage of the population is in favor of it, you can get a fairly large number of people to agree to having witnessed pretty much anything you want. Just look at the number of people who claim they've been abducted by UFOs. I'm not saying that there were no atrocities, in fact I've repeatedly noted that atrocities are (relatively) common in guerilla war. My point is that the atrocity rate is typically highly exaggerated. The proof is not in the oral claims, but in the written evidence. In both the post Vietnam war US and the post Great War Germany, there was a political fight over the war. There was disagreement over the responsibility for the war, and there was disagreement over the level of atrocities during the war. We are all well familiar with the pacifist political groups in the US. The corresponding groups in Germany were the Socialists and Communists. They went out of their way to find soldiers who HAD been involved in atrocities, and they made as much noise about those reports as possible. But it is a fact of HISTORY that those atrocities were not widespread.
There are historical examples of regions which were depopulated using high levels of atrocity. The result is that ALL the (surviving) civilians flee for safer regions. Humans, even gooks, are extremely diligent with their own safety and they run from regions where military forces are going around killing everyone. If US forces had had body count through civilian population as a primary objective of the war, the inevitable result would have been a nearly complete flight of the local population to the cities, or to friendly territory. A good example of this would be the crap that went on in the former Yugoslavia.
Re: "Remember that in the My Lai massacre only ONE man paid a price although many men killed, abused and wounded hundreds of unarmed and helpless Vietnamese. And remember that it was long after the incident was well known to military command that the investigation was even started. No one sees, no one knows and no one acts when they don't want to see, know or act. In the close knit brotherhood of combat veterans in Vietnam, I can assure you that I would have stopped such acts if I'd have been present but if they'd happened in my unit while I was out of the field for RxR of something, I'd have tried to make sure they never happened again but I don't think I'd have turned in my buddies."
I agree with both parts of your post. The reason that the My Lai incident remained unprosecuted for so long is that the military thought just like you do(did). But at the same time, you say "I'd have tried to make sure they never happened again". Why don't you admit the truth, that you were not the only honorable man in the US military? Of course units performed atrocities that have not been discovered, I realize and admit this. What I'm saying amounts to nothing more than your own self admission, that you would have tried to prevent it from happening again.
Re: "Almost anyone who was where the fighting occurred would, I believe, be astounded that a commission would attempt to make a reasonable estimate of Vietnamese civilian dead based on "hospital admissions.""
You admit here that "where the fighting occurred" was in limited areas. It is a fact of history that when atrocity is used as a tactic by a strong military against a weak peasantry, the peasants run for safety. As far as "hospital admissions", it is a fact of warfare that the vast majority of casualties are not killed but are only wounded. Even in the hinterlands, a certain percentage of these would receive medical help in the cities.
Re: "Most of the killing was done from the air ..."
For some reason, killing civilians from the air isn't counted as an "atrocity", unless it is done by the other side.
Re: "... or by only 50 battalions of around 500 men each. That's 25,000 men doing most of the killing. Using your calculations, that would amount to more than 1 civilian for every "combat" soldier."
You've forgotten to reduce those total civilian casualties by subtracting out those killed by the enemy, by our allies, or by the South Vietnamese.
Re: "Even assuming that your number of .01 or less per soldier was correct, however, that's a lot of dead civilians at the hands of American men. When you factor in that most of the killings were not mass killings like the My Lai incident where several hundred were killed, it takes a lot of seperate incidents to kill that many people. ... Maybe it's a difference in definition, but in my view it's incorrect to say "but they just don't add up to a lot of attrocities.""
There are plenty of historical examples of war involving "a lot" of atrocities, Vietnam doesn't even make the second string.
Re: "... we aren't keeping our heads in the sand and claiming that THEY are not prone to engage in such actions."
I'm not putting my head in the sand. I've repeatedly stated on this thread that the Iraq war would result in a nasty guerilla war, and that all guerilla wars involve high levels of atrocity, and that our soldiers would inevitably perform some.
What I'm saying is that our soldiers are not "prone" to doing such things. Hell, if you want to make a big deal out of a small number of criminal acts, you might as well go whole hog and argue that our soldiers are prone to killing their girl friends, or desertion. Probably the Islamics are arguing that American women are prone to showing their breasts in public, etc. These are all examples of stereotypes, and I don't think stereotyping American soldiers as prone to atrocity is accurate (or indeed, is a point you are even trying to convey).
-- Carl |
