What good came from the My Lai Massacre?

Question

Because for our project, the theme is triumph and tragedy. The tragedy is self explanitory, but what could the triumph be?

Answer 1

The triumph was the freedom of the press. The first part of it came from a news report by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. To back up his story, the press published the photos to prove the unbelievable action. Without them it is doubtful that Lt Calley would have been brought before a court martial. Because of the photos and supporting story he was found culpable.

Below are pix that demonstrate the triumph:

http://www.nam-vet.net/mylai.jpg

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/vietnam/vietphotos/17.jpg.jpg


This case didn't die. The news media kept it alive with more photos of Calley:

http://www.vietnamwar.com/williamcalleystockade.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/65000/images/_65065_calley150.jpg

It's doubtful as to if this brought the end of the war any earlier. The War ended in 1975. My Lai took place 7 yrs earlier...another tragedy.

Read the following site to see how extensive the tragedy was. Tragedy was not only for the killed victims but for the lack of justice demonstrated in the court's decisions:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/65000/images/_65065_calley150.jpg&imgrefurl=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/65065.stm&h=180&w=150&sz=5&hl=en&start=6&tbnid=ALbzxBJspYxHkM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=84&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlt%2Bcalley%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26ie%3DUTF-8%26newwindow%3D1%26sa%3DG

Answer 2

In my opinion very little lasting good was achieved by the exposure of the My Lai massacre. Our military still operates the same way. Superior officers order soldiers to do something that is questionable. Those soldiers are caught between a rock and a hard place of either being convicted for refusing a direct order, or following an illegal order (Abu Graib prison torture) . The soldier can either be court marshalled now for sure, or later maybe. Superior officers apparently do not have to testify in a soldier's trial, so cannot be charged with perjury for lying.

Answer 3

Fear and death. An army can basically walk into any unarm village and massacre everybody. I pity them.

Triumph? things like this were happening often during the Vietnam war. You're a suspected VC. take him outside and execute.

If the US really wanted to win, they should have done what was necessary and lawnmotor the North.

Answer 4

I remember the incident in March, 1968. I was just finishing high school at the time.

By itself, the My Lai massacre has almost no historical significance. It was simply a tragic accident of carelessness which happens in almost all wars. Lt. William Calley and his men were frustrated by Viet Cong guerrilla attacks and killed a number of South Vietnamese civilians (around 300 of them), thinking them Viet Cong sympathizers, without proper authorization from his superiors in the U.S. Army high command.

However, there was so much bad press about it in the American news media that it definitely added more fuel to the anti-war movement in the United States and helped accelerate the American disengagement from the war which began in 1970 with "Vietnamization" and ended in January, 1973 with the Paris Peace Treaty concluded with the communist North Vietnamese by President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissenger.

While My Lai was an embarrassment and nothing to be proud of, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) killed far more South Vietnamese civilians when they captured the city of Hue in the Tet Offensive two months earlier (January 1968). About 3,000 according to conservative estimates, some say as high as 5,500. What some people felt was ironic at the time, was that anti-war critics were lambasting the American killing of 300 people at My Lai while saying nothing about the North Vietnamese massacre which killed far more people and was deliberate military policy, not a freak accident.

Answer 5

Nothing. Absolutely Nothing. The My Lai Massacre was a just a witless massacre of a huge village done by witless US soldiers.

Answer 6

I hasn't been erased from my own expertise, even nonetheless that is been from that of the typical public. It became the 1st time the typical public became uncovered to the prospect that our military ought to do poor issues, and that they could be supported with the aid of a coverup from severe-score workers. i think of it unlucky that we did no longer study from our historic previous, and that folk nevertheless have faith interior the "i became basically following orders" protection (are you able to assert Abu Ghraib?)

Answer 7

It got the US out of Vietnam faster once people found out what was going on over there.