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May 21, 2013
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We ‘Support’ the Troops by Burdening Them MorePosted on Dec 2, 2009
By T.L. Caswell (Page 2) In 1975 there was a television drama about his trial. He would write an as-told-to autobiography, and many books have dealt with his case and the events that seared the words My Lai into the American annals. It would not be a stretch to say that his name was among those most recognized across the country at the beginning of the 1970s. After a string of rather complicated legal actions, Calley went free in 1974. He soon faded into obscurity, working at the Atlanta jewelry store of his father-in-law. It was not until Aug. 19 of this year—almost 35 years after he was released from custody—that he spoke out publicly, in person, about My Lai and how his feelings about it had evolved. Recording Calley’s words at the Kiwanis meeting was Dick McMichael, a retired broadcast journalist who wrote the story on his personal blog and then in an Aug. 22 bylined article in Columbus’ Ledger-Enquirer. It was McMichael’s Ledger-Enquirer account that was widely quoted when international media got wind of what Calley had said. The article in the small daily quickly got to the meat of the matter:
William Laws Calley was 24 years old on March 16, 1968, when he trudged into the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. Until then, the young Floridian had done little in his life that made him stand out, either positively or negatively. Before he joined the Army he had attended a junior college, but his grades were bad and he dropped out. Eventually he enlisted in the Army, and after officer training at Fort Benning in Georgia he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. “Rusty” Calley—5 feet, 4 inches tall—was a leader of men by decree of the U.S. government. Later, in an Army investigation, men who had been in Calley’s platoon said he was not liked and was seen as lacking common sense. Some even reported that there had been talk of “fragging” him (the term, derived from fragmentation grenade, came to mean killing a superior officer during the Vietnam War). Exactly what happened at My Lai, and exactly why it happened, may never be known. What is known is that hundreds of Vietnamese villagers—perhaps as many as 504—died that day at the hands of troops from a land that prides itself on being the home of the good guys. In the forefront of slaughter were William Calley and at least part of his platoon. Most of the victims were women, children and elderly people. Some were raped or tortured in other ways. Here’s one nauseating quote from an eyewitness questioned by Army investigators: “[One of the U.S. soldiers at My Lai] fired at [a baby] with a .45. He missed. We all laughed. He got up three or four feet closer and missed again. We laughed. Then he got up right on top and plugged him.” Many Americans were surprised to see Calley and My Lai back in the news near the end of the first decade of the 21st century. After all, more than 12,000 days had passed since the last member of the American fighting force was removed from Vietnam, airlifted by helicopter from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon on a spring day in 1975. A new generation of Americans has arisen since then, and today the nation has new worries—including, sadly, new wars. Old film and video clips of Woodstock, the Kent State killings and Haight-Ashbury doings still are seen occasionally, but the milieu of the late 1960s and early ’70s is little known to many Americans born since then, and indeed is dimming in the memory of some of the folks who camped in the mud at Max Yasgur’s farm in New York state, or claimed they did. It was a time of passionate division over the Vietnam War and of confrontation about communism, an incendiary public debate whose embers still glow after four decades. The survivors of the anti-Red campaign of the 1960s and ’70s surely must be chagrined today when they look to the Far East and see the evil Communist Chinese playing banker to a U.S. whose faith in capitalism has been shaken by a series of near-catastrophic economic events. Another disconcerting object in their field of vision is Vietnam, a repository of American bones but also a nation that has metamorphosed in nearly stunning ways. Today, Vietnam is a member of the United Nations and one of our trading partners. It had an average rise in gross domestic product of more than 7 percent annually from 2000 to 2007. The American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam has a chapter in Ho Chi Minh City, once known as Saigon. Vietnam.com—“your official Vietnam travel guide”—offers, for a fee, to expose you to the delights of Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Hue. New and Improved CommentsIf you have trouble leaving a comment, review this help page. Still having problems? Let us know. If you find yourself moderated, take a moment to review our comment policy. |
By liecatcher, December 5, 2009 at 5:07 pm Link to this comment
@AuntBec
Hey AuntBec:
Thanks for the correction.
I should have said he pushed America further into a
debtor’s abyss from which there is no escape. By
giving the head FED criminal, Bernanke, carte
blanche, to send $trillions to the CABAL in Europe,
with arrogance, impunity, and no accountability.
As well as $trillions more for the banksters bailouts who then used our money to screw Main Street even more.
And let’s not forget that Obama, like Calley, is just
following orders. The big difference is that when he
leaves office, he will be a multimillionaire &
responsible for more deaths than Calley. If we
counted the PTSD
victims & physically disabled as well as the record
number of suicides & destroyed families, his legacy
will be even more horrendous.
And finally,as far as signing up,I may be an “ignorant fool”, but I’m not crazy.
By AuntBec, December 4 at 3:30 pm #
Report thisObama did not bankrupt this country (liecatcher), you
ignorant fool - it was bankrupted, fiscally and
morally, by the Texas Village Idiot and his henchmen
and women. Where the hell were you these past eight
years?
Supporting our troops in the U.S. is nothing more
than a stupid fucking ribbon or bumber sticker. I
know, why don’t you sign up?
By Paolo, December 5, 2009 at 7:46 am Link to this comment
Hello, leftists! Greetings from a longstanding libertarian!
Are you getting a clue yet that the Democrats and Republicans are just two sides of the same coin?
Are you having trouble distinguishing Obama’s foreign policy from Bush’s?
Welcome to the club!
Report thisBy photoshock, December 5, 2009 at 5:52 am Link to this comment
Oh! And by the way, a close friend who’s only son, is being mobilized for the surge, the father of eight, is willingly going to Afghanistan.
Report thisHow in the hell, does this president justify any more troops in a losing war? How does he explain to those children, that their father, who has already served more than his time, has to go halfway around the world to fight a war that is at best innocuous and at worst criminal?
No, President Obama will not be receiving my vote for the presidency next election cycle, and neither will the ‘stand up’ Democrats who have given their all for the cause. It is high time that a third party, a viable third party champion the cause of peace and prosperity for the little person in this world. Americans have for too long been complacent and willing to let the elite run the show, NO MORE!
We, the people cannot allow this miscarriage of justice to continue. We are faced with the real prospect of becoming another Russia, a country which fell into anarchy because the leaders felt that it was necessary to fight a losing war, with a country that historically and recently fought wars that they have won because they are unwinnable by the country trying to take over them.
Why, oh why, did the ‘progressive and peaceful’ president, one which campaigned on the promise of talking instead of fighting, choose to enter a conflict that cannot be won and will not be won, because they are backing a cabal of drug-running, corrupt, and scamming individuals?
President Obama, this is your only term! You will not be president another term. This I will guarantee, with all my heart and soul. YOU have broken every promise made during the campaign and are now known as a person of the elite, who cannot and will not stand up to the power brokers, not for the people who elected you president but the moneyed elite who stepped in afterwards and beguiled you with visions of power and prestige. Well you have neither, power nor prestige among the people who welcomed a true breath of fresh air, Sir you are no John F. Kennedy, and you will never be.
By glider, December 5, 2009 at 4:00 am Link to this comment
AuntBec,
Report thisObama’s appointee Timmy Geitner is busy rationalizing and institutionalizing into law the 600 trillion dollar derivatives/market manipulation gambling casino for his bankster buddies. Obama’s Goldman Sachs appointees are fixing absolutely f***ing nothing except for their continued ability to exploit the markets and cement there financial profiteering off the backs of the working class and the small investor. Notice there is no serious study of the value of the wonderful “financial innovations” that Timmy lauds versus the too big to fail risk they entail. They have payed off our populist “hero” Obama and are solidifying the whole ball of wax. The proof will be that this bankster gambling casino will not diminish in size after Timmy’s faked regulatory “reform”. The concept that our lobbyist ridden Congress could produce a loophole free regulatory structure that could contain these Banksters is nothing but laughable. What is key is that you will not see the exploitive $600,000,000,000,000 casino decrease. That is little Timmy’s job. Let me know if want to place a “derivative” side bet on my contention. I will bet that in 5 years this casino will either increase in size or blow up in everyone’s face.
By berniem, December 4, 2009 at 4:06 pm Link to this comment
For those out there with any sense remember the cry from the 60s “HELL NO,WE WON’T go”. For the rest if the facts of history don’t convince you or you actually believe the crap coming from our “Leaders”, you know, “the best and brightest”, then go on and build the empire! But please don’t complain upon return that you were mislead or didn’t have a choice.
Report thisBy AuntBec, December 4, 2009 at 11:33 am Link to this comment
Hey Wayne, not only his he NOT hiding the caskets of our returning troops, he is actually going out to see them himself. Something his little predecessor wouldn’t have done even if they held his mother hostage.
Report thisBy AuntBec, December 4, 2009 at 11:30 am Link to this comment
Obama did not bankrupt this country (liecatcher), you ignorant fool - it was bankrupted, fiscally and morally, by the Texas Village Idiot and his henchmen and women. Where the hell were you these past eight years?
Report thisSupporting our troops in the U.S. is nothing more than a stupid fucking ribbon or bumber sticker. I know, why don’t you sign up?
By Judy Johnson, December 4, 2009 at 8:06 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Soldier 1 and Soldier 2. Hmmmm. Why are they over there? Maybe so we don’t have another massive attack by insane muslims? So their moms and dads, sisters and brothers won’t be blown up at Walmart? We should send all those brave ACORN thugs over there. Let those slugs see real men in action. (But can they fight or are they just bullies?)
Report thisBy Bbethany7, December 4, 2009 at 8:02 am Link to this comment
9/11 was a false flag operation meant to get us
Report thisinto these very profitable fiascos. The Israeli
lobby has also exerted enormous pressure.
It seems that every Chief Exec from Ford to
Carter, Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton, and now
44 are held hostage to the long-range schemes
of the military-industrial cabal and the shadowy
club of international power brokers who
hatched and direct this sad opera buffa.
By liecatcher, December 4, 2009 at 1:15 am Link to this comment
Obama is Bush 3.
More dangerous because he is able to fool most of the
people all of the time, including professional writers
who should know better.
Report thisBy liecatcher, December 4, 2009 at 1:12 am Link to this comment
We ‘Support’ the Troops by Burdening Them More
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_support_the_tr
oops_by_burdening_them_more_20091202/
Posted on Dec 2, 2009 By T.L. Caswell
Hey T.L. Caswell:
When you preface a paragraph with:
“Presidential Speech: The Scent of Mendacity ” and
then say:
“President Obama is, I believe, personally a decent,
moral man. But he is a politician, too, and he is not
being straightforward with Americans.”
You can’t have it both ways. Calling a man who has
Report thisbankrupted America & wasted countless lives, with no
end in sight, decent & moral makes you a person who
is expert at fecal vomiting.
By gerard, December 3, 2009 at 5:47 pm Link to this comment
9/11/01 three airplanes slammed into three buildings, 2 in New York and 1 in D.C.
Report thisAn act of terror not much different from other strategic surprise attacks here and there, now and then. Several thousand were killed; enormous piles of rubble remained smoking.
Within minutes, officials were calling for revenge – long before there was any time to consider what the best answer might be. Only that primitive upsurge of rage – an eye for an eye – or more.
So it was voted in by a lot of scared, angry people to send a vast army with vicious modern weaponry half way around the world to bomb the stony mountains of Afghanistan, without calculations of the dangers, the problems, the likely results, the possibilities of failure. Just revenge.
After a period of more or less inconsequential
attacking here and there, killing mostly people who had no power to resist and no idea what was afficting them, the story line was changed.
Iraq’s cruel, bragging, recalcitrant dictator had weapons of mass destruction – maybe, probably, oh yes, here’s “evidence”. So it’s “Shock and Awe” against one of the most ancient of civilized cities bombed day and night, and the country’s infrastructure ravaged, till a weird, pathetic, dirty, unshaven villain was dragged from a hole in the ground and hanged.
But that was not enough. The bombardments, the imprisonments, the tortures, the rage, the waste of lives and money continued for years. At last, when a partial “settlement” was made out of sheer loss of enthusiasm, the oil resources having been captured, the war was stopped by those who had started it and wanted to be finished with it without exactly losing it.
The arena moved back to Afghanistan where poverty, corruption, clan warfare, domination of religious fundamentalism was still hollowing out a country that had been ravaged several times in the long past, and once recently, and had no ability to resist either interior mismanagement or exterior attack. More waste of life and money. More pain.
More destruction – this time with the vague notion of “nation building” in the minds of the attackers. “Getting rid of” this and “changing” that, and “modernizing” it whether its wanted those changes or not, and at what cost?
Eight years later, the new American President-Who-Should-Know-Better is still ordering in tens of thousands more soldiers and trillions more weapons and supplies – in spite of continuing evidence of error and lack of success – not to say failure. More money is to be made, more territory is to be “secured.”
But still the same old death awaits thousands more innocents, young and old, and the same old smell of blood and money and insane brutality fouls the air both at home and abroad.
Still the mountains do not say “No!” and the valleys do not open up and swallow the invaders.
Still the dust rises – and settles – and all we can find to do is to sneeze and complain of our allergies.
By Emu, December 3, 2009 at 5:45 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Looks like Mr. Obama is finally going to earn that Nobel Prize of his. In one of the more devious moves in recent presidential history, the big O has sent out nearly the entire US army to lamely wander the deserts in Afghanistan.
http://www.mepreport.com/2009/12/afghanistan-the-armys-last-hurrah/
Report thisBy FRTothus, December 3, 2009 at 3:52 pm Link to this comment
“The point of public relations slogans like “Support our troops” is that they don’t mean anything… That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That’s the one you’re not allowed to talk about.”
(Noam Chomsky)
“To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That’s just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them.”
(Michael Parenti)
“[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It’s not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It’s that they just don’t care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren’t happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don’t care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home - the ones who make it back alive - with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things.”
(William Blum)
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
(Theodore Roosevelt)
“It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms.”
(John Stockwell, former CIA official and author)
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”
(George Orwell)
“U.S. leaders commit war crimes as a matter of institutional necessity, as their imperial role calls for keeping subordinate peoples in their proper place and assuring a “favorable climate of investment” everywhere. They do this by using their economic power, but also ... by supporting Diem, Mobutu, Pinochet, Suharto, Savimbi, Marcos, Fujimori, Salinas, and scores of similar leaders. War crimes also come easily because U.S. Ieaders consider themselves to be the vehicles of a higher morality and truth and can operate in violation of law without cost. It is also immensely helpful that their mainstream media agree that their country is above the law and will support and rationalize each and every venture and the commission of war crimes.”
Report this(Edward Herman, political economist and author)
By bobbiemac, December 3, 2009 at 8:19 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
What about the WWII firebombing of Tokyo and other cities, in addition to the use of the atom bomb on Hiroshima & Nagasaki?..Actions taken against a nation isolated and utterly defeated…actions that were hailed as heroic by the people who ordered them including that famous progressive Harry Truman.
Report thisIf I were William Calley, I would apologize for nothing.
By C.Curtis.Dillon, December 3, 2009 at 5:36 am Link to this comment
I can only add my small voice to Mr. Caswell’s excellent article. My father was a victim of WW 2, not on the battle field but later, through suicide. He had seen too much and was unable to reconcile his experiences with life back home. The demons were too great.
Politicians are so cynical about those who carry the ultimate burden of their stupid decisions. They only see strategic issues and necessary actions but the soldier on the ground sees the death and carnage first hand. They carry the pain and mental anguish which can never be cured.
Obama has made the same mistake as his predecessors. He has made a political decision instead of an intelligent one. After all these meetings, he did exactly what he promised to do 18 months ago. Facts never entered his calculations. It was strictly about his ratings and re-election prospects. It was Rahm whispering in his ear (just like Rove with Bush) “You don’t want to be seen as soft ... hit them hard!” Of course, he will fail because, exactly like Vietnam, the enemy is not some external agent but a domestic insurrection against a foreign invader ... us. If we put in more troops they will just recruit more warriors and the fighting will get worse. In 18 months we will not be able to retreat ... and the generals will just request more soldiers. That is their job, unfortunately. They are warriors, trained to kill.
It will be interesting to see what happens in July of 2011. I suspect there will be another “change in strategy” and more troops will be needed. What will Obama do then?
Report thisBy Wayne, December 2, 2009 at 7:30 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I wonder if Obama will reverse Bush’s policy of hiding the caskets of permanently returning soldiers under cover of darkness. Somehow I have a feeling that this will be another policy he retains.
Report thisBy liecatcher, December 2, 2009 at 6:38 pm Link to this comment
Wars are a fascists best & fastest means to achieve
Report thisworld domination. Wars are a win win for the Military
Industrial Conspiracy, Medical Insurance Pharmaceutical
Industrial Conspiracy, & the banksters who finance both
sides of every conflict. Outsourcing America’s
manufacturing & jobs yields high unemployment & easier
recruiting to provide fodder for the perpetual wars.