Daily Kos

My Lai March 16, 1968

Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 09:51:36 PM PDT

  1.  Stunned at assassination of President.  Broken heart, awakening of political self.
  1.  Inspired by new Dem Pres taking leadership, promising a "Great" Society.
  1.  Inspired by Dem Pres promising economic development to halt starvation and disease killing millions of children around the world.
  1.  Aware of war on daily TV and radio news.
  1.  Sudden realization that "progressive" Dem Pres has blown it on war.  All of it.  Broken heart for LBJ's betrayal.
  1.  Seymour Hersh and CBS break news of My Lai massacre.  State of shock.

With a million others, occupy Washington D.C. for 3 days, surround government buildings, candlelight "March Against Death".  Back from demo, mail 2-S student deferment card back to draft board, and, later, the ashes of the 1-A card...

http://www.youtube.com/...

Murders, unapologized, uncompensated, unavenged.  Forty years later, Learning unlearned.  Nations learn nothing, at least at a level that changes anything.

A lifetime's progress?  "Go fuck yourself," Cheney sneers. "This is MY show."  "Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name..."

So, why am I still here?  Is this my country, that is ruled by such passivity?  ("The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.")

20% of us (that's the most it ever was) caught the lesson of Vietnam, caught the HORROR of the Evil that we lived amidst (Brando later pinned the word for what we all felt daily), and that our parents paid for in taxes with their daily labors.

Many of us took it as our PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to throw ourselves against the machine of Death, and end the War from its fulcrum point right here inside fortress America.

And, now?

The difference is, this war has even some Machiavellian logic behind it.  That's enough to rope in a few more "young pragmatists", isn't it?  Just listen to those DLC'ers, and everyone else who mealy-mouths their way into another year of tolerating its continuation.

"We'll all get Clean for Gene, and change the system -- from WITHIN!"

CheneyCo is on its way to sitting atop (let's see 117 billion x $110/bbl) oh, $13 TRILLION worth of oil.  A year's GDP for ol' USA.

A million dead.  A nation destroyed along with the lives of another 4 million uprooted.  50,000 teen girls thrown into prostitution around the Arab world, the ultimate curse on their futures in that culture.

One third of the American people actively support the theft.  Another third will allow it, as long as their noses are not rubbed in it.  "Don't show me the blood, just fill my SUV..."

And you, the final third, know full well what is being done "in your name" (though YOU will never profit a penny from it) and with your tax money.

http://www.nwtrcc.org/

ok, enough...  one 14-year-old's rape-murder-corpse burning was enough for me.  Abeer Qasim Hamza.  March 12, 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

God, you people live in a charnel-house.  You produce a new Auschwitz each decade, until you can worm your way into using those paid-for nukes on some unsuspecting category of inconvenient brown people.

You will shock yourself, and then go back to "normal living."

It will not stop, until YOU have been reduced to the living standard approaching that of your victims.  You had the opportunity, to reach back and stop the slaughter, from your seat of comfort.  From your position of influence.  From safety.  To spread the tiniest cloak of mercy over the helpless.  You even had a MAJORITY sympathetic to you, something WE did not get until 1973.  But, no.  Nada.

You've proven Nancy Pelosi right.  Why should she stick her neck out for such pansy asses?

"America, America.  How often I would have gathered you together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not!

"Behold, your house is left unto you desolate...  There shall not be left here one stone upon another..."

Look at these dead children, killed by the same U.S. policy, attitude, and arrogance that rules today after 40 more years.  The kind that MLK warned about "The God that I worship has a way, of putting even nations in their place."  "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

"When I consider that God is just, I tremble for my country."  Thomas Jefferson.

You all go back to your electioneering now... That's some real important shit they're going over now.

Know what it is?  More dead children.  From Sand Creek to Samos to Haditha, that's all that ever comes of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

Tags: History Vietnam (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions

Permalink | 13 comments

  •  When you get too COZY with War, (7+ / 0-)

    don't be too shocked when War tries to get cozy with you...

    http://warresisters.org/

    If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State...

    by HenryDavid on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 09:53:48 PM PDT

    •  Regretably (1+ / 0-)

      Recommended by:
      don mikulecky

      Most people find it difficult to face the truth abnout war, to face the people involved, victims and perpertrators alike, to face the facts at ground level.

      Rather, we try to deal with it as an abstraction. Several times I've posted phototgraphs on this site of Iraq war casualties, both Iraqis and Americans. The reaction is always the same; few if any comments, several troll ratings without comment. The obcene truth is difficult to face, but we shoiuldn't turn away because, as you say, it comes back to visit us.

      I think Americans should know what they are buying; it will take years to pay for it in monetary terms, and already too much has been in human terms.

      Thanks for your diary and remembering Mai Lai.

      Work for Peace, the difficult but best path.

      "The half-baked ideas of people are better than the ideas of half-baked people" - Jack Kilby

      by koNko on Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 12:59:46 AM PDT

      [ Parent ]

  •  I grew up in Vietnam (5+ / 0-)

    Recommended by:
    koNko, justCal, loree920, don mikulecky, 4water

    I am American and, due to my mother's humanitarian work in Vietnam, I grew up in Hanoi.  I visited My Lai as a child and heard the story of a woman who, after watching the rape and murder of her sister and mother, hid in a ditch of corpses to survive.  The most touching thing for me was to see the accounts of remorseful US soldiers.  War is terrible for everyone involved.    

    "that while we breathe, we will hope"--Barack Obama Google Bomb: Obama Muslim

    by Preyanka on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 09:58:09 PM PDT

    •  Yes, the time for soldiers to (7+ / 0-)

      stand up and say "NO" is when they are handed the rifle and told to ship out.

      I and several friends resisted, and stopped the process, at varying points along the way.

      As a result, I am able to face both Vietnamese (worked with several) and US veterans with a clear conscience.

      My sadness is as full as it was 40 years ago, and my anger is still turned in the same direction it was then: toward stopping these things...

      If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State...

      by HenryDavid on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 10:24:36 PM PDT

      [ Parent ]

  •  We posted in sequence on the same thing. (7+ / 0-)

    Good job.  I too was torn to shreds by the betrayal of our so called "leaders".  This country better wake up!

    An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the moment. It stands or falls on its own merits.

    by don mikulecky on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 09:58:20 PM PDT

    •  Dude! You're psychic! (4+ / 0-)

      Recommended by:
      koNko, eastmt, don mikulecky, 4water

      No, it's a powerful "ghost", hanging around in our national psyche.  It really patterned much of what I've seen since, and my expectations have never recovered to what they were before that.  And I was only 19...

      Add to that, the loss of Hugh Thompson two years ago, and the proximate two-year anniversary of murder of Abeer Qasim Hamza.  Who will make the movie???

      If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State...

      by HenryDavid on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 10:20:33 PM PDT

      [ Parent ]

      •  I was over 30. Not to be trusted. (5+ / 0-)

        But I was.  I lead the Anti-war/Civil rights coalition in Buffalo NY.  Was on the faculty at SUNY Buffalo.  Faculty advisor for SDS.  Leader in the draft resistance and turned in my draft card on the steps of the Justice Department on National TV the day we turned in thousands of draft cards in protest.  That was the day before the Pentagon Demonstration in '68.  I had been a regular USMC officer as a result of being working class and having to go NROTC to get through college.

        An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the moment. It stands or falls on its own merits.

        by don mikulecky on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 10:27:31 PM PDT

        [ Parent ]

      •  you are both cosmic (3+ / 0-)

        Recommended by:
        koNko, don mikulecky, geodemographics

        read both diaries.  Thank you...stand with the truth always.

  •  Colin Powell and My Lai (9+ / 0-)

    From wikipedia

    Colin Powell, then a 31-year-old Army Major, was charged with investigating the letter, which did not specifically reference My Lai (Glen had limited knowledge of the events there). In his report Powell wrote: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." Powell's handling of the assignment was later characterized by some observers as "whitewashing" the atrocities of My Lai.

  •  Excellent reminder (6+ / 0-)

    of just what a rat-bastard Powell really is.  Consortium News has all the dirt Powell's tried to sweep under the rug all his professional life.

    But there were Heroes brought about by the horrific My Lai massacre, and while it took far too long, they were finally honored and at the Vietnam Memorial no less.

    The Abu Ghraib scandal was exposed because a soldier couldn't go along with the clear lawbreaking and torture ordered by his superior officers. Undoubtedly, there are other US troops and contractors who have outright defied clearly illegal orders, and their stories WILL surface.

    And while real justice would be for all those wrongly killed, maimed and traumatized by the Iraq catastrophe to have not suffered in the first place, consider something else.

    Dictators, criminals and thugs have paid for their bloodthirsty nature, or have died in custody, behind bars, disgraced and dishonored, or are in custody now, facing legal proceedings for their actions.

    Slobodan Milosevic

    The Ceausescu's of Romania

    Augusto Pinochet

    Charles Taylor, Liberia

    Alberto Fujimori, Peru

    The Leaders of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia's "Killing Fields"

    More At War Crimes Watch

    The Organized Crime families, which are the best way to view this corrupt Administration, have been hammered mercilessly, and their best known proponent, John Gotti, died, of cancer, behind bars, right where he belonged.

    And while prosecuting these evil swine in no way rights the wrongs they cheerfully committed, it is necessary for a civilized society to move forward.

    So, while such reckonings may take far too long for our tastes, while such prosecutions for this Administration may seem like the most naive of pipe-dreams, don't write off that possibility yet, as it seems like within the past 20 years, the chances at rightful and legal retribution aimed at the most deserving of world leaders, regimes and individuals has grown noticeably.

    It may be schadenfreude-based, but I'll keep writing and using my voice for this payback, a legal and political settling of the scores for the most corrupt, arrogant, ideological and incompetent President and Administration we've ever had the misfortune to be inflicted with.

    When it comes to Texas Politics, "Stupid" Plays Very Well

    by KingCranky on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 10:34:03 PM PDT

  •  Why do you hate America? (1+ / 1-)

    Recommended by:
    koNko
    Hidden by:
    don mikulecky

    Sing "God Bless America" for the cameras, please!

    "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." Orwell

    by NotablyZen on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 11:01:01 PM PDT

  •  Hi Henry (2+ / 0-)

    Recommended by:
    KingCranky, don mikulecky

    I've recommended this for Diary Rescue, hope to see that done

    Good Luck.

    "The half-baked ideas of people are better than the ideas of half-baked people" - Jack Kilby

    by koNko on Sat Mar 15, 2008 at 05:20:33 AM PDT

Permalink | 13 comments