You are basically either ignorant or stupid. At Mai Lai, the infantry unit in question was taking fire from Viet Cong troops sheltering among the villagers. The VC fled, as planned, leaving the villagers to be killed. What Calley and his men did was a war crime and he was prosecuted for it. Show me ONE INSTANCE where Japanese. Nazi German, Soviet, Red Chinese, North Vietnamese Main Force or Viet Cong troops were prosecuted by their chains of command for the hundreds of thousands of war crimes that they committed.
To be fair, the Japanese plan targeted military assets. But Japanese air crews strafed civilian targets and at least one clearly marked hospital.
Hawaii was a United States territory like District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, the American Virgin Islands and others. They were American soil and flew the stars and stripes.
so the japs killed civilians? I thought only the US did that. WTF?
The Mai Lai massacre occurred during an encompassing official sanctioned military operation. (an anti-insurgency operation) Within this operation, certain or a certain unit went totally rouge - resulting in the Mai Lai massacre.
....Leaving the villagers to be killed... - by whom?
your view of history is very warped, but you are entitled to hold it and speak it,-------for now.
What the VC did at Mai Lai was a typical operation by them. Start a firefight from a neutral or government-friendly village to draw out a reaction force of RVN or US troops then leave so then the ARVN or US forces would kill the civilians and turn them against the RVN government. It worked well against the ARVNs because they would generally just call-in artillery or an air strike killing most or all of the villagers. US troops tended to assault the village and only kill or wound those actually firing on them. Mai Lai was an aberration.
That the VC and also the regular North-Vietnamese forces took advantage of the huge civilian support (against the then termed US imperialists and it's corrupt Saigon allies) via deploying propaganda units/agents all over South Vietnam and many villages therefore housing voluntarily or unwillingly VC and NVA combat troops is known. That the RVN and US troops pulverized and used chemical warfare onto every square inch in South-Vietnam upon a mere VC/NVA suspicion - regardless of civilian lives/casualties is also known.
Neither the US or RVN ever used chemical weapons anywhere in Southeast Asia. Apparently my memory was faulty about Calley’s unit taking fire. But nonetheless, that was a common practice of both the NVA and VC.That the VC and also the regular North-Vietnamese forces took advantage of the huge civilian support (against the then termed US imperialists and it's corrupt Saigon allies) via deploying propaganda units/agents all over South Vietnam and many villages therefore housing voluntarily or unwillingly VC and NVA combat troops is known. That the RVN and US troops pulverized and used chemical warfare onto every square inch in South-Vietnam upon a mere VC/NVA suspicion - regardless of civilian lives/casualties is also known.
As for Mai Lai - there were no VC troops at the time, and the advancing US force also had not been taking fire from Mai Lai.
Vietnamese villagers killed by U.S. soldiers in My Lai Massacre | March 16, 1968 | HISTORY
On March 16, 1968, a platoon of American soldiers brutally kills as many as 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, one of a...www.history.com
In March 1968, a platoon of soldiers from Charlie Company received word that Viet Cong guerrillas had taken cover in the Quang Ngai village of Son My. The platoon entered one of the village’s four hamlets, My Lai 4, on a search-and-destroy mission on the morning of March 16. Instead of guerrilla fighters, they found unarmed villagers, most of them women, children and old men.
The soldiers had been advised before the attack by army command that all who were found in My Lai could be considered VC or active VC sympathizers, and were told to destroy the village. They acted with extraordinary brutality, raping and torturing villagers before killing them and dragging dozens of people, including young children and babies, into a ditch and executing them with automatic weapons.
The massacre reportedly ended when an Army helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, landed his aircraft between the soldiers and the retreating villagers and threatened to open fire if they continued their attacks.
As I and others have already stated - war is hell, and IMO there is no warring party that could claim being innocent of atrocities or of killing civilians intentionally.
That's okay - everyone has his moments
www.britannica.com
it was not a chemical weapon designed to kill humans, it was designed as a herbicide to remove foliage so the bombers could see their targets more clearly. It was toxic to humans and has killed many americans and vietnamese. But war is hell, why is anyone surprised by that?That's okay - everyone has his moments
As for chemical warfare - either you are totally unaware about the usage of Agent Orange and it's color relatives, or you might have reasons to believe that a herbicide isn't a chemical substance - in which case you would be wrong.
Agent Orange also contained small, variable proportions of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin—commonly called “dioxin”—which is a by-product of the manufacture of 2,4,5-T and is toxic even in minute quantities. About 50 million liters (13 million gallons) of Agent Orange—containing about 170 kg (375 pounds) of dioxin—were dropped on Vietnam. Agent Orange was one of several herbicides used in Vietnam, the others including Agents White, Purple, Blue, Pink, and Green. The names derived from color-coded bands painted around storage drums holding the herbicides.
Agent Orange | Definition, Effects, & Victims | Britannica
Agent Orange, mixture of herbicides that U.S. military forces sprayed in Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 during the Vietnam War for the dual purpose of defoliating forest areas that might conceal Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces and destroying crops that might feed the enemy.
This stuff (aka chemical warfare) was used and sprayed by the US and the South-Vietnamese air-force
Agent Orange was an Herbicide, NOT a chemical weapon. It was never intended to harm humans, in fact at the time it was considered harmless to people. The dosage you trumpet was tiny, one-liter weighs 2.2 pounds, so fifty million liters weighed ELEVEN MILLION POUNDS divide that by 375 equals .2933333 parts per million of dioxin. That's about as far from a lethal dose as can be found. A lethal dose of Dioxin is about twenty milligrams. You'd have to drink hundreds of gallons of Agent Orange to get that much dioxin. No reputable agency or organization has ever classified ANY herbicide as a chemical weapon.That's okay - everyone has his moments
As for chemical warfare - either you are totally unaware about the usage of Agent Orange and it's color relatives, or you might have reasons to believe that a herbicide isn't a chemical substance - in which case you would be wrong.
Agent Orange also contained small, variable proportions of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin—commonly called “dioxin”—which is a by-product of the manufacture of 2,4,5-T and is toxic even in minute quantities. About 50 million liters (13 million gallons) of Agent Orange—containing about 170 kg (375 pounds) of dioxin—were dropped on Vietnam. Agent Orange was one of several herbicides used in Vietnam, the others including Agents White, Purple, Blue, Pink, and Green. The names derived from color-coded bands painted around storage drums holding the herbicides.Agent Orange | Definition, Effects, & Victims | Britannica
Agent Orange, mixture of herbicides that U.S. military forces sprayed in Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 during the Vietnam War for the dual purpose of defoliating forest areas that might conceal Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces and destroying crops that might feed the enemy.
This stuff (aka chemical warfare) was used and sprayed by the US and the South-Vietnamese air-force
