“The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience” is an article written by Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton, that chronicles the story of the My Lai Massacre of 1968 and the resulting investigation. The article also contains the author's opinions on the military’s stance on following orders, specifically following orders that could be considered illegal. This is also discussed in Marianne Szegedy-Madzak’s “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism”. In the article she discusses how guards will torture prisoners, because it is excused as a stress-relief tool, and were even congratulated by superiors for their actions. The torturers justified their actions because they believed they were helping the real interrogators out. …show more content…
She starts stating how the people responsible for the actions are not likely going to show any remorse, and that the reason for their actions isn't as simple as it seems. She likens what the soldiers did to Zimbardo’s prison experiment, as well as Milgram’s experiment, saying, “these experiments demonstrate the Everyman is a potential torturer” (Szegedy-Maszak 76). She also acknowledges that the soldier's life at the prison wasn't normal, with 450 guards for 7000 prisoners, as well as not having the normal stress relief options that other soldiers have. Szegedy-Maszak then explains how the prison offered the three components that are key to cruel behavior that were explained in “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience”, authorization, routinization, and dehumanization. These along with the isolated nature of the prison served as a breeding ground for torture, and places with a similar environment to Abu Ghraib will continue to house these heinous …show more content…
The Marines in the movie never accept responsibility for what they did until they are finally convicted, even then Downey still doesn't understand why they were convicted. This is similar to Calley when he was on the stand for the My Lai massacre. He based his entire defense argument on the fact that he was merely following an order and his actions were not out of line. His actions could also have been caused because he became overwhelmed with the war, and took out his tension on the people of Son Lai, similar to how the guards treated of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. This may be why there was was never any sign of remorse from anyone; the guards, Calley, Dawson and Downey. They feel that what they did was normal, and they don't have to be held
Passionate John Kerry, a vietnam veteran, in his speech, Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement, to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 23, 1971, argues that the soldiers sent to Vietnam were told to do terrible things and that they were fighting for reasons they did not even know. Kerry supports his argument by implementing anaphora, utilizing a pronoun switch, applying rhetorical questions, appeals to logos through the use of statistics, quotes, and an anecdote, and appeals to pathos through imagery and powerful language. The author’s purpose is to depict to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations exactly what occurred in Vietnam and why they should be against the war too. The author writes in a belligerent tone for the Senate
McCain is correct when he means it does not matter how many times someone can hit or torture a soldier, but seeing soldiers apart of the squadron getting executed will harm the mind forever. Levin’s essay has some examples that may create an emotional bond. Levin’s article states “I’m sorry, you’ll have to die in agony, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to …” (Levin). Levin has some guilt for the American soldiers because they were tortured.
The My Lai Massacre is one example of what is wrong with the US Government. The men of Charlie Company had been told that an local enemy force
When the school officially opened in the fall of 1861, teacher George A. Davy had 70 pupils in attendance. For wages, Davy received from families various kinds of produce such as cloth, molasses, and meat. Later in 1863-64, William Woodward taught school for $10.00 a month in which he also collected payment from each pupil and family. During school students used slates and pencils from slate rock found in the mountains east of Franklin. Then each Saturday the straw was removed from the floor where fresh straw was placed for Sunday Services.
The My Lai Massacre was a significant event in the Vietnam War. Hundreds of innocent villagers were murdered by a portion of the Charlie Company. Most of the victims were elderly, 70-80, and children, as young as three. They also raped women, clubbed people, executed them (then most likely dumped into a mass grave), and carved C’s into their chests. A cover-up was created but it was no use, the American people found out.
In November of 1969, Butterfield watched as Nixon erupted over a series of press reports by journalist Seymour M. Hersh. The president was informed about the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers in My Lai. The attack was led by Army Lieutenant William L. Calley and it was the best documented Vietnam war crime. Butterfield needed to be informed about anything that was of interest to the president. Therefore, he gathered numerous documents about the case into his documents.
On the morning of March 16th 1968, over 500 Vietnamese civilians, including unarmed men, women, children and elderly, were brutally slaughtered in the village of My Lai by the Us military soldiers of the Charlie Company, a unit of the Americans division 11th Infantry brigade, under the leadership of Captain Ernest Medina. The My Lai massacre was seen as one of the most brutal events to have happened in American military history and is a clear demonstration of the corruption that is within the American military. Senior officers, such as Medina, attempted to try and cover up what had occurred in My Lai but failed to do so. The massacre was later revealed after an investigation was ordered and conducted, due to Ron Ridenhour, “a former member
In the last five pages of “The Shock Doctrine”, Klein (2007) explores the connection between the destruction of minds in pursuance of perfection and the destruction of Iraq in order to create an ideal country. Klein begins by focusing on several American prisons in which electroshock therapy and intense sensory deprivation is administered to prisoners regularly. “For many prisoners, the effects of these techniques have been: […] total regression” expressed as a “permanently delusional“ state (Klein pg. .51). The purpose of this regression, as Klein (2007) previously explains at the end of the chapter, is to erase all traces of the people these prisoners once were and to use that as a means of remaking them into model citizens. An idea perpetuated
Massacres and Watchmen: How the My Lai massacres Changed War Reporting Freedom of the press is a right held very dear by Americans, but out of what was this devotion to the media born? Unfortunately, that answer is not as simple as one event, one person, or one story. The government is an integral part of our daily lives which oversees all and controls most. Many of the instances that have gleaned the admiration of the American people for the press have undermined this, occasionally, overreaching powerhouse.
During the movie “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” viewers are shown the extreme catastrophe the whites put the Indians through. While camped out at wounded knee the Indians establish a dance that the whites decide is to be stopped. As a result of the angered whites and Indians a mass shooting occurred. It was almost like an attack because the Indians were forced to seize their weapons right before. Although the first shot was made by an Indian who had not given up his weapon, the Indians were the victims.
U.S troops were ordered to kill all male Filipino “above the age of ten” who had not surrendered and to kill prisoners when an American soldier died. Unlike Britain or France, the U.S was oblivious to the aftermaths of their actions; even the president at the time, Teddy Roosevelt, justified the killings simply “because they (Filipinos) were killing
The My Lai massacre was a point of changing views and perspectives of the American public on the Vietnam War (Source A). The violence of the actions taken were too extreme for many Americans to ignore. The massacre came to represent the war as a whole and the soldiers that were supposed to represent America’s heroes for a number of citizens no longer maintained this hero status but rather were seen as criminals (Source B). The massacre started nation-wide questioning about America’s involvement in the war and even people who were extremely pro-Vietnam war had to reanalyse their rationalisation for the American military presence in Vietnam (Source B). There was an increasing divide in the opinions about the war that only increased after the
In “Prayer in the Furnace,” Phil Klay demonstrates the cruelty of war times, and the severe consequences it has on its Marines. The war is so appalling that it leaves the Marines barely able to sleep due to nightmares, they have thoughts of suicide, and they are hardly alive due to the substandard state of their health. Rodriguez, a Marine, talks to a chaplain about the issues that he has. He “pulled a plastic sandwich bag full of little pills out of his cargo pockets and held it at eye level. ‘How do you think any of us sleep?’”
Since the 911 attack in New York, there have been serval reports state the CIA carried enhanced interrogation to torture suspect in black sites. For example, President Obama, as commander in chief, publicly admitted in August 2009 “we tortured some folks”. Because torture can be used as a method to extract information, a BBC survey of 27,000 people in 2006 shows one out of three people considered a degree of torture acceptable if it saved lives. The rest of the paper will discuss the moral justifiability of torture under two ethnical traditions — moral skepticism and consequentialism, along with a practical approach to determine whether the CIA should be condoned to use torture toward terrorists. Moral skepticism includes two variants — amoralism
What evidence is being given? This author agrees that torture should be used because in war we have dropped bombs on innocent people that have either killed or left children, woman, and good men in critical condition, which is close to being torture. In the texts he says," There is no escaping the fact that whenever we drop bombs, we drop them with knowledge that some number of children will be blinded, disemboweled, paralyzed, orphaned, and killed by them". C. Fried and was against torture, he explains that Washington said to treat the captured in battle with humanity so they won't have a reason to complain that we were hurting people like those in the British army.