'Mass Arrest' of US Marines on Camp Pendleton

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by APACHERAT, Jul 25, 2019.

  1. DixNickson

    DixNickson Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    When quoting such a horrific event (born of the horrors of war) be accurate and don't use it for cheap personal vindictiveness. Where did you find this account of My Lai calling out U. S. Marines? We Americans share the burden of responsibility for this. I do not believe that the platoon commander did this without instruction from somewhere up the chain of command. America and American Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Marines are known for their humanity towards civilians. This event is the exception to that rule.
     
  2. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You know more about this subject than I do, and nothing you have said runs counter to my general understanding, so I'll just agree, except to note that our real error with the Shah was made in 1953.

    But .. .the US is not a revolutionary power. Its elite don't think in terms of encouraging mass upheavals. In Pakistan, they probably reasoned just like the Communists in Peking did -- support a friendly power. They don't really -- few Americans do -- understand other peoples' national feeling: witness Secretary of State Clinton in Mexico, laying flowers in the graves of the American invaders. (Some advisor must have told her that it would be a good photo op for the rubes back home.)

    Moscow didn't have those problems and was able to take the young anti-colonialists under its wing. Even when we did make a move to act sytematically like a 'dangerous nation', in Iraq, we squandered our victory -- if indeed we could ever have had one.

    The best we can do, now, is to stop intervening in these quarrels, except possibly where there really is a civilized democraticall-minded population rebelling against an unpopular dictator, which invites our attention, and where ethnic conflicts don't cut across other issues.
     
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  3. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The NVA were North Vietnamese soldiers.

    The VC were South Vietnamese citizens.

    Main Force VC wore distinctive uniforms and would be comparable to Confederate soldiers during America's civil war.
    Radical Republicans called those Confederate soldier traitors and shouldn't be protected by international rules of war.

    This is when Lincoln had to turn to Vattel's "Laws of Nations." Was it a rebellion or a war ???
    If it were a rebellion the Confederate soldiers didn't come under the protections of the laws of war but did come under the protections of the U.S. Constitution.

    If it was a war then the Confederate soldiers came under the protection of the rules of war but not the U.S. Constitution.

    Then you had the VC regional force.They wore uniforms and sometimes they didn't. These were the VC who committed most of the atrocities against their own South Vietnamese civilian populations. They were also the tax man who collected taxes from the villages. Tax time also meant rape time.

    Then you had the VC that the Hollywood left always portrayed as what all VC were when they were not. Farmers at day and unlawful combatants at night. They comprised of military age men, teenagers, women and little girls and even old men.They did not wear a distinctive uniform which made them unlawful combatants and under the laws of war they could be executed in the spot.

    The My Lai hamlets were VC.
    The hamlets were located in the TAOR of the 48th Regional Force Battalion of the Viet Cong.

    FYI:
    Many VC villages also had VC militias.

    The question is, were the VC in a state of rebellion against the Saigon Government or was it a war where the VC government was recognized by other foreign governments being the legitimate government of South Vietnam ?

    FYI:
    North Vietnam government didn't even recognized the VC until late 1964 and the first NVA combat troops hadn't entered South Vietnam and started combat operations until 1965.
     
  4. George Bailey

    George Bailey Well-Known Member

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    Byron Darnell Law and Javier Salazar Quintero were the first two arrested and the ring leaders. Interesting. Probably not Trumpists.

    Does anyone even read up before commenting?
     
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  5. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Your next-to-last sentence is true, relative to many other armies, and is certainly the way we want to think about ourselves. Note:They weren't Marines, they were soldiers. And they were indeed ordered to commit mass murder by Captain Medina. But there was not any great resistance to that order. ApacheRat has gone into detail about this sordid episode in a previous post. You may not want to read it, because you will probably be dismayed, as I was, at his quoting the popular response in America to the possibility of prosecuting these men.

    All peoples everywhere, if their army and police are basically neutral -- as opposed to being the armed wing of a dominant tribe, or of a grasping ruling class which uses them mainly to kill radical college students and striking workers -- will support 'our boys' because
    (1) it's those boys who stand between them and what can be a very unpleasant world, and
    (2) if they have themselves not served in a position in which they risk their lives for the sake of others, they feel guilty about it and are unwilling to be too severe with people who have.

    By the way, does anyone believe that the Japanese people -- in private -- deplore the terrible things done by 'their boys' before and during the Second World War?
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2019
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  6. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It's all about PC social engineering of the military and diversity.

    All one has to do is look inside at the Marine brig at Camp Pendleton and the Naval Consolidated Brig at MCAS Miramar.

    The faces look like the same faces you would see at the L.A. County Jail. Mexican gang bangers and Bloods and Crips.

    The SJW and PC liberals demand that todays military look like a reflection of America today including bad hombres
     
  7. Thingamabob

    Thingamabob Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Still waiting for your "motivated" reply on why you think you know more about Vietnam than I. It should be very simple. Just tell me how you've accumulated what you consider "credibility". So far all you have done is try to second guess your own prejudices against what I might know. The best way for you to "look good" is not to suggest I know less because all that can do is initiate a battle on who is the best/worse "loser". Better (for your own benefit) to tell us what it is you think that would qualify you as knowing "more". You see what I mean? I'm just thinking of what is best for you. So let's hear it, good buddy. C'mon down and show us what you got!
    :cheerleader:
     
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  8. rcfoolinca288

    rcfoolinca288 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Excuse us if we don't buy into your hypocritical fake moral outrage. You have done nothing but to conflate, obfuscate, deflect and dance around the mass murder at My Lai and even tacitly condoning the action. The "standard" of your day included the murdering of innocent people makes the crime committed by these soldiers seem benign.
     
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  9. Thingamabob

    Thingamabob Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    :above: :nod: :above:
     
  10. DixNickson

    DixNickson Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    America's Sons and Daughters were engaged in combat in hostile fields afar. What dismayed me then, as now is the fact that there was not 100% support from the HomeFront. The Fighting Man was engaged in combat with his adversaries in Vietnam Nam and the Hate America crowd was piling on at home.

    America is a land of great Liberty (with accompanying great responsibility). She will sort out Her errors along the way inspite of Her enemies attempts to cause Her to falter.

    Crimes in war zones and their dispositions are muddled affairs at best.

    God bless our Vets.

    I suspect; The American cultural mindset is about individual freedoms while the Japanese mindset was about serving societal demands. Context is ever so important when trying to understand others. As Americans we must strive to educate our enemies that we are a benevolent people when active combat ceases and that we will ceaselessly combat our enemies.
     
  11. chris155au

    chris155au Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, I was correcting someone who thought that the thread was someone else's.
     
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  12. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

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    Considering you post a picture of a burning monk and declare it is proof of the US losing the war, it shows you don't know what the hell you are talking about. The other three pictures show signs of the ARVN losing the war, but not the US. Now, if you wish to continue, start a new thread. I allowed you to pull me off topic long enough.
     
  13. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes. I was brought up in Texas in the 1950s. No offense meant to New Yorkers and Californians and such like who may be reading this, but you couldn't find a more 'American' environment than 1950s Texas. And we always thought of ourselves as the 'Good Guys' -- whose soldiers fought bravely but then took prisoners -- who rescued hundreds of millions from the Nazis, fed civilians of all sides, were honorable warriors.

    Our America was the America portrayed by Hollywood (as it then was), the America of Audie Murphy, of the weekly TV series with Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy, with silver-plated revolvers with which they didn't kill their enemies, just shot the guns out of their hands -- pure Good fighting pure Evil.

    Our school textbooks told the same story. If anyone had told us that fifteen years later American soldiers would be raping women and then killing them, along with their children, we would have dismissed that as pure Communist propaganda, and ridiculous propaganda at that because it was so utterly unbelievable.

    We all had relatives and neighbors and teachers who had served in the military, and we knew what Americans in uniform were like: good, decent people. True, Cousin Joe who had been with the Big Red One in Sicily, and Uncle Bill who had been with the Marines at Tarawa, didn't like to talk about their experiences ... but that was just manly reticence.

    Then came Vietnam, and the real world and everything, for the first time, on the nightly news.

    And then we learned about the downside of teaching fantasies as realities, instead of teaching the complicated truth, which is that American ideals are just that ideals, aspirations, towards which we are moving but at which we have not yet arrived.

    A lot of young Americans -- the more 'idealistic' in both senses of that word -- just inverted what they had been taught -- they kept the same method, the same way of thinking, that the world was divided into pure Good and pure Evil. They just switched America from one to the other. And did the same with her enemies, who became simply fighters for national liberation.

    Some protested. Some -- Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, John Bolton, and our President come to mind -- found a way to avoid having to take part in this ugly war. It was not necessarily personal cowardice -- to some it did not seem to be a war in defence of America, or even of democracy; to others, it did not seem like a war our leaders really intended to win, so you would be risking your life for nothing.

    So there is kind of a general amnesty, if not amnesia, which has been drawn over the behavior of everyone during that period -- from the men at My Lai, to the men who avoided, one way or the other, having to go to the land of My Lai.

    The only thing worth arguing about is what lessons there are from our past wars, for our future wars. General Colin Powell -- the best President we never had -- has his name attached to 'The Powell Doctrine', which seems like the right one to me.
     
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  14. Thingamabob

    Thingamabob Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    These are your own words .....
    I have asked you why you believe that. It is right 'on topic'. The only comment you've made anywhere near a response is ......
    So I am asking you, is that the basis for you thinking you know more about Vietnam than I do? That's it? Your and my nationality? Nothing more substantial? Cat's got your tongue, I see. I don't blame you for dummying up considering how frightened you are of the issue. Your instinct has finally kicked in and it is telling you that you've bitten off more than you can chew and when the smoke hits you want to be as near to the exit as possible.

    ***** I take it you agree with this and are willing to drop the issue before ... :icon_shithitsthefan Or is there something you'd like to add?
     
  15. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

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    What a fricken troll. You totally ignore the facts I stated several times of your lack of knowledge based on the pictures you posted. Since you have yet to deny what I said about the pictures, I can only conclude you have no response and therefore have very little knowledge of the entire subject. Now, run along, I hear your mother calling.
     
  16. Thingamabob

    Thingamabob Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Hot diggity dog! That is a mighty fine reply, Doug. Drinks are on me the rest of the night! :handshake: Should we get 'im at the bar or is booze-in-a-bag "set ups" the thing in your county?
     
  17. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    Doug,

    That 'amnesia' of which you speak is a recurrent phenomenon. Growing up in 1950s Texas you no doubt had relatives old enough to remember the Philippine-American war 50 years earlier. That war was very controversial at the time, not just because many Americans did not see themselves as 'imperialists', but because there were highly publicised atrocities of exactly the type we are discussing. Civilian men, women & children were killed by US soldiers. Those same relatives might also have been old enough to remember the last great massacre pf the Plains Indians at Wounded Knee in 1890.

    People have a way of forgetting events that do not fit with the way they imagine their nations to be. When they happen again there is shock, surprise & often denial which is unwarranted by an acquaintance with the past. Good people in bad situations can do terrible things, and we would deceive ourselves to imagine that all the young men we send to fight for us are good men to begin with.
     
  18. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Unfortunately, the techies have not yet found a way to consume 'virtual alcohol' over the web.

    However, in response to your kind offer, I'm going to send you -- since I think you are an 'ancient of days' like me -- a nice visual test for truly serious aging.

    That is, a way of knowing when your biology has truly passed a certain Second Law of Thermodynamics checkpoint in terms of increasing disorder. If you respond like the person quoted on the photo I am going to send you, you will know that you have reached that position Sophocles had reached when he said, "At last, I have been set free from a cruel and insane master."

    I would like to post it here, since it would probably give pleasure to many others, but ... I would probably be banned for so doing.
     
  19. Thingamabob

    Thingamabob Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Name-calling? Profanity? You know what they say about someone who resorts to personal insults, don't ya'?
    The only fact you have stated (so far) is that you are an American citizen and I am a Swedish citizen. Now I know you have something on your mind and I can guess what it is but your nerves have deserted you. Come on and spit it out. You'll feel better ... maybe.
    Let's have a look-see. Profanity and personal insults ... plus changing the subject. Yessir Captain, this here is a clear indication that this guy is a faker.
    Well now, I'm a- gonna' tell you something you may not already know. Ya' see, my mother has been dead for at least 15 years, may God bless her soul. Anyway, she didn't speak English so that voice you hear must be your own mamma.

    Timmy 2.gif
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2019
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  20. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes, absolutely. I remember a boy who was my friend in high school -- a bit testy, but a decent fellow. We lost touch after we graduated, and only decades later, doing an internet search, did I learn he had been a sergeant of Marines, in Vietnam. I didn't get in touch with him right away, which I regret, as he died a few years later. I would have liked to talk to him about his experiences. And I certainly knew a few boys whose worst sides would have been brought out over there. It's one of the arguments for universal conscription, actually -- put those refined and sensitive college boys into the mix, the natural officer corps, and things might not get out of hand as often. Of course, to quote that computer in that film, but with respect to these little nasty no-front-line wars, the only way to win is not to play.

    As for the Philippines, was it you -- or someone else -- who posted a lot of information that I didn't know about, with regard to our occupation there. I knew only the Anti-Imperialist League, Mark Twain side of things -- the atrocities, plus that supposedly the 'fanaticism' of the 'Moor's' was the reason we invented the .45 ACP.

    I suppose no war bears really close examination. It was only reading a history of the British military that I learned that on their unpleasant march back from Concord, wounded British soldiers who fell into the hands of patriots had their ears cut off. And the novel about the Civil War, Cold Mountain, recounts someone from one side, I forget which, using a hammer to kill wounded soldiers from the other side lying on the battlefield.

    There is a fellow you probably know about, Paul Fussell, who died not too long ago, who had been an infantryman in Europe, who was notorious for not holding back about the truth, even about 'the Good War'.

    It's actually a compliment to the human race that people nowadays are inclined to deny the atrocitities committed by their own side -- a form of 'the tribute vice pays to virtue' -- a few hundred years ago they would have celebrated them.
     
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  21. Thingamabob

    Thingamabob Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I am sure we both agree that this is a good thing.

    1947 anyway, but I know you still have a thing or 2 to teach me.

    Will I be better-prepare to meet my maker when I'm done with the test ..... or does that depend upon how well I do on it?

    I believe that you are a resourceful old badger and I bet you'll figure a way .......
     
  22. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    Given the situations we put young men into it is a credit to our institutions that there are not more atrocities. That said, one is too many and constant vigilance is crucial. It is the worst sort of betrayal of the values of our societies to allow, let alone cover up, such things.

    It was probably me. There were actually several wars in the Philippines. The first was against the Spanish and ended in 1899. The second, immediately after, was against the Filipinos who had also fought the Spanish & established an independent nation. That ended in 1902 and may have cost several hundred thousand Filipino lives. The third was exclusively against those 'Moors' in the south, enjoyed at least some support from Catholic Filipinos, and dragged on until 1913. I haven't been able to find even an estimated death toll for that conflict, but the tactics employed by US soldiers suggest tens of thousands of non-combatants would not be unreasonable.

    No war bears very close examination. Get into the weeds a bit and you find all manner of things.

    Not even a few hundred. WW2 US submarine commander Dudley Morton was considered a hero despite ordering the machine gunning of Japanese sailors in the water which not only killed many Japanese, but an even larger number of Indian POWs by mistake. German submarine commanders who did the same thing were tried by the Allies as war criminals.
     
  23. Mac-7

    Mac-7 Banned

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    Are they Americans?

    You dont have to be a true blue born in the USA patriot who loves this country to serve in the military

    Maybe they hate America and love mexico or red china oe islam instead
     
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  24. Mac-7

    Mac-7 Banned

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    .
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2019
  25. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    Of course. It was Trump's fault. ;) Isn't everything?
     

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