• FirstCircle@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Going to hell would be letting this guy and the US soldiers willfully performing this massacre (‘we were only following orders when gang-raping your daughters and bayoneting your infants and old folks and anyone else who didn’t look like a good American and burning down every house in sight’) off way, way, way too easy. I invite everyone to check out the Wikipedia page on the My Lai Massacre, including, if you can stand it, the gruesome photographs taken by US photographers while it was happening and of the aftermath. And don’t miss the verbal quotes of the soldiers while they were having their fun, rapey, civilian-slaughtery holiday. This voanews article seems to leave out the additional cruelty of the US troops taking the murdered Vietnamese and dumping them in the village’s wells, just to make sure all the water supplies were poisoned. American cruelty at its finest. And of course, the one perp, Calley, who actually gets called to account for his deeds, just a little, for show purposes, gets just a slap on the wrist, because American military people = “good guys”, “heroes” even, by definition, always.

    "Calley was court-martialed and convicted of murder in 1971 and was initially sentenced to life in prison. He only spent a few days in jail before President Richard Nixon ordered him to be transferred to house arrest. His sentence was eventually reduced to 10 years in prison before he was freed on bail and granted parole in 1974.

    A few days in prison was what he got, for mass gang rapes, mass murders, and covering it all up. He should have been handed over to the S. Vietnamese villagers to face real justice.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Voice of America is wholly owned by the federal government. Committing mass murder kind of looks bad for the government so they obviously are going to be a little light on the glory details and the fact that the government tried to sweep it under the rug.