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January 08, 2006
A Great American Hero Dies
Hugh Thompson, the army helicopter pilot who turned his guns on the American soldiers who were murdering the villagers in My Lai, and thereby stopped the massacre at that point, died yesterday:
On March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Thompson and his two crewmen were flying on a reconnaissance mission over the South Vietnamese village of My Lai when they spotted the bodies of men, women and children strewn over the landscape.Mr. Thompson landed twice in an effort to determine what was happening, finally
coming to the realization that a massacre was taking place. The second time, he
touched down near a bunker in which a group of about 10 civilians were being
menaced by American troops. Using hand signals, Mr. Thompson persuaded the
Vietnamese to come out while ordering his gunner and his crew chief to shoot
any American soldiers who opened fire on the civilians. None did...
When Mr. Thompson returned home, it seemed to him that he was viewed as the guilty party.
"I'd received death threats over the phone," he told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" in 2004. "Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a good guy."
I believe that everytime we excuse soldiers who misbehave with feeble excuses --they are untrained, they were following orders, they were scared-- we dishonor the true heroes. This is not to say that those reasons are untrue -- many are untrained, scared and following orders. It is just that such reasons may explain why someone bungles up paperwork required, say, for the Red Cross. It does not explain how someone could possibly not know that it is not right to hang a person by their arms and beat him to a pulp and leave him to die.
And, perhaps most important lesson from Mr. Thompson's life was this: there is something a soldier can do when faced with an atrocity, but only if they have integrity and genuine courage -- the real thing, not something that is assumed to have been handed out to every soldier as standard issue.That's what I'm going to remember the next time someone mentions our brave men and women in harm's way.
Posted by zeynep at January 8, 2006 08:34 PM
Comments
I agree with the main thrust of your argument. That said, I'm ever mindful that none of us truly knows how we might deal with these kinds of situations. Sitting at home in our chair in the living room, we can say, "I'd never do anything like THAT." We may fully believe we could never do anything like that.
But people -- particularly those in stressful and frightening situations -- do commit atrocities. I'm fairly certain many of them are just like us, they fully believed such acts were something they weren't capable of.
I know that when the movie Platoon came out, I really had a better appreciation of what the men and women sent to Vietnam must have experienced. Up until I saw that flick, I had always believed, as a devout pacifist, that I couldn't kill anybody.
But who the heck knows? If bullets are flying around your head and you're terrified of anything that moves, who can say what any of us might be capable of?
Posted by: The Rambling Taoist at January 9, 2006 05:48 AM
I agree with Rambling Taoist. War brings out the worst and the best in us. Unfortunately, I'm afraid it brings out the worst in about 99% of us, and the best in about 1%. War puts people in impossible situations. Assume for a moment that there was some truth to the US military's story about the bombing of the house in Baiji, Iraq last week. Suppose that three guys did plant a bomb in front of your house (maybe you even saw them), and then ran to your door and demanded to be let in. Do you deny them entry and die now, or admit them and wait for the F-14's?
The real criminals are the ones back in Washington who place soldiers and citizens alike into these impossible situations by starting wars of choice.
Posted by: Bob at January 9, 2006 02:03 PM
I completely agree with Bob, PARTICULARLY his last sentence.
Posted by: The Rambling Taoist at January 10, 2006 05:28 PM