My Lai (1968)
Fifty seven years ago today, U.S. soldiers descended on the village of My Lai, Vietnam and, on orders from their commanders, slaughtered more than 500 people (including 50 children under the age of four). This is one of the photos that eventually found their way around the world and onto signs and posters carried during anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.
Some of the survivors of the massacre have since told their stories, including
Pham Thi Thuam, a 30-year-old widow caring for her 6-year-old daughter, lost six members of her family — father, sister, younger brother, and three nephews. She and her daughter were pushed into the ditch just before the firing started. Hiding underneath those dead on top of her, she pushed her child under her stomach. With bodies weighing her down she put her hand over her daughter's mouth and told her to keep quiet, not to cry, and to pretend to be dead. The soldiers waited to see if anyone moved and shot them again. They fired a second series of shots sometime later, and then a third. Much later, a long time after the shooting had ended, she pushed some of the corpses away to free herself. All around her were dead bodies curled up. She grabbed her daughter and ran across to a path. They were seen escaping and more shots were fired. Another woman running behind them was hit and fell down but Mrs. Thuam just hung onto her daughter and did not stop. When she eventually came to a halt she discovered that her hair and neck were saturated with blood. There were lumps of flesh and pieces of brains from the people killed all over her, stuck to her body by drying blood. Suddenly overwhelmed by fear at the sight of this gore she ran frantically to the neighboring hamlet, crying hysterically, desperate to wash the blood and flesh from her body. Villagers came to help her and gave her clean clothes to wear…
The Army initially covered up the massacre, but journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story. Under pressure, the Army assigned Lieut. Gen. William Peers to probe the cover-up. His report concluded that the massacre
included individual and group acts of murder, rape, sodomy, maiming, and assault on noncombatants and the mistreatment and killing of detainees. They further included the killing of livestock, destruction of crops, closing of wells, and the burning of dwellings within several subhamlets.”
The massacre resulted primarily from the nature of the orders issued to persons in the chain of command… The task force commander's order and the associated intelligence estimate issued prior to the operation were embellished as they were disseminated through each lower level of command, and ultimately presented to the individual soldier a false and misleading picture of the Son My area as an armed enemy camp, largely devoid of civilian inhabitants.
Which briefing might have primed the soldiers to shoot at anything that moved, but doesn’t explain why they kept shooting after the first few minutes when it became clear that no National Liberation Front fighters were in the village, or why they resorted to the other acts described in the report.
One of the Army investigators was Major Colin Powell, later of Iraq War fame, who wrote that “although there may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs, this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the division.” And yet,
Later investigations have revealed that the slaughter at My Lai was not an isolated incident. Other atrocities, such as a similar massacre of villagers at My Khe [see here], are less well known. A notorious military operation called Speedy Express [see here] killed thousands of Vietnamese civilians in the Mekong Delta, earning the commander of the operation, Major General Julian Ewell, the nickname “the Butcher of the Delta.”
SciencesPo provides more context:
The following picture emerges for the most heavily contested regions — the provinces of Quang Tri, Thua Thien, Quang Nam, Quang Tin and Quang Ngai [My Lai’s province] in the north of South Vietnam and the Mekong Delta in the South — from 1967 to 1971: the locations and times of seven massacres carried out by American troops were officially confirmed. The estimated number of victims is over 600. It is also undisputed that hundreds and possibly over one thousand farmers were killed by a special unit of the 101st Airborne Division known as the Tiger Force between May and November 1967; that U.S. helicopter crews regularly engaged in the practice of “target shooting” at civilians and killed thousands of civilians in this way; that tens of thousands of non-combatants — not including the victims of artillery and air attacks — were probably killed during major operations carried out by the U.S. army.
The Army court-martialed 14 soldiers for their participation in the My Lai slaughter. Only one, Lieutenant William Calley, was convicted and sentenced to life in 1971. He was paroled three years later — the impunity of imperial power.
The list of massacres committed by the U.S. military extends from My Lai back to this country’s founding (and indeed into its colonial roots) and forward to today. The list includes the extermination of millions of indigenous peoples; the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the genocide in Gaza, to name a few.
Two hundred forty nine years ago the newly-declared United States justified the slaughter of indigenous peoples by painting them as “merciless Indian savages.” Fifty seven years ago the U.S. military justified the slaughter of Vietnamese by painting them as “sneaky” and “backward.” Today the U.S. and Israel justify Gaza by painting Palestinians as “human animals.” In all cases, the victims were less than human. Racism is central to empire.