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From Wikipedia
The Mỹ Lai massacre (/ˌmiːˈlaɪ/; Vietnamese: Thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰâːm ʂǎːt mǐˀ lāːj] (listen)) was the mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam, on 16 March 1968 during the Vietnam War. Between 347 and 504 unarmed people were killed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment and Company B, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, as were children as young as 12.[1][2] Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest.
This war crime, which was later called "the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War",[3] took place in two hamlets of Sơn Mỹ village in Quảng Ngãi Province.[4] These hamlets were marked on the U.S. Army topographic maps as Mỹ Lai and Mỹ Khê.[5]
The U.S. Army slang name for the hamlets and sub-hamlets in that area was Pinkville,[6] and the carnage was initially referred to as the Pinkville Massacre.[7][8] Later, when the U.S. Army started its investigation, the media changed it to the Massacre at Songmy.[9] Currently, the event is referred to as the Mỹ Lai Massacre in the United States and called the Sơn Mỹ Massacre in Vietnam.[10]
The incident prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in November 1969. The incident contributed [11] to domestic opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, both because of the scope of killing and cover-up attempts.
Colin Powell, a celebrated elder statesman and perceived hero of the US military played an instrumental role in white washing this masacre. He was a company man, from the beginning of his career through his lies to the UN that got the US involved in another war of aggression. Henry Kissinger is often seen in a similar light among the centrist mainstream but in any just world would have been put on trial for crimes against humanity outside of the United States.
Much was said of the 58,000 US soldiers who died in Vietnam, or the 15,000 US service members and mercenaries who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is often unsaid are the millions more who were victims of the atrocities carried about by US soldiers and mercenaries, often whitewashed as contractors. You hear this same, likely fabricated story, "I was a veteran, I came home and was greeted with protestors who spat on me and called me a baby killer." Whether these accounts are true or not, people are aghast that someone could be so cruel to our returning veterans.
I would like to challenge that perspective. Decorum and norms were violated, sure. But are US soldiers actually baby killers?
From Britanica
The Iraq and Afghanistan body counts are disputed but given that the US military counts any military aged male killed by its murderous hands as deserving of death, lets count everyone who died and say it is in the millions. Frankly, given the massive imbalance of power between the US soldiers and the populations they murder from drones and helicopters using agent orange as in Vietnam or White Phosphorus and depleted uranium rounds as in the war on terror. These people who live under these conditions did nothing to deserve to be treated as "Mere G**ks" (not my words, even John McCain called them that till the day he died) or "Hadjis"
Americans, watching the wars on television and the internet are insulated from war. They do not have rubble in the streets. They do not have to go through checkpoints on the way to work where they could be shot without any consequence. They do not live under occupation. They do not have criminals and thugs deputized by an invading power to handle aid funds. Their women are not raped by the soldiers of an occupying army. Their body parts are not collected as trophies by members of that occupying army. These populations did not want nor did they ask US soldiers to impose a fake democracy on them.
Americans do not experience war crimes but American soldiers, the celebrated veterans, commit them.
Look at what our veterans did to Fallujah where they massacred vast swaths of people who didn't want them there. This wasn't about terrorism. Iraq never threatened America. Did people in Fallujah kill US soldiers? US soldiers were invaders, how can you blame them.
The political culture and the media have made it a taboo to condemn the people who pulled the triggers? Why? Because the veterans are sad about it? What about their victims? What about the refugees they created? Why are we hyper focused on the veterans and not the victims who massively out number the US soldiers who did the murders. The media is willing to talk about the thousands of US troops that died but not the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of Iraqi and Afghan civilians. They will laud veterans as heroes even as blood drips from their hands.
And you know what? Some of the civilians who died, both in the Vietnam War and the War on Terror, were babies. Calling US soldiers baby killers is completely moral and justified.
It is a taboo not to support the troops. Support the troops by not starting wars. Support veterans yes, but stop creating more of them.
The purpose of making that a taboo is to make it impossible to not root for the home team. The home team is jerks. The people in charge are the most ghoulish people we could find. It's often called the national security blob. They are very good at losing wars and extracting massive amounts of money and wealth by doing so and never facing any consequences for being wrong. And the troops fight for them.
Be citizen of the world. Look at it from the perspective of a human, not an American. There is no home team. There's just people. What our troops do is a vile job. No one needs to do that job. Vietnam era troops at the very least were conscripted. We have all been indoctrinated to never question the home team.
American soldiers do not and never have fought for anybody's freedom, let alone yours. They are far more likely to take freedom away from people. American soldiers fight for a chain of command. At the top of that chain of command are the aforementioned ghouls. They signed up to fight for the blob. They go where they are sent to go. There is no freedom involved in any of this. Nation building a democracy are the sales pitch that the ghouls do not believe in. They do not believe in it for America and they do not believe in it for other countries. They are more than happy to side with fascist death squads if it will help expand markets for weapons. They will overthrow a democracy if it suits them. They have sided with the reactionary and tyrannical Saudi regime, who played a significant role in 9-11 and sent our soldiers to fight on their behalf in Yemen. You cannot vote them out, they are bipartisan. They haven't done anything cool since WW2.
So in my view, we should not celebrate veterans or Veterans day. We must instead atone and mourn the victims of those veterans. The US military is the most destructive and vile forces on earth, They are also the single organization with the most carbon emissions. They are the world's biggest polluter, carry nuclear weapons that can wipe out all human life on this planet.
We must remember US war crimes and US victims first.
