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Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic (Read 7896 times)
Mr Hammer
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #30 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:31pm
 
greggerypeccary wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:29pm:
Mr Hammer wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:20pm:
greggerypeccary wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:12pm:
Unforgiven wrote on Aug 10th, 2018 at 9:43pm:
Why do people who kill other people for a living get labeled war hero?

I challenge the concept that killing people is heroic.

Saving people from being killed is heroic.

Rescuing people in danger or mortal danger is heroic.

Killing people is not heroic.

Soldiers cannot be heroic just by killing people.


True.

So very true.

I suggest you look up vc winners and their actions pecca. Many were given to men who died so their mates wouldn't. Some were given to medics, some to men who saved fellow wounded soldiers. The VC just isn't about killing the enemy. It's about while facing the high chance of death doing extraordinary  actions.


I never mentioned the VC.

well you don't what this topic spawned from then, do you?
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #31 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:36pm
 
freediver wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:24pm:
Not by your own standard of evidence.


If you have evidence that he saved no lives please present it.

Evidently Freediver believes that only killers can be heroes.

...

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wiener-my-lai-hugh-thompson-20180316-...

Quote:
Everybody's heard of the My Lai massacre — March 16, 1968, 50 years ago today — but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. When he arrived, American soldiers had already killed 504 Vietnamese civilians (that's the Vietnamese count; the U.S. Army said 347). They were going to kill more, but they didn't — because of what Thompson did.

I met Thompson in 2000 and interviewed him for my radio program on KPFK in Los Angeles. He told the story of what happened that day, when he and his two-man crew flew over My Lai, in support of troops who were looking for Viet Cong fighters.

"We started noticing these large numbers of bodies everywhere," he told me, "people on the road dead, wounded. And just sitting there saying, 'God, how'd this happen? What's going on?' And we started thinking what might have happened, but you didn't want to accept that thought — because if you accepted it, that means your own fellow Americans, people you were there to protect, were doing something very evil."

Who were the people lying in the roads and in the ditch, wounded and killed?

"They were not combatants. They were old women, old men, children, kids, babies."

Then Thompson and his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, and his gunner, Lawrence Colburn, "saw some civilians hiding in a bunker, cowering, looking out the door. Saw some advancing Americans coming that way. I just figured it was time to do something, to not let these people get killed. Landed the aircraft in between the Americans and the Vietnamese, told my crew chief and gunner to cover me, got out of the aircraft, went over to the American side."

We know that Americans committed a massacre 50 years ago today; and we also know that an American stopped it.

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What happened next was one of the most remarkable events of the entire war, and perhaps unique: Thompson told the American troops that, if they opened fire on the Vietnamese civilians in the bunker, he and his crew would open fire on them.

"You risked your lives," I said, "to protect those Vietnamese civilians."

"Well, it didn't come to that," he replied. "I thank God to this day that everybody did stay cool and nobody opened up. ... It was time to stop it, and I figured, at that point, that was the only way the madness, or whatever you want to call it, could be stopped."

Back at their base he filed a complaint about the killing of civilians that he had witnessed. The Army covered it up. But eventually the journalist Seymour Hersh found out about the massacre, and his report made it worldwide news and a turning point in the war. Afterwards Thompson testified at the trial of Lt. William Calley, the commanding officer during the massacre.

Then came the backlash. Calley had many supporters, who condemned and harassed Thompson. He didn’t have much support — for decades. It took the Army 30 years, but in 1998, they finally acknowledged that Thompson had done something good. They awarded him the Soldier's Medal for “heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy.”

On the 30th anniversary of the massacre, Thompson went back to My Lai and met some of the people whose lives he had saved. "There were real good highs," he told me, "and very low lows. One of the ladies that we had helped out that day came up to me and asked, 'Why didn't the people who committed these acts come back with you?' And I was just devastated. And then she finished her sentence: she said, 'So we could forgive them.' I'm not man enough to do that. I'm sorry. I wish I was, but I won't lie to anybody. I'm not that much of a man."

And what were the highs?

"I always questioned, in my mind, did anybody know we all aren't like that? Did they know that somebody tried to help? And yes, they did know that. That aspect of it made me feel real good."

Today there's a little museum in My Lai, where Thompson is honored, and which displays a list of the names and ages of people killed that day. Trent Angers, Thompson's biographer and friend, analyzed the list and found about 50 there who were 3 years old or younger. He found 69 between the ages of 4 and 7, and 91 between the ages of 8 and 12.

Nick Turse investigated violence in Vietnam against noncombatants for his book “Kill Anything that Moves.” He concluded — after a decade of research in Pentagon archives and more than 100 interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors — that Americans killing civilians in Vietnam was “pervasive and systematic.” One soldier told him there had been "a My Lai a month."

We know that Americans committed a massacre 50 years ago today; and we also know that an American stopped it. Hugh Thompson died in 2006, when he was only 62. I wish we could have done more to thank him.
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Mr Hammer
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #32 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:44pm
 
Hugh Thompson was awarded a medal for what he did actually. Look it up.
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #33 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:49pm
 
Mr Hammer wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:44pm:
Hugh Thompson was awarded a medal for what he did actually. Look it up.


Lt. William Calley was awarded the Freediver medal.
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #34 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:53pm
 
Unforgiven wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:49pm:
Mr Hammer wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:44pm:
Hugh Thompson was awarded a medal for what he did actually. Look it up.


Lt. William Calley was awarded the Freediver medal.

wiki- Thompson and the two other members of his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, were awarded the Soldier's Medal (Andreotta posthumously), the United States Army's highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy.


So it was recognised  hey?
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #35 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 3:20pm
 
Unforgiven wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:36pm:
freediver wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 1:24pm:
Not by your own standard of evidence.


If you have evidence that he saved no lives please present it.



And if you have any evidence he did save lives, please present it. Remember, this is your own words:

Unforgiven wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 11:38am:
freediver wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 9:51am:
1. What if you have to kill some people to save others?

2. Would you describe the people fighting IS in Iraq as heroes?

3. What about the soldiers who fought the Nazis?


1. That would require a consideration of the merits of both sides and consideration of the fact that a person isn't killed until they are dead, therefore one cannot presume one person will kill another merely because they are holding a gun. So by the time proper consideration is given the incident may be over.

2. No. Many of them are no better than ISIS which was created out of US mismanagement of Iraq and Saudi radicalization, arming, and funding of Iraqi Sunni extremists. The Saudis have an interest in fomenting chaos in Iraq and Iran and are still doing so. The USA is responsible for the mess in the first place by invading Iraq under false pretexts and then causing Sunnis to be economically and socially ostracized in Iraq.

3. A day at the office. More than 1 million German soldiers died in captivity because of soldiers "office procedures" which included denying shelter, food and medical treatment and in some cases machine gunning them against a wall.

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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #36 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 3:27pm
 
Perhaps the Freediver medal can be awarded to William Calley and other criminals and cowards in military uniform.

Freediver is denying that Hugh Thompson saved Vietnamese from massacres. That's a cowardly attack on a real hero.

"Everybody's heard of the My Lai massacre — March 16, 1968, 50 years ago today — but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. When he arrived, American soldiers had already killed 504 Vietnamese civilians (that's the Vietnamese count; the U.S. Army said 347). They were going to kill more, but they didn't — because of what Thompson did."

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wiener-my-lai-hugh-thompson-20180316-...

Quote:
... Today there's a little museum in My Lai, where Thompson is honored, and which displays a list of the names and ages of people killed that day. Trent Angers, Thompson's biographer and friend, analyzed the list and found about 50 there who were 3 years old or younger. He found 69 between the ages of 4 and 7, and 91 between the ages of 8 and 12.

Nick Turse investigated violence in Vietnam against noncombatants for his book “Kill Anything that Moves.” He concluded — after a decade of research in Pentagon archives and more than 100 interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors — that Americans killing civilians in Vietnam was “pervasive and systematic.” One soldier told him there had been "a My Lai a month."

We know that Americans committed a massacre 50 years ago today; and we also know that an American stopped it. Hugh Thompson died in 2006, when he was only 62. I wish we could have done more to thank him. ...
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #37 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 3:42pm
 
Soldiers from Western countries commit atrocities and it's often not prosecuted;  but it's not part of our military strategy.

The Nth Vietnamese and VC however,  mass execution orders cane from the top.

The executions following the battle of Hue nunbered nearly 5k civilians, women,  children,  elderly
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #38 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:03pm
 
Gordon wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 3:42pm:
Soldiers from Western countries commit atrocities and it's often not prosecuted;  but it's not part of our military strategy.

The Nth Vietnamese and VC however,  mass execution orders cane from the top.

The executions following the battle of Hue numbered nearly 5k civilians, women,  children,  elderly 


Americans killed 3 million Asians during the Vietnam war.

You don't kill that many people by random acts of individuals. Is Gordon seeking prequalification for the Freediver medal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties

Quote:
... In 1995, the Vietnamese government released its estimate of war deaths for the more lengthy period of 1955–75. PAVN and VC deaths were reported as 1.1 million and civilian deaths of Vietnamese on both sides totaled 2.0 million. These estimates probably include deaths of Vietnamese soldiers in Laos and Cambodia, but do not include deaths of South Vietnamese and allied soldiers which would add nearly 300,000 for a grand total of 3.4 million military and civilian dead.[5]

A 2008 study by the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) came up with a higher toll of 3,812,000 dead in Vietnam between 1955–2002. For the period of the Vietnam War the totals are 1,310,000 between 1955 and 1964, 1,700,000 between 1965–74 and 810,000 between 1975 and 1984. (The estimates for 1955–64 are much higher than other estimates). The sum of those totals is 3,091,000 war deaths between 1955–75.[4] ...
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #39 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:09pm
 
What are your thoughts on the deaths in Vietnam during the Japanese occupation?  Oh probably none because you only worry when whities are responsible.
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #40 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:28pm
 
Gordon wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:09pm:
What are your thoughts on the deaths in Vietnam during the Japanese occupation?  Oh probably none because you only worry when whities are responsible.


Gordon's Freediver medal does not give him the right to obfuscate massacres.

What does Freediver medallist Gordon think about the 1+ million WW2 German POWs in allied hands who died due to lack of shelter, lack of food, lack of medical attention, and machine-gunning?

Here is your award Gordon.

...
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #41 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:30pm
 
So basically, conventional soldiers cannot be heroes, because there is no way of proving that the soldiers they are fighting would kill anyone, but Thomson is a hero because he let all those My Lai villagers get slaughtered while he filled out the appropriate paperwork.
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #42 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:34pm
 
freediver wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:30pm:
So basically, conventional soldiers cannot be heroes, because there is no way of proving that the soldiers they are fighting would kill anyone, but Thomson is a hero because he let all those My Lai villagers get slaughtered while he filled out the appropriate paperwork.


Is that a former marine living creature in your arms that was killed for your enjoyment?

Are you seeking another Freediver medal?
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #43 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:47pm
 
freediver wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:30pm:
So basically, conventional soldiers cannot be heroes, because there is no way of proving that the soldiers they are fighting would kill anyone, but Thomson is a hero because he let all those My Lai villagers get slaughtered while he filled out the appropriate paperwork.


Is your argument rally that stupid Unforgiven?
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Re: Soldiers killing people cannot be heroic
Reply #44 - Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:58pm
 
freediver wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:47pm:
freediver wrote on Aug 11th, 2018 at 4:30pm:
So basically, conventional soldiers cannot be heroes, because there is no way of proving that the soldiers they are fighting would kill anyone, but Thomson is a hero because he let all those My Lai villagers get slaughtered while he filled out the appropriate paperwork.


Is your argument rally that stupid Unforgiven?


You can't be a hero simply by killing someone.

You can be a hero by saving people from being killed.

You can qualify for the Freediver medal by committing atrocities.
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