"OBITUARIES
of Vo
Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who helped drive the American military
from his country, noted, as The New York Times put it, that “his critics said
that his victories had been rooted in a profligate disregard for the lives of
his soldiers.”
The
implication is that the United States lost the war in Vietnam because General
Giap thought nothing of sending unconscionable numbers of Vietnamese to their
deaths.
Yet
America’s defeat was probably ordained, just as much, by the Vietnamese
casualties we caused, not just in military cross-fire, but as a direct result
of our policy and tactics. While nearly 60,000 American troops died, some two
million Vietnamese civilians were killed, and millions more were wounded and
displaced, during America’s involvement in Vietnam, researchers and government
sources have estimated. (...)
In
more
than a decade of analyzing long-classified military criminal investigation
files, court-martial transcripts, Congressional studies, contemporaneous
journalism and the testimony of United States soldiers and Vietnamese
civilians, I found that Gen. William C. Westmoreland, his subordinates,
superiors and successors also engaged in a profligate disregard for human life.
A
major reason for these huge losses was that American strategy was to kill as
many “enemies” as possible, with success measured by body count. Often, those
bodies were not enemy soldiers. (...)
Veterans
I’ve interviewed, and soldiers who spoke to investigators, said they had
received orders from commanders to “kill anything that moves.”
(...)
“The
Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner,”
Westmoreland famously said.
“Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient.”
Having
spoken to survivors of massacres by United States forces at Phi Phu, Trieu Ai,
My Luoc and so many other hamlets, I can say with certainty that Westmoreland’s
assessment was false.
(...)
"We
need to abandon our double standards when it comes to human life. It is worth
noting the atrocious toll born of an enemy general’s decisions. But, at the
very least, equal time ought to be given to the tremendous toll borne by
civilians as a result of America’s wars, past and present. " (thanks "Ibn Rushd")
