My Lai Massacre

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

Not sure if this would belong in PR or not, but I'm thinking no.  American History is not my most well-informed topic - I know the major things we learned in high school and such, but there's so very much more that I really have no idea about.  For example, I saw a reference to the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam on Facebook today.  47 years ago.  I took to Wikipedia to read about it and am saddened and amazed to find that such things could ever take place and I'm sure anyone could easily point me to much worse atrocities that the US has committed, unfortunately.  I understand full well that in the fog of war, it cannot be easy to always be thinking straight when you're just hoping to get out alive.  That aside, I still can't fathom how something like this happens.  Did the folks involved really truly believe somehow that they were in the presence of VC combatants or did they just not care?

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

FYI, small picture links to some scenes from the incident which could be work-questionable.

[hefdaddy42]

My Lai was awful.  It's where the term "babykiller" came from.

[El Barto]

Didn't much care for it, but I seem to recall that Platoon did a pretty nice job of covering the mindset that went into it. Several different factors involved, including groupthink and a deference to authority. Every once in a while we hit on examples here and the same sorts of discussions occur regarding culpability of the mob doing something shitty. Usually it involves a gang-rape in a highschool somewhere.