My Lai Massacre Analysis

The atrocities committed against Vietnamese civilians was a political threat to Nixon’s strategy of Vietnamization. Nixon’s goal was to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese so that he is able to withdraw most of the U.S. troops. The massacre in My Lai would further justify the resistance of the enemy and it was the complete opposite of what Nixon wanted to accomplish.

Thompson was not sure what had exactly been occurring below him, but he knew he must intervene. He flew down into the hamlet and turned his guns on his fellow soldiers to save a group of Vietnamese civilians. He recued eleven Vietnamese soldiers with two helicopters before heading back to his base to report and end the killing ("The My Lai

Mr. Nance has played a part in the attacks of al Qaeda since the early 1990s and Hitchens states the many points that Mr. Nance makes to persuade anyone to believe waterboarding is torture. The author brings in special forces to argue that waterboarding is a punishment used for special forces not U.S. citizens. Accordingly, Hitchens demonstrates imagery, metaphors, and tone to persuade the audience waterboarding is indeed

American Novelist, Tim O’brien, in his book, Going After Cacciato, illuminates the daunting effects of the Vietnam War by delving into the mind of a young soldier, Paul Berlin. The theme of discontinuity and trauma is revealed as the novel jumps back and forth from reality and fantasy. The book focuses on Berlin, on guard at the observational post as he recounts the tragic deaths of members in his squad and imagines a story of him and his squad chasing after Cacciato. The sudden change of scenes in each chapter creates discontinuities, contributing to a feeling of confusion. This is the author’s attempt to emulate the influence of war onto a soldier — disorientation.

In 'The Memorial Tablet ', Sassoon is representing his views as a soldier who died in World War 1. The soldier is forced to fight for something he doesn 't believe in. It says "Squire nagged and bullied until I went to fight". Sassoon 's choice of verbs 'nagged ' and 'bullied ' emphasizes how much the squire wants the soldier to join and how much the soldier doest want to join.

By 1975 the Vietnam war had claimed over 5 million lives, many of which were civilians. This has made it a war that Americans have been ashamed of and tried to forget. W. S. Merwin was outspoken on how he felt about war, which he shows in “The Asians Dying.” He makes a statement on the inhumane way the Vietnam war took human lives. ” The Asians Dying” will shock readers with its gruesome imagery and force them to look at what war does.

The United State caused the death of Several Native Americans with no sympathy but willingly executed a man for doing the exact thing that their government allowed. When comparing these two major events, the Trail of Tears and the Bataan Death March, one

I do think that the eye symbolize the issue that the has narrator has with his inner vision. Which he refuses to accept that he is sick and mentally unstable. Because the narrator did describe the eye as “evil” and the eye of “vulture”, and these words does summarize the narrator 's identity pretty much. Since he did kill the old man without any real reason and dismembers his body and even courageously let the police sit and have a conversation over the old man’s corpse. Furthermore he did stalk the old man before he killed him and showed no sympathy nor any human emotion.

As politicians continued to send more and more troops to Vietnam, Americans began to question the involvement of the US and voiced their disapproval openly. In 1963, Bob Dylan recorded, “Masters of War,” as an angry protest song that voiced the opinions of the young people who were protesting against the war. He describes the brutality of war throughout the song. He explained how the government builds death planes, big bombs, and guns to aid in the brutality. Pointing fingers at the government, Dylan claims that they only build in order to destroy.

In the chapter “The man I Killed,” O’Brien narrates an incidence which had permanently destroyed his life, murdering an innocent man. He had a lot of difficulties describing the man he killed, and that is why he avoided using the first person in his narrative. The reason for doing this was to relieve some of his guilt which had possessed him. Nevertheless, O’Brien could not hinder himself from picturing a complete imaginary life for the Vietnamese soldier. He outlined the similarities that he possessed and those of the dead man.

It is widely believed that there was a misunderstanding and that Medina’s words at the briefing were misinterpreted by the soldier’s “preexisting anger toward the Vietnamese.” [ Belknap, 58] According to the Peers Commission, who was in charge of the My Lai Massacre investigation, “part of the problem was bad intelligence” [ Belknap, 60] and the operation plan “was based on faulty assumptions” [ Belknap, 60] concerning the whereabouts of the enemy soldiers and their belief that the My Lai village was inhabited by innocent civilians for 4 years[ Bergthold interview, 1969].

“Woodstein” and Watergate, Edward Snowden and the NSA, and Seymour Hersh and My Lai exposed the hidden wrongs of the US government with staggeringly influential power to change both the government and journalism. Here, we will be focusing on the fallout from Hersh’s reports on the 1968 massacres at My Lai (“Pinkville”), Vietnam. With the exposer of US Army immorality by Seymour Hersh of the St. Louis Dispatch in a series of reports the field of war journalism was forever changed into two distinct eras, Pre and post Vietnam and fundamentally changed the journalist, military relationship.

According to Tim O’Brien, the soldiers, who were between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five years old, “had no sense of strategy or mission” (page 19). They order their experience through superstition as opposed to rationality. Consequently, superstition becomes a sort of religious faith that has to save each of them from the twists of fate in the atmospheric strangeness of the jungle. For example, Kiowa “believes in the New Testament stories of life after death” (page 156), Jimmy Cross believes that he “received a good-luck charm from Martha” (page 14), and

Likewise, Haynie makes a point to expose the effect the media has on the public with its biased portrayal of the negative side of veterans and their connection to mental illness. The public’s opinion is formed by how the media covers a story. It just goes to show that when the media is biased in mentioning service members and how dangerous they can be, it leaves the public with only a violent image regarding veterans. In the coverage of Itzcoatl Ocampo’s case, some news stations revealed his connection to the marines or the fact that he is a veteran before properly identifying him.

My level of interest in the experiments that were conducted in the lab did not change over the semester. I find my current undergraduate research to be more interesting and at times has more straight forward calculations. Although, I did find that my interest in process safety has increased since the beginning of the semester. My Dad is very knowledgeable in process safety, and it is fun to discuss how people messed up and caused industrial disasters, and what can be done in the future to prevent similar incidents from happening.