At least 347 and up to 504 civilians, almost all women, children and elderly men, were murdered by U.S. Army soldiers. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children as young as 12.
only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., the leader of 1st Platoon in C Company, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after his sentence was commuted.
Research has highlighted that the My Lai Massacre was not an isolated war crime. Nick Turse places it within a larger pattern of American atrocities enabled by deliberate policies from commanders, such as “free-fire zones” and “body counts”, as well as widespread racism amongst American military personnel. Many other atrocities were also covered up by commanders.
Why you should know about this: It is important to know about history so that we can learn from it, avoid the mistakes and atrocities of the past, and know which institutions have a history of performing atrocities, trying to cover them up, etc. and what that looks like.
Please tell me you’re not trying to excuse the rape of civilians as “it’s just what humans do”.
It has nothing to do with evolution. These were angry men, taking out their frustration and anger of being drafted, watching their friends die for nothing in a jungle, on the local population. Rather than the government that sent them there in the first place.
The source of their anger fueling their ruthlessness is not evolutionary. It’s manufactured by the ones that sent them there in the first place.
Neither of which justifies rape or mutilation in any way. But it’s why they were capable of doing what they did. Anger and hate.
I’m not excusing it in any way.
I wish I had a way to advance our evolution past this point so that we didn’t have a significant portion of the population that are monsters.
Evolution. You keep using that word. But I don’t think it means what you think it means. Because this has nothing to do with evolution. Why are you trying to make this into some kind of evolutionary instinct?