I also watched My Lai: One of the Vietnam War's Darkest Chapters by PBS. Pretty harrowing stuff. It's hard to wrap my mind around how ordinary human beings can become capable of such atrocities. It's hard to wrap my mind around how the military can be so irresponsible when things like this happen. Invariably, the truth comes out and causes people to trust the military even less.
I saw about half of a Frontline documentary called The Wounded Platoon some time ago, about a platoon of soldiers from Colorado who saw the worst of the Surge and have suffered great psychological trauma (and committed some pretty serious crimes) since then.
You can watch it all online: The Wounded Platoon, My Lai
The military uses young men for its warmongering and self-serving purposes. Then it spits them out to fend for themselves and disavows all responsibility when the war follows the solider home in the form of PTSD or other disorders, physical or mental.
A documentary like My Lai makes it easy to see who the real villains are (hint: it's not the soldiers). And I don't shirk my own role as an accomplice in all of this for accepting and embracing the comfortable western life I've been able to live because of our love of war as a nation and human race.
Sheesh. I didn't intend for this post to be so negative.
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