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He was an American soldier, so yes, he's a war criminal in my book.
Thats definitely a fair perspective, but he was clearly exploited into being involved.
Most of the front line war criminals are being exploited into being involved. Why would those be mutually exclusive?
Everyone who has ever done something evil has done so for an internally understandable reason.
He could shoot his commanding officer and never did it. Why?
Both can be true, you can be exploited and still be guilty of being a part of something bad.
Somebody blackmails you into hurting somebody else, you're a victim of blackmail but you still hurt somebody else. Both things are true at the same time.
dude stop having shit takes, he called an air strike on vietnam, yes hes among the war criminals like the rest of them
For whatever little it's worth, Lt. Dane called the airstrike and not him.
Pulling out the modlog is an insane thing to do captain crunch.
We were discussing that any american combatant is Vietnam was a war criminal, even if they were only engaging enemy combatants, due to the fact they shouldn't have been there in the first place. Even if Forrest Gump was exploited by American imperialism, would he still be a war criminal.
This is sincerely not a bait post, I just wanted to hear some input on the nuance of the situation.
So, I'm willing to step on this landmine here.
If you were a US soldier in Vietnam, you absolutely were fighting for a nation that did war crimes in Vietnam and was the bad guy.
But I feel like the war criminal label has to actually be reserved for the people that actually did the killing of civilians, and specific acts, like the solders that did the Mai Lai massacre.
Like if you harmed civilians, yeah war criminal.
But if somehow you managed to fight just armed combatants (bear with me here), even if you were fighting for a colonial aggressor (France or the US in Vietnam) that doesn't rise to the level of war crime. That's just you being part of an imperialist aggressor (which is STILL BAD) and for some reason it just feels like calling every US soldier a war criminal just dilutes the label and makes the idea of war crimes less serious and prosecuting those people who did them less likely to happen.
Like, to put it another way: every war crime is immoral, reprehensible, and evil, but not every immoral, reprehensible and evil thing rises to the level of a war crime?
level headed take i think. it's easy to sit at the computer and bemoan conscripts from the previous century when none of us have any idea what we would have done under those conditions.
people on here love to post about how every member of the us military gets the wall or whatever, and i really do get the impulse, but you are straying from materialism at that point. it would be a completely untenable position in a revolutionary situation. to continue the counterfactual, good luck doing a new american revolution with zero troops on board.
Some Vietnam vets I’ve spoken to who regret their actions really seemed to feel they were basically brainwashed at the time, (our govt lied to us etc) in terms of what they were told communism was and what America was doing in Vn. Obviously I can’t say how true that is but it’s what they seemed to believe
I sort of forget the Vietnam scenes of Forrest Gump. I sort of only remember him pulling the one soldier out who was wounded (legs?), nothing beyond that. So I dunno?
I mean it's basically the same as real life McNamara's morons. So maybe? Kinda depends on what they did.
Idk if you were so handicapped that you didnt know you had to throw grenades in an arc for them to go further (real story), im not sure how mentally competent you are to be criminally responsible
They send him into a tunnel with a flashlight and a pistol at one point
this is an insane thing to post lol it's like cumtown madlibs or something
In the general sense, yea.
I was in a combat arms job, attached to an armored cavalry unit during the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 and also managed to get away with only firing like 3 or 4 rounds the entire time I was in Iraq (as a function check into some piles of sand). Didn't shoot at anybody, didn't run anybody over with a vehicle, didn't call in fire on a house, wasn't involved in any black bagging. (Probably some unexploded ordinance might have gotten thrown around when we were piling up stuff as fast as we could into pits to destroy it, so potential for human harm there.) The worst I, personally did, was some light theft and trespassing in abandoned houses. Not great, but not murder.
BUT, I was directly involved in an illegal war though. Even if I didn't understand it at the time, even if I trusted (naively) that people in the political class actually DID know what they were doing, so I get to be war criminal for ever.
He's definitionally a war criminal but his mental capacity would obviously be a mitigating factor in sentencing.
I mean I'm about restorative justice anyway.
Obviously I'd put him on trial, crimes fully enumerated, and have qualified legal and medical professionals determine if his developmental disability qualifies for any valid types of Non compos mentis-style pleas.
I don't know about millenials, or Gen Xers , normally people from Gen Nay wouldn't receive e charges if disabled.
