basically the reasons the doctor keep the arm was "I kept this guy's arm as a relic to tell myself I'm a good person!" like idk what to say
Main part of the story:
Nguyen Quang Hung fought during the Vietnam war and had his arm amputated by US army doctor Sam Axelrad in 1966 after his arm caught gangrene.
Dr Axelrad kept the bones of the arm as a reminder of the good deed he had performed by treating an enemy soldier.
He began a quest to track down the owner of the arm in 2012, meeting Mr Hung on Monday to return his bones.
"I'm very happy to see him again and have that part of my body back after nearly half a century," Mr Hung said.
"My arm bone is evidence of my contribution to the war. I will keep it in my house... in the glass display cabinet," he said, adding that he hoped the arm would help him claim a veteran's pension, as his army files had been lost.
He also plans to be buried with his bones.
Ok, less fucked up than the OP image makes you think. But still pretty twisted.
Ok, that's actually kind of wholesome given that he saved the life of a North Vietnamese/NLF soldier. I assumed it was like a war trophy or something.
its like that, i post it because i founded kinda weird and creepy to be a doctor and think "im gonna keep the severed arm"
Yeah but the war trophy idea is on another fucking level entirely, like the guy bent down and picked up a recently blown-off arm from the battlefield and stuffed it into his backpack next to his smokes and ripped out porn mag pages and somehow kept a rotting human arm around through everything and got it home.
Nguyen Quang Hung fought during the Vietnam war and had his arm amputated by US army doctor Sam Axelrad in 1966 after his arm caught gangrene.
Dr Axelrad kept the bones of the arm as a reminder of the good deed he had performed by treating an enemy soldier.
. . .
"When I amputated his arm [in 1966], our medics took the arm, took the flesh off it, put it back together perfectly with wires, and then they gave it to me," he said.
"When I left the country six months later, I didn't want to throw it away, I put it in my trunk and brought it home, and all these years it has been in my house," he added.
But, that said, Nguyen agrees with you:
"I can't believe that an American doctor took my infected arm, got rid of the flesh, dried it, took it home and kept it for more than 40 years," he said.
Fingers crossed for the Vietnamese guy to finally get his pension, that part was a bummer.
nice to see that chapo.chat supports the troops; must be the bernie influence
Of things to have displayed at your house, your arm is one thing to make visitors do a double take. It's weird that the doctor kept the arm, but if it can give him his pension, I guess this can work out in his favor.
Vietnam vets are such a mixed bag. You either get crazy chuds who mourn we didn’t kill enough of them or ones who figured out we were the invaders and immediately protested the war after coming back.
Yeah I wouldn't say it's "good" but it's surely a way to knock some class consciousness into some people.
correct me if im wrong, but isnt this the nazi soldier defense? "they were drafted! they had to!"
like, im sorry, i know propaganda is strong is america but the choice between jail time and slaughtering innocents by the millions is clear. plus, yes there was propganda, but there was also a pretty important anti war movement? and people heard stories from their families and friends about what was going on there. and i think its unfair to all of us (the the vietnamese, americans, soliders, etc.) to give them a pass on this. you dont have to go around screaming at them or whatever, but the vietnam war sucked, and every american who helped participated in genocide is both a sucker and a murderer.
we as a country need to learn to deal with our genocidal past and present. and how much nuance is needed on this website about this anyway? people say "kill cops" and ACAB and literally post clips of cops dying and getting beaten here, but heaven forbid someone say "vietnam vets are pieces of shit?" that ....confuses me.
there's definitely similarities, but there are nuances. the nazi soldier defense is a legitimate defense for random grunts who consisted of poor people on the front line who were forced to participate in the armed forces of their country at the time, but not for those that volunteered. every soldier drafted from germany in wwii is considered a nazi. the defense falls through when they're fucking guarding a concentration camp.
cops aren't drafted. they're fucking voluntary. they're all bastards.
okay, thats fine, and even a good point! im also sure many cops could tell you "it was the only job available and i had to take it to feed my family" and in a lot of cases it would even be true! the job market in rural places and even some isolated cities/suburbs is abysmal. but that wouldnt not make them a piece of shit. becoming an armed oppressor, taking on that mantle to save yourself is.....well, i can understand it, but i dont think i can fully forgive or reconcile myself with it.
but then again, i dont have to. its not my country they committed a genocide against. i couldnt ever bring myself to ask victims for nuance or understanding over a genocide. im happy this was restorative for the man in this case, but we have to accept this wont always be so. i believe we have to reconcile with the overwhelming negative impact our country has had on the lives of millions and we have to do that without caveats and concessions for our own feelings on the matter, or else will always learn to justify it.
Deeming an 18-year-old soldier 100% responsible for their choices is inconsistent with what we know about brain development, especially when there's a national propaganda apparatus talking them into the wrong decision. We can't (rightly) recognize how kids should have their development factored in by the criminal legal system (when there isn't national propaganda taking them into crime) but then turn around and ignore all that for 18-year-old troops.
Oh yeah, I'm not saying let teenagers completely off the hook for serious crimes. I'm saying it's a factor we should (and sometimes do) consider in a criminal context, so it should be a factor here, too.
“Oh no a draft now I have to willingly massacre and brutalize POC. Oh well, draft said I had to! It’s not like I could just take the prison sentence and not go and support imperialistic genocidal war!”
it wasn't even a 'people of color' thing back then, they specifically targeted communism and basically threw everyone in the same boat as the nazis.
i already acknowledged that you could take the cell, but some of those people had families and shit dude. like if you have children and have to support them and you going to jail means everyone in your household is ostracized and they'll actually lose their home, it blurs the lines a little bit. it's not always so simple as we make it out to be.
like you, i will, and boldly at that, say i would take the cell, but to simplify this shit to 'them all being pieces of shit' ignores the class war.
do you give the rich draft dodgers more points because they didn't go slaughter them? they didn't because they had a fucking choice and the draft didn't fuck with their livelihood. the government was basically like 'you do this or we will ruin your fucking life and your family.'
Also, a dishonorable discharge is (for most purposes) equivalent to a felony on your record.
I give rich draft dodgers more points for not facilitating genocide. Badempanda had a good video on this
rich draft dodgers did facilitate genocide by participating in the class war in the first place. they always send the poor.
Yeah and the poor Americans supported the genocide by committing it
yeah, for sure, but you need to put an asterisk on that shit and explain the circumstances.
because they were poor and the government held their lives hostage.
yes, they were. and you can totally hold them morally to a fault there. i just don't think it's quite so black and white as 'they are all pieces of shit.'
They healed the mass murdering child raping woman abusing communist killing racist xenophobic pieces of shit AmeriKKKans
if we're just going to throw everyone under an umbrella then we're all fucked.
i don't, i just recognize that material conditions exist and so does propaganda
You are literally reiterating the propaganda without nuance, only using the socially prescribed "nuance" the general muriken public has been using for almost 50 years now.
i'm not sure it's a choice for them. i'm not a neurologist or anything, but generally propaganda has seemed to have some kind of effect on people's brains that they aren't exactly aware of.
Are you literally claiming to be immune to propaganda?
it wasn't for me. i just naturally doubt a lot of shit and question things. a lot of people don't seem to be born with that characteristic.
Hell, give me the keys to your truck and I’ll deliver Mao to Fort Bragg
https://66.media.tumblr.com/08b76133a76a533fa0840823b082816a/tumblr_inline_pnvl9mLKAk1qjv12c_500.png
lmao every single person working in a hospital in the US is a piece of shit in that case
it’s easy to say you would have been a conscientious objector and taken the cell, and i’ll say that too,
Thank you. I'm going to ignore everything that didn't matter before you said "but"
Upvote me if the libs are at it again and getting upset over this quality post
Unless not all troops means only the ones who parodied their commanding officers in Minecraft (I believe it was in pre alpha back then), then 🙄🙄🙄
$50 to anyone with a time machine to kill Columbus, discovering Americas was a mistake.
This reminds me, I should really learn to make gun powder from scratch just in case I ever get access to time machine.
its just a nice, easy to understand summary of some of the shittiest parts of columbus
i could just as easily have said, in a comment, without any links at all, that columbus was a literal child sex slaver and that i believe literal child sex slavers should be killed. if you disagree with that, fuck off
(by the way: the oatmeal is not the source of the information in that comic. the sources, which are cited at the bottom, are A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen, both of which are, believe it or not, real books. these real books, in turn, cite primary sources)
Furthermore, I gotta ask, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you a fan of Columbus?
Lol, imagine stanning someone who the spanish monarchy thought went too far
No one is "hung up" on columbus
It's funny seeing a supposed leftist defend him thoughThe yanks are pushing back on the centuries of pretending that columbus wasn't a rampaging psychopath mate
These kind of stories are more common than you think (not the bone returning part ofc), old US soldiers visit Vietnam to reunite with their old lover/friends, to pay respect to fallen US/VC soldiers, to visit their old post, etc. The reception by people here is usually positive and the media frame these visits as healing the wound between 2 nations.
