Pathfinder

Let me see if I can narrow it down for you.

In Vietnam we were fighting against a nation which had military forces, land, sea, and air.

Even though we could have bombed Hanoi into rubble with just the use of conventional weapons, and although in the later days of the war we did some intense bombing, we still chose not to bomb them into rubble. We still were slective in our targeting. The Rusell report is basically misinformation: We did not intentionally target hospitals and schools, they were collateral damage.

If we would have chose to turn Hanoi into rubble, as we did many German and Japanese cities, it would have been a technical violation of the Geneva convention.

In Vietnam, at one point in time there were "Free Fire Zones". In effect this meant that anyone in these zones were considered to be armed combatants, or sympathizers of armed combatants (enablers).

To provide you with an extreme example:

During the Son My operation, of which My Lai and LT Calley became infamous, the area had several villiages that was a known stronghold for the 48th VC Local Force (LF) Battalion. The non-combatants (civilians) were suspected to be VC sympathizers.

On the day of this operation, several villages in the My Son AO (area of operation) came under attack, by Task Force (TF) Barker, which was a battalion-size unit of the Americal Division.

Prior to inserting troops into the AO, it was "prepped" with artillery fire and Helicopter Gunships. There of course were a number of civilians killed during the "prepping".

When the troops were inserted into the AO, LT Calley's 1st Platoon, C Company entered the village dubbed My Lai (4). He and several of his troops executed a large number of civilians.

He was Court Martialed and was convicted for killing civilians.

Now the subtelties of what is considered to be a war crime and what isn't comes into play and is often a very fine line.

Some may ask why isn't it considered to be a war crime when villages known to contain civilians are targeted by artillery and Gun Ships. Well it may actually be a war crime under the rules of the Geneva convention, but it is also SOP for inserting troops. This is an "impersonal" use of fire power, just as carpet bombing is.

Why then would LT Calley be guilty of a war crime? Because he at a "personal" level made the decision to kill unarmed people.

When the Tank Commander made the "personal" decision to kill unarmed people, how is it a different scenario than that of LT Calley?

Actually I empathized with LT Calley and I empathize with the Tank Commander, but at the time I fully understood why LT Calley was, and should have been, Court Martialed.

I have stated time and again that war is criminal in and of itself, and is a dirty affair, beyond the understanding of those that have never participated.