On 10/21/2004 10:55 PM, Eric Takabayashi wrote:
> Scott Reynolds wrote:
> 
> 
>>On 10/20/2004 10:04 PM, Eric Takabayashi wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Please tell me more about how all Americans in your pathetically limited knowledge
>>>are angry. Are you ignorant, or are you lying, or are you exaggerating?
>>
>>I suppose he is thinking of the people who learned about the massacre
>>when they saw the photo pictorial about it in Life magazine, as I did
>>when I was a kid. I was shocked, disgusted, angry, bewildered, etc.,
>>when I saw it, and I suspect that many others felt the same.
> 
> 
> Ernest explicitly claims he knows no one NOT angry. I don't care that "many" Americans
> are angry.
> 
> Based on my own limited knowledge, I don't know a single person (offline) who expresses
> anger about My Lai, for example. And I used to get into arguments with my own parents,
> registered Democrats, about US history. Because they, as children of the 40s and 50s,
> were raised to think quite differently about their country the US. They never
> criticized Vietnam, or any President or his policies that I can recall.
> 
> No exaggeration or lie.

Are you seriously saying that your parents expressed no anger of dismay
about My Lai? Perhaps they thought the way it was dealt with was
appropriate, or perhaps you are referring to other discussions you had
with them (about the rightness or wrongness of the Vietnam War in
general, for example) and extrapolating their attitude to cover specific
atrocities such as My Lai.

In any case, you are quite mistaken if you think that there were not a
very large number of people who were very upset and angry at the time.
As for contemporary attitudes, it is not surprising that the emotions
have cooled after all these years.

>>No one who saw those photos at that time -- when they were still news, in other
>>words -- could possibly forget them.
> 
> 
> So explain the mixed reaction and denial, please.
> 
> 
>>It's like Abu Ghraib.
> 
> 
> Indeed. Many do, but many still don't give a damn today about treatment of (suspected)
> terrorists or insurgents.

And many do. You would not use the contemptible attitudes and foolish
statements of a few callous individuals to condemn an entire nation,
would you?

>>A picture is worth a thousand words. Just as many
>>people are angry now about abuses committed by US service personnel,
>>many more people were angry then, because the abuses were so much worse.
> 
> 
> And what of what we do not know, or are not allowed to know, then or now, such as the
> other atrocities in the region around even just My Lai, or in the rest of the country?

What are we not allowed to know? There is quite a lot of information out
there, if you are inclined to look.

-- 
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Scott Reynolds                                      sar@gol.com