Talk:My Lai massacre/Archive 4

Pattern of war crimes against civilians
Situating the My Lai massacre in the context of the wider pattern of US atrocities in the war is important because the reader should be given a glimpse of the significance and relative salience of the My Lai massacre. Subsequent revelations about war crimes, including reports from the VWCWG Pentagon investigation, shed much light on this. With this in mind, I added a section but it was watered down with weasel language (e.g. "alleged"--these were documented by the official US investigation) and much of the information and most of the footnotes were removed so only a stump of the section remains in the article. Indeed, even the heading was changed to limit it only to the VWCWG investigation. Here is what I added:


 * The My Lai massacre was but one of many atrocities perpetrated by U.S. armed forces against the civilian population of South Vietnam. Over a course of several years concluding in the early 1970s, a U.S. Pentagon task force called the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG) investigated atrocities perpetrated by U.S. troops against South Vietnamese civilians and created a secret archive of some 9,000 pages documenting 320 incidents of massacres and atrocities, in addition to the My Lai massacre. The investigators interviewed hundreds of U.S. personnel and created an extensive record that describes frequent attacks targeting ordinary South Vietnamese civilians, including families in their homes and villagers in their rice paddies. U.S. military murdered, raped and tortured with impunity and the brutalities were perpetrated not by just a few rogue units but were widespread. A portion of the archive was declassified in the 1990s.
 * The archive documents seven massacres from 1967-1971 in which at least 137 civilians died; 78 additional attacks targeting noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted; and 141 incidents of U.S. soldiers torturing civilian detainees or prisoners of war. Only a few hundred U.S. personnel were ever charged with any crime and of those only 14 served time in prison. The VWCWG also investigated over 500 additional alleged atrocities but could not verify them. Decorated U.S. army officer John Kerry, founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, testifying before the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate in 1971, stated that the My Lai massacre was just the most well-known instance of a much more widespread pattern of war crimes against civilians by the U.S. armed forces. The crimes perpetrated in My Lai were "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with full awareness of officers at all levels of command." Kerry went on to recount to the Senate committee numerous barbaric acts of U.S. military personnel targeting South Vietnamese civilians. The VWCWG also tried to intercept communications by U.S. officers in the field revealing atrocities by U.S. forces to prevent them reaching Congress.

--NYCJosh (talk) 10:03, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * No weasel language, I just reduced it to be NPOV and purely factual reflecting the findings of the VWCWG and removing the opinions and speculation of John Kerry and the Winter Soldier Investigation. You clearly want to assert/imply widespread atrocities to US forces in the same manner as Nick Turse does Mztourist (talk) 10:28, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * 1. Inserting "alleged" for well documented massacres is textbook weasel language.
 * 2. I don't want to assert anything, just want to provide the information that the VWCWG found and documented, as reported in a series of articles published by the LA Times, one of the countries leading general readership dailies.
 * 3. Senator John Kerry is a highly decorated US army officer whose testimony to the US Senate committee at the time adds important perspective, and confirms in broad strokes what the VWCWG documented and the LA Times reported.
 * 4. There is no reason to water down this information, unless you have some sort of agenda. My Lai has a context--we would be depriving readers by suppressing it.
 * 5. The only WP rules-based objection you have raised is NPOV, so let's discuss that explicitly. NPOV applies when there are at least two different points of view on an issue so we would not want WP to take a side. But here, there is no other "side"--the US govt itself declassified its archive and a major newspaper reported the findings and factually non-controverted conclusions drawn from the findings. If you have a source that refutes this, let's have it. Otherwise, the section I wrote is NPOV because it is the only side on the issue.--NYCJosh (talk) 13:20, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * 1. "alleged" comes from the LA Times article where it states "The documents detail 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by Army investigators"
 * 2. All of that is covered in the paragraph. You don't need to cite the same LA Times story 4 times
 * 3. Kerry was a US Navy officer if you bothered to check. His Senate statement was just his opinion and assertions, no evidence was provided and so including it is WP:UNDUE. The facts are contained in the VWCWG and WP is supposed to present facts
 * 4. I am not watering anything down, just presenting the facts, not opinions and implication
 * 5. The section you wrote is not NPOV as it is not just a presentation of the facts, but rather pushes a POV of a "Pattern of war crimes against civilians" wider than what is supported by the evidence produced by the VWCWG. I have reduced the section to the facts. My Lai prompted the Pentagon to investigate war crimes in Vietnam and indeed they found that some had occurred. Mztourist (talk) 03:26, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
 * 1. Not alleged. The LA Times article states "The files are part of a once-secret archive... that shows that confirmed atrocities by U.S. forces in Vietnam were more extensive than was previously known." A paragraph later: "The records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese — families in their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing. Hundreds of soldiers, in interviews with investigators and letters to commanders, described a violent minority who murdered, raped and tortured with impunity. Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units..." (I added the underlines for emphasis.)
 * I can keep quoting like this from the LA Times article. The VWCWG interviewed hundreds of witnesses under oath and confirmed the existence of the atrocities.
 * That's why I added the "hundreds of soldiers" paraphrase in my section--to convey to the reader the comprehensiveness of the investigation by the VWCWG. That, too, should be added back in.
 * The LA Times article does use the word "alleged" ("A task force was assembled from members of his staff to monitor war crimes allegations...") but is very clear that these were confirmed by the VWGWG (see my earlier quotes and many others). The article leaves no doubt that these massacres happened.
 * 2. I cited a second LA Times source that is a link to a series of articles on this subject. Each adds more information. Also cited was a Nation (magazine) source that provides an overview. These too should not have been deleted.
 * 3. Kerry's testimony is important because this is the first time an officer of the "Winter Soldier" investigation, which included a lot of testimony by US service members about US atrocities in Vietnam, esp. My Lai, was testifying to Congress. So Kerry is a My Lai investigation veteran participating in the Senate hearings about My Lai. We can make that connection more explicit.
 * 4. Let's see what details remain to be discussed.
 * 5. That a pattern of war crimes existed is hardly debatable because no source disputes it. Three events make a pattern. The VWCWG found seven massacres in which at least 137 civilians were killed. "The records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese — families in their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing. Hundreds of soldiers, in interviews with investigators and letters to commanders, described a violent minority who murdered, raped and tortured with impunity. Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units, a Times review of the files found. They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam." Again, pretty clear that it was widespread.--NYCJosh (talk) 05:21, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
 * 1. "Alleged" came from the article, so not weasel words as you said. I have read the article and what is there is adequately summarised in what I have written.
 * 2. I don't see the second LA Times story as adding anything more of value, particularly as VWCWG has its own page, but will reinstate it
 * 3. Kerry's testimony is his opinion, not facts. If you wish to add facts that were uncovered by the Winter Soldier Investigation then those can be added
 * 4. You haven't provided any new facts
 * 5. Again WP is an encyclopedia of facts. What I have written is what the VWWCG uncovered, whether or not those incidents amounts to "a pattern of war crimes" in 8 years of war that involved over 3 million Americans is taking a POV. Nick Turse has a POV that he pushes and just because he asserts it in a few articles and a book doesn't make it true. Mztourist (talk) 06:33, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 11 August 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved (closed by non-admin page mover)  Megan Barris   (Lets talk📧)  07:50, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

My Lai Massacre → My Lai massacre – Sources don't usually cap massacre in this context; we should not treat it as if it's a proper name if sources mostly don't. Yes, a few massacres are consistently capped in sources (like the Boston Massacre), but most are not, so we use lowercase per MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 06:07, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. It was an actual massacre, not a work titled "My Lai Massacre". J I P  &#124; Talk 14:07, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Support The ngrams test seems a fair way to judge if an event has evolved in usage to being referred to as a proper noun -- Boston or Valentine's Day would be capitalized, for example, while this one would not. A search in Google news brings up mixed results but leans lower case.--Yaksar (let's chat) 14:09, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

The epithet 'baby killers'
I removed this sentence:
 * The epithet "baby killers" was often used by anti-war activists to describe American soldiers, largely as a result of the Mỹ Lai Massacre.

The statement is sourced to an interview between Myra McPherson and Haberle. But the fact that Myra McPherson asks the question "How do you view the fact that veterans were stamped “baby killers” largely as a result of the My Lai massacre that you exposed?" does not make it true.

There is contrary evidence on the issue: The allegedly common scene of mockery and confrontation of returning Vietnam Veterans is contested by The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam by Jerry Lembcke. Lembcke finds survey data showing that 75% of returning veterans opposed the war as of 1975, that most reported positive experiences on their return, etc. The book also documents numerous fictional accounts that string together "baby killers" shouts and spitting, which Lembcke finds to lack factual foundation. He describes it as an enduring myth about the end of the war.--Carwil (talk) 02:15, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

PFC Herbert L. Carter Motivation Claim
The article currently claims that Carter’s gunfire was accidental and his desire to leave the site was concocted later. The only citation for this claim is currently defunct, if someone could find one that corroborated that the gunfire was accidental I think it would significantly improve the article. Deku link (talk) 06:04, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Gratuitous inclusion of a subjective and seemingly biased characterization of the subject matter
From the introduction:

“This war crime, which was later called ‘the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War…’" By whom?

The reference is to a book entitled War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam, by Bernd Greiner and published by Yale University Press. Did the author of this book make this assessment or was he quoting one or more others who did?

Regardless who made this assessment, it seems totally subjective. What exactly rendered this massacre the “most shocking”? Was it because it was perpetrated by American forces, with the implication being that ignoring similar atrocities by the other side that dwarfed My Lai in body count--such as this one presented publicly by no less an esteemed source than Wikipedia-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF --as not so shocking as what else can one expect from a bunch of Godless communist savages? This implication seems more than a bit chauvinistic, not to mention racist, to me and I believe the quote and reference should be removed as being totally subjective and unworthy for inclusion in such an unbiased and objective publication as this one!

Thank you.HistoryBuff14 (talk) 22:06, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * The quote appears to be taken from the first sentence of a description of the book on the inside front flap of the jacket cover. It is unclear to me who wrote this. I think this weakens the case that the quote is supported by a reliable source since it is coming from something like a book review rather than the text of the book itself. At the very least I think this discrepancy should be reflected in the citation. Fiwec81618 (talk) 06:16, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): WG3416.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Are the photographs in the gallery wholly necessary?
Some of the photographs seem more suited to a site like Documenting Reality. I don't necessarily mind the gallery, but for a kid accidently stumbling upon this article to see brains like that is a little bit iffy in my opinion. Yourlocallordandsavior (talk) 10:03, 9 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED and sadly a comprehensive encyclopedia will include images of atrocity such as these. The risk of exposing people to extreme content is less than the risk posed by presenting sanitized history to readers. CosmologicalDefect (talk) 03:25, 28 March 2022 (UTC)