EA - Hugh Thompson Jr (1943–2006) by Gavin

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Hugh Thompson Jr (1943–2006), published by Gavin on December 10, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.On the 30th anniversary of the massacre, Thompson went back to My Lai and met some of the people whose lives he had saved."One of the ladies that we had helped out that day came up to me and asked, ‘Why didn’t the people who committed these acts come back with you?’ And I was just devastated. And then she finished her sentence: she said, ‘So we could forgive them.’ I’m not man enough to do that. I’m sorry. I wish I was, but I won’t lie to anybody. I’m not that much of a man."Hugh Thompson was a volunteer officer in the Vietnam War who turned his squad's weapons on American soldiers to stop them raping and murdering more women and children than the four or five hundred they already had.He models the standard idea of heroism: one day, one decision, clarity, evil men to defy, faces you can see. Then, a system to navigate, betrayal, self-sacrifice, being punished for virtue.I'm writing about him because of how the story makes me feel. It is a fault of my feeling that I feel like this about Thompson and not Borlaug.One dayThompson and his crew, who at first thought the artillery bombardment caused all the civilian deaths on the ground, became aware that Americans were murdering the villagers after a wounded civilian woman they requested medical evacuation for, Nguyễn Thị Tẩu, was murdered right in front of them by Captain Medina, the commanding officer of the operation... "It was a Nazi kind of thing."Immediately realizing that the soldiers intended to murder the Vietnamese civilians, Thompson landed his helicopter between the advancing ground unit and the villagers. He turned to Colburn and Andreotta and ordered them to shoot the men in the 2nd Platoon if they attempted to kill any of the fleeing civilians...“Open up on ‘em. Blow ‘em away.”While Colburn and Andreotta trained their guns on the 2nd Platoon, Thompson located as many civilians as he could, persuaded them to follow him to a safer location, and ensured their evacuation..."Later that day, sometime in the afternoon, after they had gone through the village, we were back out there again. [The murderers] were just casually, nonchalantly sitting around around smoking and joking with their steel pots off just like nothing had happened. There were five or six hundred bodies less than a quarter of a mile from them. I just couldn't understand it."...senior American Division officers cancelled similar planned operations by Task Force Barker against other villages... possibly preventing the additional massacre of further hundreds, if not thousands, of Vietnamese civilians.Synecdochein the Vietnamese province of Quang Ngai, where the Mỹ Lai massacre occurred, up to 70% of all villages were destroyed by the air strikes and artillery bombardments, including the use of napalm; 40 percent of the population were refugees, and the overall civilian casualties were close to 50,000 a year... 203 U.S. personnel were charged with crimes, 57 of them were court-martialed and 23 of them were convicted. The VWCWG also investigated over 500 additional alleged atrocities but it could not verify them.[A draw: ] PFC Herbert L. Carter; shot himself in the foot while reloading his pistol and claimed that he shot himself in the foot in order to be MEDEVACed out of the village when the massacre started.CoverupThompson quickly received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions at Mỹ Lai. The citation for the award fabricated events, for example praising Thompson for taking to a hospital a Vietnamese child "...caught in intense crossfire". It also stated that his "...sound judgment had greatly enhanced Vietnamese–American relations in the operational area". Thompson threw away the citation.Initial reports claimed "128 Viet C...