Day 42

Part of my major, which I love by the way (despite how much friggen work it is,) involves a sweet course known as Methods of Research and Analysis. It's not required, but it should be. The course is not about content. Rather, it's about how to interpret the content; where the use of the primary source best fits within the context of the thesis of an argument, determining strengths and weaknesses of secondary source arguments, and basically understanding that not everything you read is true. This doesn't mean that nothing is true, it essentially is the realization that there is no such thing as a perfect source or argument.

ANYWAY.

As a part of the reading for this course, I spent last night in the library reading a book of court transcripts and other government documents centered around the My Lai massacre, which occured March 16, 1968, which is REALLY close to three months after the Tet Offensive. And oh, the things that people confessed to. And oh, the things people saw. Several soldiers verified the shooting of a mother and her baby. Vietnamese civilians were herded into a ditch and gunned down by M-16 assault rifles on automatic fire. All in all, close to 500 Vietnamese were killed in the incident, and the hunt for the Viet Cong (guerilla warriors fighting in the South on the side of the Communist North) turned up an unconfirmed number of VC and three (yes, THREE) M1 rifles and carbines. There was one wounded, accidentally self-inflicted during the cleaning of a .45 caliber pistol.

And I don't think anyone knows gut wrenching until you read rape reports. I made it to the report of an 11 year old girl being found raped and dead until I had to stop and just skip to the next document.

Military people, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's about 128 people in a company, divided up into platoons, which are subdivided into squads. All that to say, while some men refused to fire on civilians when ordered to do so, most did not. The one person convicted for murder, getting life in prison (which Nixon reduced to 20ish years,) was the leader one of the platoons, Lt Calley.

Everyone else got off with nothing. One, after admitting to firing 16 clips of ammunition WITHOUT BEING SHOT AT and killing ten people, was even heralded as a hero in his hometown while people said he was just following orders.

Such bullcrap. It came as a huge shock to me, because, since I live in the United States, Vietnam was always referred to as the war that didn't really need to be fought, and that American troops just got overwhelmed as the war became a political nightmare. Somehow, and for some reason, it didn't register to me that we would have disregarded the Geneva Conventions and pulled something off like this.

I know that God is in control and I believe that judgement is his to give. But this was a case, as I read this, that I wanted judgement NOW. I am ok now, but I just hate stuff like that.

Otherwise, I keep being surprised at how busy I really am and I don't remember ever being this busy. I'm holding up ok, but I'll be glad to get this week over with. I'm sorta behind, but I plan on catching up tomorrow. I actually planned on catching up today, but I mostly just walked around and hung out with people.

Maybe tomorrow I'll actually work.