Paul Meadlo, a participant in the My Lai massacre, admitted in an interview with Mike Wallace he shot men, women, children, including babies. He suggests that it was because he had lost a ‘damn good buddy’ earlier and that his commander, William Calley ordered him to do it. While he was shooting he felt nothing, but after a few hours it got to him. You can watch this segment in episode 8 of the Vietnam War docu made by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. (1:10:40 to be exact)

Eventually some IOF soldiers will come forward and admit to the same crimes and just like Paul Meadlo they will claim it was because they felt outrage over past losses or because a commander ordered them to kill. The truth is that these people lack the moral backbone to say no in those situations and that a long history of dehumanization of the enemy precedes this. Nothing bad would have happened to Paul Meadlo had he refused. Speaking of dehumanization, the Vietnamese were compared to ants, they were called gooks, dinks and zipperheads or as the innocent sounding ‘Charlie’, their houses were referred to as ‘hooches’ and women were ‘mama sans’. Israelis do the same with Palestinians. They’re not killing people, they’re wiping out insects. There is a dynamic in the IOF that will get you praise from peers if you dare to go so far as to kill a child.

There is a famous story of an American soldier who refused to participate in the gang rape of a kidnapped Vietnamse girl. His story was turned into a movie with a brilliant Michael J. Fox playing the man (Robert Storeby) who resists peer pressure. It’s a brutal movie, the girl who plays the victim is such a good actress you’ll hurt all over watching her ordeal. The girl’s name was Phan Thi Mao. Casualties of war with Michael J Fox and Sean Penn is the third movie that deals with this horrible incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_on_Hill_192