Thaindian News

By Madhuri Dey
Apr 27, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The latest episode of the “American Experience” showcased the horrific incident known as the My Lai massacre that took place in 1968, in the Quang Ngai Province in Vietnam, during the Vietnam war. The story has since been recounted numerous times, but in the latest narration, American Experience tries to make it all relevant, stringing together all the tales that surround the horrific and gruesome incident in which almost 500 Vietnamese common people were killed by the troops of the United States military. However, the telling of the tale, otherwise brilliant, does fall short in certain counts, like not being able to really look into the matter, and finding out who had given the order. Also, the show fails to find a justification of the whole matter.

The documentary features soldiers who had been there and done that. The soldiers are asked about the incident, and how they could justify killing hundreds of innocent men and women, not in face to face combat, but people who were totally unarmed. The soldiers, on the other hand, have different versions of the tale. Many of them claimed that they never shot, although they were among the troops sent by the United States, while others blamed the ones who had ordered them to go.

What makes the incident all the more horrible is that it happened all because of a piece of wrong information given by the United States Intelligence Service. The Service informed that a troop of the Viet Cong were stationed in My Lai. However, it was only after the orders were carried out and the people killed, among them children as young as three, that the mistake was recognized.