Post
by Smitty-48 » Tue Mar 13, 2018 2:41 pm
Well, specific to the Pinkville Massacre, I would say there was an ambition to rain retribution down upon the Viet Cong villagers in their intractable stronghold, the narrative of a rogue Lieutenant going off reservation all on his own is not credible, as other members of Company C said to Seymour Hersch at the time, "Calley was just a small fry", to wit, not actually the one who incited the liquidation all on his own without input from higher.
Despite Westmoreland's inclination to seek decisive engagements with NVA and Main Force NLF formations in the Jungle Highlands at the off ramps to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the most intransigent resistance to the Americans was always in the villages south of the DMZ on the lowland plains between the mountains and the sea, and again, the area around Pinkville had been designated a Free Fire Zone in the face of this, which, Free Fire Zone meant shoot anything that moves, on sight, men, women, children, whatever, so a massacre of sorts, in slow motion, had already been in progress for some time.
Technically, a Free Fire Zone was in contravention of the laws of armed conflict, in of itself, you're talking about troops who were already gunning people down indiscriminately on a daily basis, as policy, herding said people into one place to do it all in a more efficient manner, was simply a logical extension of the activities ingrained in their concept of operations.
Nec Aspera Terrent
