I see nobody has mention this in the boards but it was something make me feel sick how the prisoner were treated.They were abused , starved and tortured .
It looks like that everyone thinks thats normal in Vietnam or Laos. How bad is that?
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First off, starved and tortured aren't the same thing.
Dengler was first tortured (like being hanged upside down with an ants nest). In the deleted scenes you see that the aim was to make him sign the propaganda letter.
Then he was starved in the camp with the other prisoners. That was probably due to the scarcity of food. The guards themselves suffered from it. That's why they wanted to kill the prisoners and make it look like they tried to escape so they could go back to their villages look for food.
It was sickening and the kind of medieval behavior we didn't even see from the Nazis.
But, let's keep it in context:
* You're being attacked from the sky by weird machines flown by white giants (4 feet and change is a normal height for these hill people).
* Village life is pretty much consistent with the middle ages, at least as far back as oral history goes until the French showed up at the turn of the century.
* Your education consists of being taught how to shoot an SKS and Stalinist propaganda.
Chances are, you'll be a mean motherfscker, too. But maybe there's a hint of racism in there, too, the Japs were notoriously savage with POWs as well (Bataan Death March as one great example).
Not to justify what the viet cong did to their prisoners,
The Americans aren't exactly innocent when it comes to torture, war crimes, or atrocities.
Educate yourself. Study My Lai, Abu Grab prison, Guantanamo Bay.
My Lai was an atrocity, but trying to compare Abu Gharib with Bataan, the rape of Nanking or the atrocities inflicted on these POWs isn't really much of a comparison.
Guantanamo Bay is run fine. Its strict, but its not torture.
Re: Guantanamo Bay,
I did my research and it turns out, terrorist and detainees get better health care then the average US citizen. Hows that for American irony? In fact, many Americans living near the border, come up here to receive normal healthcare. Great value system you guys have down there.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States
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-Negatyve
At a certain point, tough *beep* You fly planes into our buildings in support of your fascist, psychotically deluded religious beliefs, we're going to capture, interrogate and/or kill your terrorist leaders.
Welcome to the war of civilizations.
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The Americans went clear across to the other side of the world and bombed Laos and Cambodia (this is where I live) - two countries they weren't even at war with, destroying whole villages (in Cambodia, almost 600,000 were killed by Americans bombs). How kindly would you be if you caught someone who indiscriminately killed your family members and many others you knew?
shareLaos and Cambodia both supported the Viet Cong, if by no other means than by allowing them to operate from within their borders. That amounts to an act of war, and the US simply acted on this.
The sad fact of the Vietnam War is that the US was fighting the spreading of fascistoid soviet/chinese "communism" with little support from the rest of the world. A full flexing of their military muscle (a nuke or two, even) would have brought the conflict to an end much sooner and at much less loss of life, but support, even in the West, was sadly lacking, and so the war turned into the mess that it did. Hardly anyone today can claim that the North- Vietnamese vision of a country leaves much to be desired compared to the US vision (the two Korea's is a prime example of this) and one can only hope that the horrors of the Vietnam War had some positive effect in preventing similar conflicts in other parts of the world and stopping the spread fascist regimes across the world...
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Agreed and I would like to add something:
The natives in Southeast Asia did not attack the United States. Not once did a plane from N. Vietnam or Laos bomb the United States; there was no incident of them doing so like the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. Now, if somebody was to aerial bomb my village (town) and make life difficult for every man, woman, and child, I (and any other person living here) would certainly "discuss", with any enemy pilot that was captured, the morality of his actions and "bad manners". And, when I got through with that person he (or what was left of him) would look upon Dieter's treatment as quite humane in comparison.
NOT to criticize Dieter's following of orders; I would bomb a village if given a legitimate order to do so. However, I would not be under any delusions about what would happen to me if I were shot down and captured.
At a certain point, tough *beep* You fly planes into our buildings in support of your fascist, psychotically deluded religious beliefs, we're going to capture, interrogate and/or kill your terrorist leaders.
Welcome to the war of civilizations.
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Ummmmm Stephen Harper is a Terrorist Leader???
It was sickening and the kind of medieval behavior we didn't even see from the Nazis.
It was sickening and the kind of medieval behavior we didn't even see from the Nazis.
No, you're right. The Nazi's went much further than that, you idiot. Try looking up their medical experiments on civilians. It makes what the NVA did overall pale in comparison by sheer evil, cruelty and volume. There's never any excuse for torture but unfortunately it's a fact of life in wartime, or when people feel under threat. All nations do it. What they did was in the bigger picture very minor compared to what has gone on in other conflicts. That's not to downplay how horrific it was for anyone experiencing it, but there is no way you can make out that they were worse than the Nazis for crying out loud. The nazis experiments on criminals, POW's, the mentally ill and against people they considered defective or lesser were some of the most abominable acts in recorded history, and that's just what the Nazis did. Read a book.
Give me a hedgehog and I'll show you.
^Not to mention the barbarity of the Japanese throughout WWII. Much worse than anything the Vietcong came up with.
share
just gotta say have you not heard of Auschwitz and did the 'allied' forces at the time do the same to the north Vietnamese? or looking to the present day what about the cases of torture in Guantanamo Bay by the Americans (both CIA and MI5)
Have you any idea how the US treated the Vietnamese prisoners or civilians? Collecting body pieces like fingers just ears for fun. Or dragging a person after a jeep to make him speak. The atrocities from the US during the Vietnam War is not even comparable to what the NVA or FNL did.
If you think that the FNL treatment of US prisoners was cruel, then what treatment would you expect if you get attacked by a nation with superior weapons? You constantly getting bombed and finally managed to get a pilot down.
However I understand that all this is not commonly known among US people. Just as an example:
Ask a US student how many US soldiers died in Vietnam, they answer: 58 000
Ask a US student how many Vietnamese civilians died in the Vietnam War: *no answer*
If you are a US citizen you are not supposed to know the truth. The government and Hollywood will take care of that for you. Don’t read books the truth might scare you...
If you watch Oliver Stone's "Heaven & Earth" you see an interesting perspecting - a Vietnamese woman who had problems with BOTH sides over the conflict. And it, too, is a true story (she wrote two autobiographies).
Samantha
"We're here. We're dead. Get used to it."
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Hazel, I'm a US citizen, and I've been all over Asia and specifically all over Vietnam. It's true that US soldiers cracked and committed a lot of atrocities there. It's also true that the same happened with the Vietnamese. They gave just as good or better than they got. I've been in a Tiger Pit like they used to keep prisoners in. They used to torture their own people because they didn't believe them when they said they weren't democratic. We dropped napalm on whole villages. They raped their own women and killed their own children.
Go to the Women's Museum in Hanoi and you can get a hint of their history, and that's just what's SANCTIONED by their government to own up to. You think the US has whitewashed our wrongs in the war?! You should see how the Vietnamese spin their side of the conflict. How they were practically greeted as liberators in Saigon, how they threw Christmas parties for the POWs in the Hanoi Hilton... it's ridiculous. Oh, and there's no accurate count of Vietnamese casualties because it's not like they conducted a census or had registered dogtags. Even the estimates are vague speculation.
I'm not trying to defend the actions of either side during the war, just to point out it was a SAVAGE conflict for everyone that was directly involved, one that stripped away people's very humanity. That's a tough thing for any country to own up to. It'll be a great day when our countries can work together to help build up what we together tore apart. But I'm afraid that day is a long way off... In the meantime, I just hope people can remember that (wo)men, ANY man, are capable of great deeds, and great evil. And hopefully we can steer toward the former and away from the latter.
Hey, mykungfuistrong - that sounds about right.
And to the original poster, about why the torture:
When people are getting bombed and shot at, they will get very very upset - actually quite angry. And the more helpless they are, the angrier they will get, and the more vicious their actions will be when they get a chance to pay back. It seemed realistic to me that the ones who killed Duane in the movie were unarmed farmers, well, unarmed except for knives and axes. While the prison guards who had guns and thus some kind of power actually never killed anyone, in the movie. The more helpless, the more vicious.
I've been told that during World War 2, American aircrew here in Europe were told to surrender to military personnel if they were shot down, not to civilians. The risk of lynching was much, much higher in the hands of civilians. Especially if you were near, or in, a city that had been bombed recently. Seems logical. If someone just had a family member killed by a bomb, he is probably not the safest guy in the world to surrender to, especially if you are a recently shot down bomb-aimer...
Interrogation and torture are as old as war itself and is used to get information from the enemy for intelligence. Some Americans beat them selves over the head for small things such as playing loud music at prisoners or water boarding but the Europeans and the rest of the world still do it because it works. NV was notorious for what they did to prisoners and were much more brutal then US forces ever tried to be. Read up on the Hanoi Hilton. Most infantry soldiers and pilots have no pipe dreams about what will happen if they are captured. As for What goes on in conflicts you only hear about these things now days because of modern technology and fast paced information dispersal with the media. Back during WW2 and before US forces did interrogations and they were a lot more hard core then water boarding. Most of the stories about finger necklaces and civilian slaughter was an invention by Hollywood and the antiwar crowd, most of the stories came from the NV, though My Lai did happen and it was dealt with. Bombing of major cities yep it did happen and it worked in breaking moral of the NV and the NV were near close to surrendering by their own words years later, and then the media misreported a singular event that changed the NV minds. So why do Vietnamese interrogate prisoners, use common sense.
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Come on this isn't that bad at all compares to movies like Deer Hunter. Now there's hardship and torture for you.
The prisoners in this film have it pretty easy compares to alot of other nam movies.
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Why did americans tolerate slavery and beat the crap out of slaves and torture and rape?
Americas not this utopian society some people believe it is.
War is inevitable though wrong but sometimes warranted. As far as vietnam goes I only know my father lost half his teeth half his tongue from a grenade. was exposed to angent orange and still has nightmares over the atrocities inflicted on both sides of the war. Americans did some bad stuff to the civilians as well.
A young man would get in trouble and the judge would say well its either prison or enlisting. Which choice do you think some took. Give nutjobs a gun on another country and see what happens. Small majority i know.
A history book cant replace the recount of someone you know wouldnt lie to you. My dad still cannot watch vietnam movies. Hes still in the jungle. He still sleeps with his gun. Go figure!!
Your lively hood is rice and livestock. you see planes bombing your villages and farms. someone gives you guns and says defend your home. what would you do. most of the gorillas were just that gorillas. no formal training other than knowing how to survive in the terrain. let someone come to your town right now and start blowing things up would you defend your family? would you fight for your wellbeing? I believe so.
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and the American planes indiscriminately bombing villages killing innocent women + children.
shareand the American planes indiscriminately bombing villages killing innocent women + children.
Yes, indiscriminately bombing -- as if command would let a pilot take a multi-millon dollar aircraft armed with a million dollars worth of ordnance and just drop it any old place for laughs, without any regard for resources, fuel, cost, risk or any tactical or strategic concerns.
"What the hell, there's nothing to do today -- let's go grab an F4 Phantom and blow up some villagers."
Get a clue.
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