Mike Tyson Quotes

A number of the American soldiers refused to obey Calley's illegal order. Some helped some villagers to escape, and a helicopter pilot landed betreen Callery's men and the villagers they were shooting at, and ordered his helicopter machine gun crew to fire on the soldiers if they did back off. The soldiers stopped firing at the civillians. However, his and other reports of the massacre were covered up by the military for a few years. Mai Lai was not the only major war crime perpetrated by Americans in the Vietnam War; there had been a few others. But given the years of fighting and the many opportunities war crimes violations under orders were quite rare. The Viet Cong had many more war crimes that they perpetrated, and our South Vietnamese allies repeatedly committed war crimes against their own people.

The moral imperative of submission rather than allowing a war started by the aggressor, logical for Pizarro and Church leaders of the time, is the same logic of aggressors from Adolf Hitler to Saddam Hussein.

Attila the Hun

They had seen many other abolitionists attacked and butchered by the pro-slavery forces. The civil war of Kansas was over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave state of a free state. If a free state, the free states would be able to block further slavery. If Kansas were to become a slave state, the slave states would have a sufficient majority to make all future expansion hospitable to slavery. The slavery forces started sending man and families into Kansas so that they could vote; the abolitionists did the same. Both sides armed and a war began with each faction trying to kill or drive the other faction out of Kansas before the vote. See {617388} and {612516}.

The Abenaki Indians from Canada had come South and raided many of the settlements of upstate New York. In the process, they committed many atrocities killing civilian men, women and children. Amhurst ordered Robert Rogers and his rangers to attack the Abenaki home villiage in Canada on a famous punitive raid. The Rangers, did indeed, raid the Abenaki and wiped out all the males of the tribe that were in the camp at the time. Amhurst hated Indians, but still had his standards regarding the killing of women and children, but was perfectly willing to kill all the mature males. There were no Geneva Conventions at the time. The same general introduced biological warfare by giving Indians smallpox infected blankets. See {619646}

The Lebanese Prime Minister had been assassinated with most Lebanese thinking that the Syrians were behind the murder. All the political parties in Lebanon called for a UN Tribunal to investigate the assassination. As the Tribunal was ending its investigation, word leaked out that the report would name Lebanese Hezbollah operatives as being involved in the assassination. If that happened, the Lebanese government and army would have the obligation to arrest the murders for trial and Lebanon would be split against Hezbollah which was the most powerful and militant political group as well as being a terrorist group. Hezbollah declared that they would not allow any arrests of their people, and that they wanted the Government, led by the murdered politicians son to repudiate the UN Tribunal even before the report was issued. When that failed, Hezbollah withdrew from the government coalition and reconstituted a government without the son of the murdered Prime Minister who was then thrown out of office. Jumblatt’s Druze party held the balance of power and surprisingly sided with Hezbollah. Usually he was a strong advocate for justice. However, if he refused to go along with Hezbollah, they would use their terror troops against the Lebanese army and civil war would result. Hence Jumblat’s answer—a classic statement of a political dilemma.

Nathaniel Bacon had led a rebellion in Virginia and had routed the Governor’s troops and caused him to flee leaving control of Virginia to Bacon and his followers who were far more democratic and advanced. However Bacon succumbed to swamp fever, and his followers could not hold the colony together giving the Governor a chance to establish his authority. He then went on a vengeful reign of terror, executing all of Bacon’s followers he could get his hands on. With no danger to the authority of the Crown, King Charles felt that Berkeley had gone too far. The King’s father Charles I had been executed in the aftermath of the English Civil War, but he had executed far fewer than Berkely had done in Virginia.

Cromwell’s army of Parliament massacred all the town’s defender. Cromwell had issued an ultimatum to the town commander which had been refused. See {632367}.