William Calley Quotes


Why haven't you killed them yet?


Context

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.


Citations

William Calley, Repremand to several of his soldiers whom he had ordered to kill the Vietnamese Civillian villagers -- old men, women and children -- of Mai lai. Quoted on Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, TV Documentary, “The Vietnam War”, PBS, September 25, 2017

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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William Calley
William Calley
  • Born: June 8, 1943
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William Laws Calley Jr. is an American war criminal and a former United States Army officer convicted by court-martial for the premeditated killings of 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the Mỹ Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. Calley was released to house arrest under orders by President Richard Nixon three days after his conviction. A new trial was ordered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit but that ruling was overturned by the United States Supreme Court. Calley served three years of house arrest for the murders. Public opinion about Calley was divided.