War is where men get to do what they do best. Kill each other. Most of you live in a very sanitized world.

What you're seeing in the photo is someone who is most likely a psycho.

You'll find 1 or 2 in every 100 people. These people can kill all day long without feeling or effect.
They're not all rotten however. Most live normal lives without killing anyone but if the situation arose they wouldn't hesitate.

During the Second world war it was discovered that most of the killing was done by 1 or 2 men in a squad.
Modern training/drill has upped that number considerably.

Actually, what he did was legal under the Rules of War. The photographer who took the picture later regretted it as it ruined the guy's life. It portrayed the incident without context and unfairly characterized the subject. It also excused the atrocities that the victim in the photo, and the NVA at large, committed. The subject of the photo was hounded in the US and lived a miserable existence. Eventually the photographer established contact with him again and apologized. They remained friends until the officer's death.

http://allthatsinteresting.com/saigon-execution

From the article:

According to Lém’s widow, he had disappeared just prior to the Tet Offensive, and according to the soldiers who captured him in Saigon, he was caught practically red-handed leading a Viet Cong hit team tasked with killing National Police members or, if they couldn’t find any, their families instead.

On the morning of the “Saigon Execution” photo, Lém’s death squad had just killed 34 people – seven police officers, two or three Americans, and several police officers’ family members, all bound at the wrists and shot in the head over a pit – and they may have been looking for Loan himself.

Legally, this put Lém in a bad position. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, he wasn’t fighting a battle, and he had evidently committed a major war crime against General Loan’s own subordinates and their kids. As a war criminal and terrorist, Lém had effectively no protection under the Geneva Conventions and was eligible for summary execution when caught.

Maybe we could discuss the treatment of POWs in VN, or the US military in Somalia (blackhawk down), or the millions murdered in Cambodia, or the hundreds of millions murdered by the soviets, or the innocents who are getting their throats slit in the middle east, or the girls getting acid thrown in their faces, or the honor killings, or the bombings that are killing dozens of people every week, ...

Experts estimate that in some regions of Eastern Europe, Stalin had one person in three killed.
One in three.
The war crimes committed by the Japanese leading up to and during WWII overshadow the horrific actions of other governments or organizations or individuals, including the soviets and nazis.
My great uncle did not survive the Bataan death march but as much press as that gets, it pales compared to the human experimentation performed by the Japanese. Maybe not in sheer numbers but by how despicable and terrible they were.
Look up unit 731.

My point is we are a very violent race.
We do bad things constantly, we kill each other or worse. Always been that way.
Singling out this one that happened 50 years ago seems a bit first-world to me.

wiki

The WWII data you cite was generated by the Army's chief historian, S.L.A. Marshall. Later research suggests he made up the numbers. It doesn't affect the OP's discussion directly, but I thought it was interesting enough to point out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall

Hollywood, the Press and misleading movies, photos (out of context) and slanted articles cost us greatly in Vietnam and resulted in the ultimate deaths of millions. A lot of it ended up in history books/documentaries as fact. We see a lot of the same today...some call it "fake news".

Butchers/terrorists like Lém often get away with atrocities and live rich full lives if their side wins. He got what he deserved (except he did not suffer nearly enough).

I have range safety duty each month with a fellow who was a Vietnamese Master Sgt. in their Marines and left with his family at the last minute. All his sisters came to the U.S. but a brother, also a Marine stayed "to help his country" and went through the indoc. camps. He finally came to the U.S. in 1995 or so and the family noticed he walked funny. Seems he has NO TOES any longer! Nice indoctrination!

Hollywood, the media and young people are almost always on the wrong side of any issue.

The guy in the photo got what he deserved, from a guy that knew what he was doing. The rest of the world should have withheld their opinions of it. All they did was to display their own ignorance.

I also was there. I saw old women, very young children, old men and water buffaloes blown up, dead and sometimes burning. Whole villages blown up, no questions asked!
No cameras no lawyers!
Definitely one of those had to be there to understand it, and even then, it made no sense

Just like every war that has ever happened. That is why that you choose them carefully and then finish what you started.

No need to apologize Alansglide, it may help to vent once in a great while.

I once brought up here, the breakdown of morale among our troups toward the end of the conflict, and it's impact on mission effectiveness.
Something I don't think I'd ever spoken of before.
I only got mildly rebuked. And may have opened some eyes.

Not sure if I felt better afterwards.

On the current subject of casualties of war, the surrounding populations suffer extremely while a war rages around them. Look at refugees fleeing their homes as an example. Even if they stay, the disruption of resources lasts generations
Many wars are the creations of the leaders who don't usually participate in the action on the ground.
There might be less wars if the leaders were as impacted as their people/ militaries are.

The point was some people have no problem killing other people.

Most of us however do have a problem with it and that's a good thing.

I recently read somewhere that if somebody is planning on killing someone then that person has to dig two graves. One for the person who is going to be killed and one for the killer.:eek:

The old adage live by the sword die by the sword is apt.

Pretty sure I have no problem with killing murderers/terrorists. I would happily execute any/all. If there were an "executioner" job opening...I am there. Doing the right thing may be hard, but it makes the world a better place.

That would be any man who is an effective element on the front lines of any war.
The same opposite might be true about the men volunteering for selfless wave attacks knowing certainty of death awaits them.

In modern times this might translate to bankers who robo-foreclosed upon millions of American families even those without a mortgage, or the CEO who lays off tens of thousands with the stroke of a pen, or the politician who sacrifices one segment of a population for the benefit of another, or the spouse who takes everything and leaves the other destitute.

The sociopath mentality is successful in certain venues.

Maybe that generals smile was a grimace. That general was probably thinking about the thousands more VC assassination squad members (sent from the north to wreck genera havoc upon the populous through terror campaigns in both countrysides and city) which they hadn't caught yet. Any second now one of those guys could jump behind a house and toss a bomb in the street. His life was as expendable as the next person.

The area between the muzzle and head sure looks clear, as in no gunsmoke/flame/particulate. It just looks strange as I have never seen a revolver shoot that clean.

The B&W film most popular back in the day was Tri-X. A "fast" 400 ASA film, Developed in D-76, often "pushed" to a higher ASA to allow faster shutter speeds, fine detail gets lost.

Just my guess...but I was an amateur photog in roughly the same time frame, had a darkroom, developed my film. (edit) Actually, I was a cheapskate, bought film in bulk 100' rolls, loaded my own cartridges. Got a really good price on some rolls...free. Cindy worked in a bank. When the bank had the surveillance camera film changed, Cindy was able to snag the old film. It was still dated okay..;) Far as I know the bank Cindy worked in never had a holdup. It was located a block from the police station in a location that would have made for a difficult getaway route.

Paul, you're speaking a language I know but thought I had forgotten. Yep, the photog probably was using Tri X 400 ASA black and white film pushed to 1600 ASA developed in Kodak's legendary D-76 bath. Maybe he used F-5 paper for max contrast. The lack of a flame at the end of the barrel makes the photo even more eerie.

Hmmm dachau...
Prison guards lined up and machine gunned down.
Makes the Valentine's day massacre look tame.

And don't you guys know that the history is written by the winners!? We say it was 11 million. It was 15 million!...
Bolshevik math