Vietnamese Tiger Force - Essay Example

Tiger Force is a convincing story of courage, brutality and tricky escapes. The current events in Iraq and Afghanistan match well with this story. It so happened, that on the onset of the Vietnam War, the American Army founded an experimental combating unit which was called “Tiger Force”. The men selected for that force were top notch and first-class. They were much superior to the others and the most courageous the American armed forces could present (Sallah & Weiss, 2007). Furthermore, they were not required to advance under strict command in the field and would be asked to advance on a long range. Their job was to look for the secret hideouts and stations of the enemy in order to help the bombing squad aim their targets precisely. Before them, no troops had ventured those areas. They were to serve as if they belonged there, to come out of their old selves and to dive deep into their enemy’s mind to know them better. This was carried out as an experiment yet things greatly went amiss (Sallah & Weiss, 2007). Tiger Force was a fighting squad of the United States Army, 1st Battalion. It belonged to the 327th Infantry Regiment, and 1st Brigade (Separate), 101st Airborne Division which combated the Vietnamese in the War that brought innumerable miseries. The unit was the size of a sub-division consisting of about 45 paratroopers was established by Colonel David Hackworth to beat the guerrilla tactics of the enemy in November 1965 (Nevins, 2005). Tiger Force was greatly acclaimed and a lot of its men had to pay for the unit’s reputation with their lives. Tiger Force’s parent division was conferred the Presidential Unit Citation in October 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This also embraced a mention of Tiger Force’s service at Dak To in June 1966. It was stated by Toledo Blade in October 2003 that officers of the Tiger Force squad had executed countless felonies in war (Nevins, 2005). Michael Sallah was a reporter at the Toledo Blade newspaper. In December 2002, he obtained confidential records of US Army Commander Henry Tufts. A document in these records pointed to an earlier inquiry of undisclosed war crimes known as the Coy Allegation. In order to inspect this more, Sallah and fellow Toledo Blade reporter Mitch Weiss acquired a big compilation of documents produced as a result of the inquiry carried out at the National Archives, College Park, MD (Nevins, 2005). It was revealed in the inquiry, that the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command had probed during the Tiger Force squad 1971 and 1975 for suspected war crimes executed for the period between May and November of 1967. The proofs included affirmed statements from numerous Tiger Force pros which specified war crimes supposedly carried out by the Tiger Force men especially during the operations of Song Ve Valley and Operation Wheeler military campaigns (Sallah & Weiss, 2007). The committed war crimes as per the confessions of individuals who allegedly committed the crimes as well as those who did not were as follows: There was physical torture and termination of POWs. An event was recorded where there was deliberate execution of innocent Vietnamese villagers including men, women, children and elderly people. Ghastly exercise of severing off ears of victims and making collections was in practice. Necklaces made of human ears were worn in routine. Scalps of the victims were cut off and collected. Furthermore, an event was on record where a young mother was intoxicated, sexually molested and then terminated. Another event was noted where a unit officer executed an infant and cut off his or her head after the baby’s mother was terminated (Sallah & Weiss, 2007). It was finally deduced by the investigators that many of the war crimes did occur. However, in spite of the evidences, the Army chose not to pursue any prosecutions.It was further revealed that the Tiger Force members executed innumerable frequency of Vietnamese civilians over a seven-month period in 1967. After a 4 and a half year Army investigation, it was exposed that no less than 18 Tiger Force men indulged in war crimes, but still the matter was dropped by the Army (Anderson & Ernst, 2007). The official files were buried in the Army’s records since 1975, and to this day military official continue to conceal them from public. Those seven months during which the Tiger Force descended below the level of humanity can be compared to the worst nightmares. Their crimes cannot be counted, their madness not comprehensible, and so great was their magnitude that for almost forty years, the report of Tiger Force was kept underground that stretched all the way to the White House. Facts were removed, documents were wiped out, and men were pressurized to reveal nothing (Anderson & Ernst, 2007). The advent of 1967 brought tremendous change in Tiger Force. The enemy that had troubled the Chaine Annamitique in 1965was greatly defeated, going for the hide unless temporary awesome force provided it a break to attack. The NVA and local Viet Congo that were powerless against the enormous US force, no longer boldly walked through the southern I Cops’s pastrol lowlands. Only peasants, who supplied provisions were the ones that stood between them and absolute devastation. Those among the Tiger Force soldiers who replaced the original top notch members, the goal had switched from stealth to purposeless barbarous acts (Anderson & Ernst, 2007). It could well be documented, that Tiger Force, best only according to its barbaric soldiers, was actually a valuable death machine. The squad was only concerned with how many people were executed by 1967. The generals who were responsible for allowing the massacre realized years later what they had done, so they tried to cover the activities of their favorite heroes, and the stories remained concealed until Sallah and Weiss rooted them out (Anderson & Ernst, 2007). Tiger Force’s offenses are not digestible or understood in peaceful times, like severing off ears for preparing necklaces, scalping victims, adorning jeeps and barracks with beaming skulls apart from scores of other cruelties. However, nothing is just usual in war, especially in Vietnam. Crimes sometimes seemed absolutely appropriate in the evil world where the Tiger Force functioned, and its men became some of the most prized infantrymen. Sallah and Weiss present the reason as: “In Tiger Force there was no end, no commanders to slam on the brakes,” they declare. “The Army wanted Tiger Force to terrorize the Vietnamese. The Army created a Frankenstein and then turned it loose” (p.278). It was with a tip and some papers that were produced to Washington bureau that the Blade’s Tiger Force story began, just like many newspaper revelations do. Michael D. Sallah and Mitch Weiss (2007) made it a mission in their vicinity as reporters, and spent eight months researching records and interrogating platoon members and Vietnamese people who survived the atrocities. The most significant evidence was put forth by the participants. In the words of William Doyle, an ex-sergeant of Tiger Force “Nobody out there with any brains expected to live. So you did any goddamn thing you felt like doing—especially to stay alive.” Also ex-Private Ken Kerney was reported as saying, “The commanders told me, ‘What goes on here, stays here. You never tell anyone about what goes on here. If we find out you did, you won’t like it.’ ” In March 1968, more than five hundred Vietnamese civilians were ruthlessly terminated by a task force operated by Tiger Force squad whose platoon was headed by William L. Calley, Jr amongst others. This platoon was functioning a few dozen miles from a Quang Ngai village which was named as My Lai 4 by the military. A law professor gave a statement in The Blade that the massacre might have not been initiated had the senior officer corps proceeded on complaints of military violence in Quang Ngai that had been reported by a minimum of two soldiers (Sallah & Weiss, 2007). It was also conveyed by The Blade that in the initial period of the 1970’s, senior executives at the White House and Pentagon were submitted with recurring reports on the Tiger Force investigation. This took place when Calley was convicted for the killings of twenty-two Vietnamese ordinary citizens in March 1971 and also when the Army was openly claiming that My Lai had no connection with these killings (Sallah & Weiss, 2007). Interestingly, the probing of My Lai led to the discovery of a second great slaughter that had been initiated also in the same area on the same day, in a village known as My Khe on the same day. However, Lieutenant General William R. Peers who had functioned in Vietnam for more than two years, openly refuted that there any such massacres even though he had led the incidents (Anderson & Ernst, 2007). It happens often, that in the probing of war offenses, inconsistency between the facts and the military’s declared versions has continually been unearthed with bruising results, by an independent press. The remarkable probing of Tiger Force by Blade, however remain not very explicit. Four of the key television networks have failed to relay it even though NBC and CBS have been connected with Blade. Also most of the chief newspapers have either disregarded those findings or reduced themselves to issuing a summary for Associated Press. Ron Royhab who is the Blade’s executive editor, pointedly wrote in a feature issued on the first day of the series, that the choice to run the Vietnam tales had no connection with present armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. As he stated, in this time of war, a hesitancy is present, and especially so, during an ever more unpopular war against an ingrained guerilla army, to print features that could be inferred as weakening the morale of armed forces (Anderson & Ernst, 2007). Also news groups impulsively expose stories from their rivals, especially those in minor markets. It could also be that others in the media are intending to carry out their own Tiger Force probing measures. That remains to be seen. Hideous events do take place in war everywhere, and it is the duty of the media to undertake precisely what Blade has achieved, which is to uncover, confirm and print the facts (Anderson & Ernst, 2007). There can be one obvious answer. War is inexorably horrible for all things that breathe air. The two reporters Sallah and Weiss hold the officers and chief civilian heads in the Defense Department under accusation that decline to answer their probing. However, this impediment from the senior persons fails to restrain them from preparing a tough argument in the court of rational thinking for unthinkable murders by American soldiers. As they proceed to undertake this case, they ensure that the readers have substantial proof to determine what the inquiry of Tiger Force implies when the war in Vietnam comes in picture. Still, one person didn’t comply with the orders. Read More