Reddit Reddit reviews Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death

We found 9 Reddit comments about Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death
Broadway Books
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9 Reddit comments about Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death:

u/YourOldPalHoward · 51 pointsr/ChapoTrapHouse

If you’re at all interested in this case, I highly recommend the book Black Hearts, which investigates the incident and everyone involved in extreme detail. It’s an exhaustive, practically bottomless chronology of military incompetence and inhumanity. Oddly enough I was exposed to it because it was on the official reading list of the Marine Corps a few years ago, ostensibly as a lesson on the consequences of a poor command environment. But anyone who has served can tell you that everything the book catalogued is just business as usual for the military.

u/Ellistann · 9 pointsr/politics

You're not wrong in these cases.

Pat Tillman had plenty of weird things going on, but I'm of the belief it was friendly fire. It doesn't excuse the fact his leadership's first instinct was to try and cover up their screw-up. But the system did spit out the fact they did and gave the public the 'truth'. I can't say it did/didn't happen like CID stated in their report, but they're pretty good about keeping stuff nuetral and calling it like it is. The situation also has the ring of truth to it in my experience. I'm not saying you couldn't understand because you haven't been there; but many conspiracy folks imagine malfeasance when confusion and stupidity are truly the culprits and tragedy is overwhelming. Our need for logical reasons and want of vengeance for someone to blame is usually the driving force for this and is very understandable.

My Lai is a huge black eye for the Army, and we should be called out on it. We use it as training aids to show how a pilot displayed moral courage and saved those that weren't killed immediately. He's lauded as a hero, but we really don't do the right thing and pile shame on Lt Calley or his commander CPT Medina. Or the sister companies doing the same thing in next sector over under their commander (whose name I couldn't easily find) or roast the BN Commander who set the conditions for the massacre.

We've tried to get past that incident, and use it to tell everyone that comes in about personal courage not necessarily being facing a physical danger.

But we aren't perfect as an organization. Not everyone serves with honor. My Lai was Vietnam, but this happened in 2006. The Soldiers involved tried covering it up, but one of the folks broke down and told a friend about it because he was having issues in dealing with the fact he helped carry it out. PFC Watts did the right thing and turned his fellow Soldiers in.

He got an unbelievable amount of shit, and there was a very serious round of discussions about leaving him there with the people he turned in would be killing him by proxy. Eventually he was taken out of the base and told his story to the right folks at CID and the rest is our unfortunate history. Good news is that PFC Watts is alive and well, and that the folks involved are rotting in prison. Bad news is we failed as an organization to stop this from happening and we also pushed PFC Watts out of the Army and he's gotten death threats for years after.

More on the situation is in book Blackhearts.

u/doskey123 · 3 pointsr/syriancivilwar

Please don't treat this as if the west was not capable of the same crimes. It's quite the opposite and a lie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre

There, brave US serviceman killed 24 civilians. All murderers of the Haditha massacre walked. None were convicted. If the US is any good at anything, it is at covering up war crimes. And if you could stomach that, have a look at the next one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings

And if you want to find people justifying this rape and killing of a 14y old girl by talking about how stressful these poor soldiers were, just have a look at the comments of this book on amazon, :

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Hearts-Platoons-Descent-Triangle/dp/0307450767

u/Some_guy_called_andy · 3 pointsr/worldpolitics

I was going to say "this happened again!?" But then saw that this article was from 2006. If you want to read a book about this, as well as the general mess that their platoon went through, read The Black Hearts.

u/ZebraBalls · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death was written about those murders. I got it after Justin Watt did an AMA. I couldn't get past the first chapter, it was so brutal. I think the media that shows as honest a rendition of what's going on is out there, it's (the honesty) just not in the forefront that it was during the Vietnam war.

u/ang29g · 1 pointr/army

The book he mentions in his AMA, Black Hearts, shines some light on the subject. It was in one of /r/army's professional development threads a few months ago.