This is one of the most heinous war crimes in recent history..
Forty-nine years ago today, in one of
the most heinous and grisly acts against civilians during wartime, as
many as 500 unarmed men, women, children, and the elderly — nearly the
entire population of the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai — were
slaughtered, raped, and brutally tortured by United States troops.
As the U.S. military continues to
deploy boots on the ground in additional nations — and as specters of
totalitarianism and even greater militarism materialize as if pulled
from a century ago — the lessons of My Lai should not be relegated to
history’s ignominious dust bin.
History, after all, doesn’t repeat
itself — ill-fated actions are carried out like déjà vu, by those who
refuse to examine past mistakes as if they are sleepwalking through
life.
