Read the wiki on the My Lai massacre . Now assuming that it is entirely accurate here there were NO VC in those hamlets. The ONLY American casualty was a GI who shot himself in the foot. What is wrong is that soldiers were given orders and carried out the orders to kill everything in sight, men , women and children and animals and they did just that. The leaders were ultimately the most responsible but the soldiers carrying out such an order are not excused.
We will let GOD sort that mess out as to who did what , who was guilty of what. We here do not know and the ones that participated know but won’t tell.
War is a major major major affliction of mankind, as is famine and a whole host of other evils visited upon mankind. Difference is war is inflicted upon man by man. While famine and disease and volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and tidal waves are NOT done by man upon man.
War is evil, and it has been with us since before there was time.
There is a difference though in how we fight war on a personal level should one be drafted to war as a soldier.
The ones landing on the beach in France on D Day facing combatants who are keen on killing you are fighting a soldiers war. Combatant to combatant.
The soldier who was sent to a Vietnamese village to rout out VC insurgents believed to be hiding there and given orders to kill everyone and everything is not excused even though he has his orders. He is not a soldier when he shoots unarmed women and children , when he sets fire to their homes and waits outside for them to flee and shoots them down with machineguns and grenades. When he shoots unarmed people point blank. When he rapes , along with his buddies women and young girls he finds AND also then butchers them. When he mows down women who used their bodies to shield their children , and sees children who have not died and who are running away and mows them down with machine guns and grenades.
He is no longer a soldier , he is a murderer, a rapist , a sadist. He is not a soldier.
Hiroshima was a crime, Nagasaki was a crime . The carpet bombing of London was a crime. Bombing any civilian targets is a crime. Because it is not combatant to combatant. It means killing many civilians. Pearl Harbor was a criminal act. The US justified it’s atomic bombing on the premise that the Japanese would fight to the last man when the US invades Japan as it planned to do. And it was theorized that the sacrifice of two cities full of civilians (Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not military targets) would demoralize the enemy into surrender. Which is exactly what happened.
Hundreds of thousands of people were killed unlawfully. Has the US apologized for the bombs? I don’t remember such. But it should.
Japans leaders committed many many atrocities against innocents in China and elsewhere.
Hitler’s Germany inflicted cruelty upon millions. Millions of Russians and Germans and others died.
Many suffered a terrible and unjust death.
I do think there is a difference between dropping bombs on civilian targets and bayonetting and shooting point blank unarmed women and children though. Dropping the bomb you don’t know who you are killing, you just know people are going to die. However seeing with your own eyes and doing with your own hands blowing the people apart in front of you who are unarmed and are women and children carries a higher level of depravity in my simple thinking. However I will leave to the Higher Power to decide if there is a difference and how to judge the such.
What is happening in Gaza today is beyond horror, the stories are just completely disheartening. I think the offensive must stop today, right now.
Israel is basically saying all palestinians are responsible for the attacks on Israel and therefore can be exterminated like Hitler exterminated the jews.
They are not saying that but they are killing everyone they can. Seems casualty figures are something like 2/3 are women and children. Israel is bombing hospitals, not allowing in trucks with basic necessities.
They are basically saying we will rout the land of all and any terrorists and everyone who happens to be there, that is sad but too bad.
They can’t succeed in routing all the terrorists without killing most anyone still alive in Palestine and the extermination of near everyone in Palestine is unjust and wrong and must stop.
Israel was right to bring the terror the palestinians inflicted upon Israel back to Palestine, but there is a point where revenge has been served.
Israel is not putting Palestinians on trains and taking them to concentration camps and gas chambers so there is no systematic eradication of a people but they are bombing whole neighborhoods into rubble.
Not too long in the distant future hoofs are beating down and the much feared 4 horsemen of the apocalypse may be nearing. Something we don’t want to see for many Millenia to come
