Double standards...

Today marks the 39th anniversary of an incident that perhaps changed the course of the Vietnam War, and firmly established the duplicity that has come to characterize the American stand toward many issues, terrorism included.

The My Lai massacre, committed on March 16, 1968 by U.S. soldiers on hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians, remains to date a shameful blot on the U.S.'s claim to being a nation founded on liberty and freedom. U.S. soldiers had killed more than 300 Vietnamese, which comprised mainly of aged people, women and children, purportedly in a search operation aiming at rooting out Vietcong guerrillas and their supporters.

The search operation found no insurgents in the village. On questioning the villagers present there, the U.S. soldiers found them either pleading ignorance, or showing reluctance to provide any information, a logical stance, considering that the U.S. weren't exactly very popular at this stage in the war. Fearing, or so they claim, that these villagers were in truth Vietcong supporters, the U.S. soldiers herded them into ditches and mercilessly executed them with automatic firearms. The commanding officer, at the height of this killing frenzy, even expressed the desire to throw hand grenades into trenches harbouring villagers.

From an account gathered by the Peers Inquiry from one of the participants who described using a baby for target practice during the massacre:

He fired at it with a .45. He missed. We all laughed. He got up three or four feet closer and missed again. We laughed. Then he got up right on top and plugged him.

Convinced beyond doubt that any and all villagers of My Lai were a threat, the soldiers decimated the entire village, killing innocents in the age group of one to eight-five. If a one-year old can be a threat to the U.S., God save them!

The military then shamelessly attempted to camouflage the carnage as a military victory with the death of over 100 'enemies'. Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and then investigating officer, simply white-washed all allegations of brutality on the part of the U.S. and the South Vietnamese forces towards innocent civilians. It was only when returning soldiers echoed stories of such horror in the U.S. to the media that the incident was brought to light, and the offenders prosecuted.

The Americans did not find it a tad difficult to execute leading military personnel of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany for having issued the orders to commit crimes against innocent people. But when it came to punishing Americans guilty of the same crimes, the U.S. showed a strange reluctance. Of the 26 men charged with the crime, only one, the commanding officer, would be convicted, and he too would serve barely 4 years in prison before being pardoned, purportedly because an officer cannot be prosecuted for following orders.

Whatever may have been the justification for the Vietnam War, the conduct of the U.S. soldiers sorely fell foul of the principles of jus in bello. The acts of war should have been directed against those who have wronged the U.S., and not towards innocents caught in situations not of their making.

That the My Lai massacre was barbaric goes without saying. Comparing this with the Holocaust would be presumptuous, and yet the sheer abandon of reason is the same, whether it was by the Nazis or by the Americans. My Lai would strengthen the anti-war movement in the United States, and eventually, after 7 years, the U.S. would withdraw, in what would be the only military defeat they had suffered till then.

The Americans choose to depict the Nazis and the Japanese as the ultimate symbols of evil. But I wish to state that for their reluctance to prosecute, for their desire to subvert justice under the garb of command responsibility, they have done the world greater wrong than the twain could ever have done. Those who claim a moral high ground are obliged to maintain those heights. Even Caesar's wife must be above suspicion, for Caesar to be venerated.