This day, the soldiers of the greatest and best nation on Earth – a country that has no peers – did what is their god-given birthright: murder innocent people. They butchered over 500 innocent civilians.
Of these 182 were women and 173 children – 17 were pregnant women and 56 were infants. The rest – a number no one mentions because it is all right to kill a man, why not – were men.
The butchery ended because a support helicopter crew led by a man who defined courage and sanity saw what was happening and decided to end the mayhem.
The place in question: Mỹ Lai. The year: 1968
One soldier who butchered these unborn babies, infants, children, women and men said that they were simply following orders or else they would have been shot – in other words, they killed babies as they didn’t have the courage to stand and die for what is right and courageous. Deserves a few rounds of applause, doesn’t it? Does not give you much hope for personal bravery of soldiers, does it?
This was not the first time or the last time the best army on earth has butchered people. They have done it before in South Korea and countless times again in Latin America, Iraq and Afghanistan, and only their god knows where else.
The question here is not that the massacre happened – the tragedy of it cannot be understood in a lifetime – but that this has continued to happen and regular people have continued to live their lives without asking how this can be stopped once and for all. The savagery that a dictator has unleashed on Ukraine is only a symptom of the larger malaise as people who have witnessed tragedies first-hand or second-hand have continued their lives as if nothing has happened.
This in one way is a confirmation of the development level of the human species. We are just focussed on survival – no different than bacteria. We are as bad as the bugs who continue their lives even if a few thousands are wiped out a few yards away by a bug repellent. Even the birds and animals show remorse when another of their species dies. We, the greatest species that any god has ever produced, like to put these things under the carpet for they are a truth we would rather not see.
The ostrich puts its head in the sand to protect itself from dust storms. We do so because we are not brave or kind. We have created a world that is dying from our atrocities. What we don’t realise is that for nature, we are not an intelligent species. We are just one that has the power to think more. We cannot multiply and thrive like bacteria or viruses, we cannot change shape and colour like octopuses, we cannot fly like birds – we just have one power with which we have created a world that should have been better.
Mỹ Lai, No Gun Ri, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Syria, Ukraine… the list is endless. Where the fuck do we go? We will mess up everywhere we go. The Americas, Australia and New Zealand were opportunities to make ourselves better. We have done everything but that.
For your reference we have included the link to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Fat lot of good that will do.
Read More:
The My Lai Massacre by Seymour M. Hersh (St. Louis Post Dispatch: 13 Nov 1969)
Hero of Mỹ Lai: Hugh Thompson Jr. (Wikipedia)
Credits:
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay
