Kerry, Kerrey, My Lai, etc.
Something that puzzles me. John Kerry is still taking some criticism because in 1971, when he had returned from combat and become a leader in the anti-war movement, he testified in Congress that U.S. military personnel in Vietnam had committed "atrocities." The idea is that as long as the country is at war, talk like that is contrary to "supporting the troops"--I guess, whether it is true or not.
(Kerry says he probably went too far, even in using the word "atrocity"; he says he never referred to killing babies; yet he says "all I did was to tell the truth about some of the things that happened over there," "All I know is that it happened as a matter of course, and there were things that were happening over there as a matter of policy.")
In this case, however, we have recently heard from the coverage surrounding the experiences of sound-alike Bob Kerrey that indeed atrocities had become common, maybe even a standing policy of the U.S. military. If a hamlet was found to harbour enemies, and had somehow been given fair warning, it would be destroyed--and everyone found there could be killed.
One implication would be that the famous My Lai massacre, for which individuals were tried and convicted, was not an isolated action carried out by renegades, but an example of policy in action.
Why would Americans ever act this way when they were trying to win hearts and minds? Because on the one hand they had great difficulty in telling friends from enemies; and on the other hand, they were confident that it should be easy to get rid of a relative minority of trouble-makers, and win over everybody else.
|
