My Lai, Vietnam and Minab, Iran: They were Children
On March 16th, 1968, American soldiers from Charlie Company massacred hundreds of civilians, men, women and children, in a ditch in the village of My Lai in Central Vietnam.
At first, the massacre was denied by the Army and then they blamed the Viet Cong.
The army covered this up for over a year, until one soldier wrote a public letter about the incident and Seymour Hesch,a reporter broke the story.
Last week, on Febuary 28th in Minab, Iran, according to Iran State media, a rocket or a bomb struct an elementary school killing allegedly over 170 individuals, many of them children.
The Americans, the Israelis and the Iranians (it was rumored the a Iranian missile hit the school by mistake) all denied responsibilty. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State and Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press secretary both stated that the Army was "looking in to it."
Both of these tragedies are horrific. There are no words. Both were caused by American wars (if we had not started the Iranian war, those childern and adults would still be alive)
Those are the facts.
The My Lai massacre turned many Americans against the Vietnam war and caused even more distrust of the military and Administrative officials.
But today, we live in an entirely different and unique information eco-system. We are innudated with news and events everyday (Steve Bannon calls it "flooding the Zone")
As a result, my great fear is that what happened in Minab will be swept under the rug, or simply forgotten by us in the torrent and fog of war.
I also worry that we have become so accustomed to violence in our media that we've lost touch with outrage, with fury about what is happening in our name.
In the end, the military is acountable to us, the citizens. The Vietnam war ended (ignominiously) largely because civilians, like you and me, rose up and said no more.
We need that now. Call you representatives. Go to the Marches. Do not let Minab be swept away. Do not let this war become glorified. Wars are not about glory, they are about horror and destruction.
The novelist Anton Myrer wrote in Once an Eagle, “Once the drums begin to beat. . . there is nothing ahead but fear and waste and misery and desolation . . . once the engine has started it must shudder and rumble to the very end of its hellish course, come what may."