From Tom Dispatch
By Vietnam Veterans

Dear Tom,

Although I’m sure we occasionally execute some innocent person after years on Death Row, we as a nation go to great lengths not to execute any innocents. Only the worst of murderers seem to reach death row. So it seems quite ironic that we accept seeing some men apparently planting a bomb on the side of a road in Iraq via a video from a Predator drone and, using that information, decide to drop a 500-pound bomb on a house where they might be hiding, a house where we don’t have a clue if there are other people.

Killing innocent women and children is okay, “just” collateral damage– If this is “okay,” then why wasn’t what Lt. Calley did in Vietnam okay? Similarly, why were Hiroshima and Nagasaki okay, but My Lai wasn’t? Somehow, when our soldiers shoot innocents at close range we are appalled, but when it is done via bombs or artillery it’s “okay.”

At about the same time My Lai occurred, I was flying as a crew chief/gunner on a Chinook [helicopter]. Passing a small village I thought I heard a single shot directed at my helicopter. Or maybe it was just “blade pop.” Looking into the village, I could see women and children in the streets in what I’d call a “pastoral scene.” I elected not to “return fire,” though by my unit’s rules of engagement I could have done so. About an hour later we happened to fly past that village again. There was no one in sight, but there were numerous bomb craters in the rice paddies and where homes had been. My guess is that someone else received fire, or thought they received fire, returned fire, and the pilots called for an air strike. I doubt any of the people in the village had time to flee from the attack. Never ever have I heard anything about that event, just My Lai…

Read more Devastation