Fifty-Five Years Since My Lai Massacre: How US Soldiers Freely Murdered Vietnamese Civilians

20 hours ago

CC0 / Ronald L. Haeberle/Public Domain /

Despite the fact that over 500 innocent Vietnamese, including women and children, were murdered by US troops, virtually all of the perpetrators got away scot free.

On March 16, 1968, a company of US soldiers committed an atrocity that became emblematic of the war the country waged in Vietnam, murdering over five hundred unarmed civilians in a village called Son My located in what was, at the time, South Vietnam.

This act of wanton brutality, which involved US soldiers raping and killing innocent civilians indiscriminately, became known in the US as the My Lai massacre, named so after one of the hamlets in the Son My village.

Despite the fact that the village did not harbor Viet Cong guerrillas and that no weapon caches were hidden there, soldiers showed no mercy to the Vietnamese civilians, gunning down women and children, throwing grenades into houses and setting buildings ablaze.

Women and children in My Lai, prior to being killed by US soldiers

CC0 / Ronald L. Haeberle/Public Domain /

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Blogger's note:  Thomas Jefferson once said "I tremble for my country when I think that there may be a god that is just".