The action of the unidentified US staff sergeant in Panjwai district in Kandahar province, slaughtering at least 18 innocent civilians, including nine children, is a demonstration of both the brutality and the deepening crisis of American imperialism’s war of aggression in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The atrocity recalls, in both its horror and its potential political impact, the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, an even greater act of mass murder that brought home to much of the American population, and particularly to young people, the barbarism of the war in southeast Asia.
The My Lai massacre was first brought to public attention in articles written by Seymour Hersh, then an investigative journalist for the New York Times, which described the killing of hundreds of Vietnamese villagers by a platoon of US soldiers under the command of Second Lieutenant William Calley.
There are obvious differences in detail between the events of March 12, 2012 and those of March 16, 1968, 44 years ago almost to the day. Sunday’s massacre appears to be the work of a lone gunman who, according to press reports, had suffered mental problems in the course of four combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. At My Lai, some 26 soldiers participated in the killing of 504 civilians. They were following orders by the US high command, which tasked them to destroy the village, burning every home, and identified the entire population as sympathizers of the National Liberation Front, the Vietnamese nationalist insurgents. READ MORE
