"Kill them all."
“Kill them all.”
Those three words.
I am taken back to March of 1968.
The United States is involved in an illegal and immoral war in Vietnam.
U.S. Army soldiers of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 23rd Infantry Division, entered the hamlets of My Lai on a search-and-destroy mission. The soldiers had been briefed that the village was a NLF stronghold and that all who remained could be considered NLF or active sympathizers.
Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader, testified that his company commander, Captain Ernest Medina, had given orders to “kill them all”. When Calley reportedly asked if this included women and children, Medina was said to have replied, “I mean everything”.
The only one held accountable was William Calley.
Flash forward nearly five decades.
Trump is threatening war on Venezuela and illegally bombing fishing boats in the international waters of the Caribbean.
The order went out to “Kill them all.”
Meaning everyone on board a boat in the Caribbean suspected, but with no evidence, of carrying drugs.
After an initial strike on the boat, two men were still alive. So a second missile was launched to comply with the “Kill them all” order.
In the past three months, similar strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific have killed more than eighty people.
It was an order that violated U.S. and international law.
Who will be held accountable?
"Kill them all" replaces the failed bullying slogan, "tariff them all."
Over 500 were killed at My Lai. Only Calley was tried and served less than 2 years house arrest