I wrote: > > Thanks, we are probably closer to agreement than it appears.
And Roland replied: > > Amen to that! Amen indeed. And Roland further wrote: > When I first heard about My Lai, I was a first lieutenant in the German > Air Force. > At that time, I frequently heard the question: "When will the American > president be convicted as a war criminal?" > After all, general Yamashita was prosecuted by the United States for > atrocities committed by troops under his command. > The same principle to the best of my knowledge also was applied in > Nuremberg. > However, in the case of My Lai, even the commanding officer was > acquitted of all charges, and the Commander in Chief was never accused. > And there were lots of My Lais, perhaps not on the scale of that tragedy, but still a lot of them. One came to light since it involved former US Senator Bob Kerrey, who finally admitted his culpability a few years ago after decades of denials and efforts to get others involved to remain silent (detailed in a lengthy piece in the New York Times Magazine in the late 1990s). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1298289.stm This is why Michael Walzer (in a famous debate with Norman Podhoretz) argued that the Vietnam War was an unjust war. The means required to win that war necessarily involved civilian casualties like My Lai and Thanh Phong, and unjust means can not be allowed even in the pursuit of a just war (and I do not believe that the war itself was justified either; it was a civil war occasioned by the end of French colonialism in Vietnam, and the US should have stayed out). And the same argument about unjust means of course holds true for Gaza today, whatever one thinks of the competing arguments about the justice of Israel's going to war. John M. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages prior to posting, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
