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Vets say not much learned in My Lai

Visitors look at a re-created scene at the massacre museum at My Lai village in Quang Ngai, Vietnam, on March 7. PHOTO: AFP

To the villagers who survived the My Lai massacre and many of the Americans who fought in the Vietnam War, all the anniversaries of the atrocity are important.

But commemorations yesterday, 40 years after the event, seem especially urgent to many of the Americans who have traveled to Vietnam to attend. Some see parallels between what happened here on March 16, 1968, and events in Iraq, the site of another controversial war that has drawn US troops to a faraway corner of the globe.

"We're supposed to learn from the mistakes of history, but we keep making the same mistakes," said Lawrence Colburn, whose helicopter landed in My Lai in the midst of the massacre. "That's what makes My Lai more important today than ever before."

US troops landed in My Lai on a "search and destroy" mission, looking for Vietcong guerrillas. Although there were no reports of enemy fire, the troops began mowing down villagers and setting fire to homes, killing as many as 504 villagers, including unarmed women, children and elderly. The incident shocked Americans and undermined support for the war.

A memorial will be held today at a museum about the massacre.

Yesterday morning, Buddhists monks led a group prayer at the massacre site, burning incense and praying for the souls of those who died. Among the mourners was Do Thi Buong, 67, who fled from the marauding troops and whose mother was shot to death.

"We just want peace," she said. "We don't want this sort of thing to happen again anywhere else in the world. Every year when this day arrives, I always feel terrible sadness, and I always remember my mother."

Colburn and Hugh Thompson, who was piloting their helicopter, landed between the soldiers and terrified villagers and are credited with stopping the slaughter by talking to their fellow troops.

Mike Boehm, another veteran in My Lai for the commemoration, said the slaughter reminded him of the 2005 scandal that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where US guards abused and sexually humiliated Muslim prisoners and photographed their actions.

"If you follow the war in Iraq," Boehm said, "you can see nothing has changed. At both My Lai and Abu Ghraib, there was a dehumanization of our enemy and a dehumanization of our own soldiers."
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