The Lessons of My Lai #
March 14th, 2008 | In Worth Reading
March 16th is the the fourtieth anniversary of one of most notorious massacres in America’s history. Ed Ruggerio wants to make sure that we’ve learned the right lessons from it.
This March 16 we should remember that we can still “lose” wars by forgetting that we aren’t always the good guys. We lose them when we can’t muster the courage to confront our own worst selves. We lose them when we stick our veterans into simple categories: well-adjusted or crazy. We lose wars when we sanitize them; when we create myths that lack the obscenity and evil of the real thing.
And when we “lose” a war this way, it makes it easier to start the next one.