Ronald L. Haeberle — Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image
Vietnamese villagers, including children, huddle in terror moments before being killed by American troops at My Lai, Vietnam, March 16, 1968.
Through the centuries, whether combatants have fought with spears, bows and arrows, muzzle-loading rifles, naval cannons, long-range bombers, nuclear weapons or cutting-edge drones, one aspect of warfare has never changed: innocents die. In the 20th century alone millions — tens of millions — of civilians were killed and continue to be killed and maimed in global, regional and civil wars.
Most of these victims are “collateral damage”: men, women and children caught in urban warfare; families obliterated by grenades and mortars; entire cities laid waste by bombers dropping tons of ordnance from miles above. But countless civilians slaughtered in warfare don’t die by accident or as the result of military errors; they’re killed by design. They are, in other words, murdered — often after being raped or tortured. It happened in the Peloponnesian War, it happened in the Napoleonic Wars, it happened in the American Civil War and World War I and the Spanish Civil War and World War II and the Korean War and Vietnam and Kosovo and Iraq and it’s happening today in Syria and the Congo and other places where the paths of warriors and civilians inevitably cross.
READ MORE: http://life.time.com/history/my-lai-remembering-an-american-atrocity-in-vietnam-march-1968/#1
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