Robert Parry: Colin Powell and Lessons of My Lai
[Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.]
In an Aug. 28 editorial, The New York Times applauded a belated “note of personal regret” from former Lt. William Calley for his role in the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968. But neither the Times nor any other leading U.S. news outlet has ever suggested that remorse might also be due from Colin Powell, who as a young Army major helped cover up the crime.
Powell's role in rebuffing an early appeal from a GI for an investigation of Americal Division abuses of Vietnamese -- encompassing My Lai -- was an important early marker in Powell's career as he climbed the ladder of Pentagon and Washington success by never standing up for a principle that made a superior uncomfortable.
That pattern continued through the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s and culminated in the deadly falsehoods that Powell presented to the United Nations in 2003 justifying the invasion of Iraq.
For his part, Calley told a Kiwanis Club gathering in Columbus, Georgia, that “there is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. " I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families.”
Calley's remorse may be decades overdue but at least he has paid a price for his role as the senior officer on the ground during the massacre. By contrast, Powell, who helped keep the slaughter under wraps several months after the fact, has enjoyed a long career of endless praise as an American hero...
Read entire article at OpEdNews.com
In an Aug. 28 editorial, The New York Times applauded a belated “note of personal regret” from former Lt. William Calley for his role in the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968. But neither the Times nor any other leading U.S. news outlet has ever suggested that remorse might also be due from Colin Powell, who as a young Army major helped cover up the crime.
Powell's role in rebuffing an early appeal from a GI for an investigation of Americal Division abuses of Vietnamese -- encompassing My Lai -- was an important early marker in Powell's career as he climbed the ladder of Pentagon and Washington success by never standing up for a principle that made a superior uncomfortable.
That pattern continued through the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s and culminated in the deadly falsehoods that Powell presented to the United Nations in 2003 justifying the invasion of Iraq.
For his part, Calley told a Kiwanis Club gathering in Columbus, Georgia, that “there is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. " I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families.”
Calley's remorse may be decades overdue but at least he has paid a price for his role as the senior officer on the ground during the massacre. By contrast, Powell, who helped keep the slaughter under wraps several months after the fact, has enjoyed a long career of endless praise as an American hero...