The city on a hill

The anniversary of My Lai is March 16.

Tom Ricks finds oodles of Congressional testimony online.

His post is illustrated with this photograph.

Of which he writes:

everyone in the accompanying foto was shot and killed a few minutes or even moments after the foto was taken

Remember, only one soldier was convicted for killing these people and hundreds of others. He did three years' house arrest. A couple of years ago, he got around to stating that he's sorry about all that.

Some people like to say that America makes too much of its own crimes. It's not true. It wasn't true in 1945, it wasn't true in 1968, it's not true in 2011. We let ourselves off the hook, because we think that we are special somehow.

John Winthrop is too seldom quoted in context:

for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake; wee shall shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into Cursses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whether wee are going.