Slaughter in Gaza evokes memories of My Lai.

Who put the Glock in that child's hand in Georgia?+

On the morning of March 16, 1968, American forces entered the village and gathered up all living things: elderly men and women, infants in mothers’ arms, pigs, chickens, and water buffalo. Then, the Americans proceeded to kill them all, slowly, carefully, and methodically. It took four hours. (UpRise RI)

Watching the daily videos and images of Israeli forces intentionally slaughtering unarmed civilians, including thousands of children in Gaza’s killing fields, brings back my unshakable memories of My Lai, only on a much larger and visible scale. As I recall, it took over a year before journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story in the western media.

On this day in 1969, Lt. William Calley, the most notorious leader of the My Lai Massacre was charged with six specifications of premeditated murder in the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in March 1968.

An Army board of inquiry investigated the massacre and produced a list of 30 persons who knew of the atrocity. Still, only 14, including Calley and his company commander, Captain Ernest Medina, were charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley, whose platoon allegedly killed 200 innocents. He was found guilty of personally murdering 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment. Then, his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. Proclaimed by much of the public as a “scapegoat,” Calley was pardoned by President Richard Nixon in 1974 after serving about a third of his 10-year sentence.

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IDF snipers competed for most knees

IDF sniper: “On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all. My locator wasn’t supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting close to the end of our stint, and he didn’t have any knees. In the end, you want to leave with the feeling that you did something, that you weren’t a sniper during exercises only. So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that we switch. He got around 28 knees there, I’d say.” (Haaretz 3/2020)

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Who put the gun in that child’s hands?

The 14-year-old suspected of a mass shooting at Georgia’s Apalachee High School had been “begging for months” for mental health help before his deadly attack on Wednesday, according to Colt Gray’s aunt. He “was begging for help from everybody around him,” the aunt, Annie Brown, told The Washington Post. “The adults around him failed him.”

A 14-year-old boy killed two fellow students and two teachers and wounded nine others in a shooting at a Georgia high school on Wednesday, jolting the United States with the first mass campus shooting since the start of the school year.

The suspect, who had been interviewed by law enforcement last year over online threats about committing a school shooting, was taken into custody shortly after the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, investigators said.

More than 382,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine. — Washington Post

So the authorities and school administrators knew that Colt Gray had serious issues and that he had even threatened a school shooting back when he was only 13. Now, my first question is who put that military assault weapon in that child’s hands? My second is, what will it take to get him the care and treatment he needs, rather than trying him as an adult? And the third (perennial) question is, how many students and teachers have to die before the cowards in Congress get off the NRA dole, pass some effective gun control laws, and get these assault weapons off the streets?