Whatever military justice ultimately delivers to the soldier accused of methodically killing 16 Afghan civilians, most of them women and children in their beds, the case says all the worst things about how a few -- or even one -- American soldier going rogue can wipe out not only blameless civilians but years of nuanced and carefully constructed foreign and military policy.
The one that came to mind was the My Lai massacre, the March 1968 incident in Vietnam where as many as 500 civilians -- mostly women, children and the elderly -- were massacred by U.S. soldiers, in an incident that ended up shaping the outcome of that war.
The reason it came to mind is because, some years ago, Times photographer Robert Chamberlin and I were traveling the country, interviewing people -- some of them just at random -- about the impact of the Vietnam War on the nation's culture and psyche.
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