“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform

and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while

so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over.”

–Muhammad Ali

A gruesome image of My Lai massacre.

One of the most horrific massacres that surfaced during the American of Vietnam was the My Lai massacre. On March 16, 1968, a company of American soldiers killed more than 500 people, all unarmed civilians. Before the soldiers killed the unarmed civilians, they raped young girls and women. As if killing the unarmed was not enough to satiate the violent tendencies of the soldiers, they mutilated the dead bodies, a practice that American soldiers would repeat in future invasions of other countries –the most infamous incidents in recent past was American soldiers taking photos with amputated limbs of Afghan Taliban.

The year 1968 was a year when students all over the world rose up against social injustices and the American war in Vietnam. The anti-war movement was at its peak in these days. The massacre of My Lai that Seymour Hersh brought to public attention –the same author who has written a book-length investigative story on Bin Laden’s killing and how Pakistan and the US collaborated to hunt him down– accelerated the anti-war movement and gave a new impetus to the dissenting voices against America’s war in Vietnam.