Civilian casualties

In a previous column, I wrote that one mark of past international communist military actions is an apparent disregard for civilian casualties.

On Feb. 26, 1968, U.S. troops re-entered the city of Hue in South Vietnam after North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops had occupied the city during the battle of Tet. What they found was massive destruction and mass graves. During their 25-day occupation of Hue, the communist force had executed anyone who had shown support for the South Vietnamese government. Mass graves discovered indicated 2,800 civilians executed, although some estimates are as high as 5,700 killed. None of this was surprising since the Viet Cong had executed village leaders across South Vietnamese since the early days of the war. The brutality was an intentional military and political tactic designed to put the populace in fear of the Viet Cong in order to gain cooperation.

The removal of opposition through murder occurred in many communist countries, but the worst case is generally regarded to be in Cambodia, where civilian executions were in excess of 600,000. It is estimated that starvation and disease were responsible for more than 2 million deaths. Stories of governmental civilian murders in communist countries have emanated from Eastern Europe, China, North Korea and Afghanistan. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was responsible for millions of deaths in the Soviet Union. This history has been minimized, ignored or forgotten by younger generations.

I am recounting this history as a demonstration that ISIS and other Islamic terrorists are simply a new manifestation of evil in the world, and they are not the worst the world has had to deal with. I am not trying to minimize the threat these groups present, but we must keep things in perspective. In this election year there will be politicians who will try to cultivate fear and present themselves as our best hope to meet this threat. Don't let these merchants of fear have their way. Rational actions will be more effective than paranoid ones.

Jack Dragoni attended Boston College and served in the U.S. Army in Berlin and Vietnam. He lives in Chaffee, Missouri.