Less than human beings

Soldiers raped the Vietnamese
and left them on the road;
they weren’t women, weren’t children,
but products of their foe.

They fired at the babies’ heads
and mangled girls’ remains;
senselessly they raped and killed
the souls without restraint.

To you and I this seems far-fetched:
what man could do such things?
It’s easy when he thinks of them
as less than human beings.

Wonder how the Nazis
could so surely kill the Jews?
They saw them not as men and women,
but vermin and refuse.

“Jews don’t cry, but let out
filthy water from their eyes;
they drop at death onto the ground
like rats and roaches die.”

Then they take the bodies to be
buried in mass graves;
discarding, nary a tear,
the skeletal remains.

To you and I this seems far-fetched:
what man could do such things?
It’s easy when he thinks of them
as less than human beings.

When they go home
to greet their wives,
they act like you and me —
at the moment, men at home, not of atrocity.

If they get caught they claim that
they were “doing as we’re told”;
instead of rot they may
run free and merrily grow old.

Neither are they inhuman
nor mythologic beasts;
they live next door and at the core
are just like you and me.