"Kill them all. Let God sort them out."?

Question

The US Special Forces pin and Patch, "Kill them all. Let God sort them out." derived from the Albigensian Crusade,1209 by Pope Innocent III against the Cathar heresy, at Bezier, Southern France.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/42/messages/1108.html

The commander of the crusade, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, pointed out, not everybody in the city was a heretic. Some were good Catholics. How should they know which weren't? A monk present at the siege recorded the answer of the Papal Legate Crusaders, Arnaud-Amaury, the Abbot of Citeaux, as "Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet." ("Kill them all. God will know his own." ) So the Crusaders followed his advice and killed everybody they could find in Beziers. Roughly 20,000 men, women and children of the town were slaughtered to comply with the order.

1290 to the 1960s is a long dormancy.

Anyone know any war, or incident during the interim when it popped up?

How it happened to come up when it did?

Screaming radical: I suppose truth hurts sometimes. I'm a veteran myself, of those times. I saw young servicemen with the phrase tattooed on their arms and chests. I saw the patches and pins.

Today, if you'd care to do a web search, you'll find those patches frequently sold on EBay.

Sheeeze. No point in lying about it, or trying to obfuscate.

I asked a legitimate question. Frankly, I won't even bother trying to search any portion of your answer.

Maybe someone with a smidgen of truth in his mind will provide an honest answer.

If there's someone out there who knows something about actual use of the phrase I've asked about, whether it was ever popularly used as a political, or military phrase between 1200 and the 1960s, I'd appreciate anything you can provide.

Alternatively, anyone who knows the history immediately surrounding the phrase being adopted as a slogan for US troops, and how it came back into use, I'd also like to know any details.

Super-patriots, religious fanatics, and liars, I'd appreciate it if you'd take your business to some other question.

Pascha: I'm not asking for rationalizations about the Vietnam war. Of course people have killed one another in every war, indiscriminately. Of course US troops are no guiltier of practicing it than anyone else, and a lot less than many armies you and I could go on about endlessly.

But I didn't ask that.

I asked about a phrase. The phrase came out of some circumstance, some mind, some discussion, some experience, probably during the 1960s.

And probably, possibly it was used by Spanish Conquistadores, or mercenaries, or some other wars somewhere during the intervening centuries.

I'd like to know when and where.

Similar to Nat Turner's slogan about killing white children during the Nat Turner uprising, "Nits make lice!"

That phrase shows up throughout history, every culture and nationality.

This one's more difficult to find.

Answer 1

Your question made me think of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 when the crusaders sacked the Christian city of Constantinople. They went on a rampage of indiscriminate looting,raping and killing for several days.
I think that the circumstances of war can create a similar mindset among combatants.
Do we know of any war in which people were not indiscriminately killed? We do not know the pressures soldiers are under, and when they see their friends being killed, some will act in ways they will no doubt regret for the rest of their lives.

Answer 2

First of all the US Special forces Pin and patch do not say that or anything like that. The person that told you they do flat out lied. The phrase has been common in every major conflict since. especially where the enemy forces were not formal military units and easy to separate from the civil populace. Note the first time any real opposition to this attitude was during the Viet Nam war. The Viet Cong were guerrilla forces who would attack from the middle of civilian groups and when US forces returned fire the civilians were killed. Often there was no way to distinguish the VC bodies from the civilian casualties. The survivors would grab the weapons and run leaving the bodies where they fell mixed among the civilians. US Military forces caught hell from every one about the civilian dead but no one ever condemned the Communist Forces for shooting first from a hospital, temple, or school. US Ground troops taking heavy fire and casualties from an village would often call for artillery or air strikes against the villages and when asked if this was wrong would say "Let God sort them out!" I can not say they were right or wrong, no one who hasn't been there can.