America passed a significant moment in its history a few weeks ago without notice. It wasn’t an anniversary to celebrate but we should have reminded ourselves of it so that it would never happen again. We are quick to condemn other peoples and cultures for their horrendous treatment of their fellow human beings – the Holocaust, 9/11, etc. but quick to forget our own sins. Perhaps ignoring such an event is due to human nature’s penchant for pushing evil to the backs of our minds – particularly when the incident shocks us to our core with its diabolical evil. Ethnocentrism run amok is not unique to “them.”
Some observers of history ask “How could anyone do to another human being what the Nazis did to the Jews and other ‘undersirables’? Few today remember Yale Professor Stanley Milgram‘s experiment on obedience begun August 7, 1961 in which an authority figure ordered participants to deliver what they believed were dangerous – even lethal – electrical shocks to a subject for failing to answer a series of questions correctly. The ominous results suggested people are highly susceptible to authority and highly obedient.
Or perhaps this anniversary of shame is because most Americans were never told the truth about the most evil event in America’s military history. Here’s the truth:
On March 16, 1968, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment of the 23nd Infantry Division entered the village of My Lai. The Company Commander, Captain Medina, hearing that the large number of villagers were slowing down his movement ordered Lt. Calley to “get rid of them.” He did – more than 500 old men, women, children and babies were slaughtered. Young girls and women were raped and mutilated before being murdered.
Feelings against the Vietnam War dominated the media. The predominant feeling among patriotic Americans about My Lai were tending to believe our troops were victims of a malicious media – “our boys are incapable of such atrocities”. President Nixon reflected this opinion by ordering the Army to release Lt. Calley from prison and letting him await the verdict on “house arrest.”
In an interview with Mike Wallace of CBS News, the soldiers under Captain Medina and Lt. Calley used the Nuremburg Defense for their actions: “We were just following orders.”
- How many aboard each chopper?
- Five of us. We landed next to the village, and we all got on line and we started walking toward the village. And there was one man, one gook in the shelter, and he was all huddled up down in there, and the man called out and said “there’s a gook over there”.
- How old a man was he? I mean was this a fighting man or an older man?
- An older man. And the man was hauled out and said that there’s a gook over here, and then Sergeant Mitchell hollered back and said “shoot him.”
- Sergeant Mitchell was in charge of the twenty of you?
- He was in charge of the whole squad. And so then, the man shot him. So we moved into the village, and we started searching up the village and gathering people and running through the center of the village.
- How many people did you round up?
- Well, there was about forty, fifty people that we gathered in the center of the village. And we placed them in there, and it was like a little island, right there in the center of the village, I’d say…and…
- What kind of people – men, women, children?
- Men, women, children.
- Babies?
- Babies. And we huddled them up. We made them squat down and Lt. Calley came over and said, “You know what to do with them don’t you?” And I said yes. So I took it for granted that he just wanted us to watch them. And he left, and came back about ten or fifteen minutes later and said “How come you ain’t killed them yet?” And I told him that I didn’t think you wanted us to kill them, that you just wanted us to guard them. He said. “No, I want them dead.” So-
- He told this to all of you, or to you particularly?
- Well, I was facing him. So, but the other three, four guys heard it and so he stepped back about ten, fifteen feet, and started shooting them. And he told me to start shooting. So I started shooting. I poured about four clips into the group.
- You fired four clips from your…
- M-16
- And that’s about how many clips – I mean how many –
- I carried seventeen rounds to each clip.
- So you fired something like sixty-seven shots?
- Right
- And you killed how many? At that time?
- Well, I fired them automatic, so you can’t – You just spray the area on them and so you can’t know how many you killed ‘cause they were going fast. So might have killed ten or fifteen of them.
- Men, women and children?
- Men, women and children.
- And babies?
- And babies.
- Okay. Then what?
- So we started to gather them up, more people, and we had about seven or eight people, that we gonna put into the hootch, and we dropped a hand grenade in there with them.
- Now, you’re rounding up more?
- We’re rounding up more, and we had about seven or eight people. And we was going to thrown them in the hootch and drop a hand grenade down there with them. And somebody holed up in the ravine, and told us to bring them over to the ravine, so we took them back out and led them over to- and by that time we already had them over there, and they had about seventy-seventy-five people all gathered up. So we threw ours in with them and Lt. Calley told me, “Soldier we got another job to do”. And so we walked over to the people, and he started pushing them off and started shooting. …
- Started pushing them off into the ravine?
- Off into the ravine. It was a ditch. And so we started pushing them off, and we started shooting them, so all together we just pushed them all off, and just started using automatic on them. And then. …
- Again, men, women, and children?
- Men, women, and children.
- And babies?
- And babies.
- Why did you do it?
- Why did I do it? Because I felt like I was ordered to do it, and it seemed like that, at the time I felt like I was doing the right thing, because, like I said, I lost buddies. I lost a damn good buddy, Bobby Wilson, and it was on my conscience. So, after I done it, I felt good, but later on that day, it was getting to me.
- You’re married and have children?
- Right. Two children.
- Obviously, the question comes to my mind…the father of two little kids like that…how can he shoot babies?
- I don’t know. It’s just one of those things.
- How many people would you imagine were killed that day?
- I’d say about three hundred and seventy.
- What did these civilians – particularly the women and children, the old men – what did they say to you? They weren’t begging, or saying “No…no,’ or… ?
- Right. They were begging and saying ‘No, no’. And the mothers was hugging their children, and… but they kept on firing. Well, we kept right on firing. They were waving their arms and begging. . .”
Scenes like this were common among German troops during the Nazi invasion of Europe and Russia – and Russian troops during their advance into Eastern Europe. The United States and our allies convicted and hung over 300 Nazi war criminals who performed acts exactly like those of Lt. Calley.
During the Vietnam War, 95 Army personnel and 27 Marines were convicted of murder and manslaughter of Vietnamese civilians. Their sentences were not reduced. In the My Lai massacre, thirteen officers and enlisted men were charged with “war crimes or crimes against humanity.” Another twelve officers were charged with having actively covered up the incident. Only Lt. Calley was convicted.
Calley was convicted of 22 counts of Premeditated Murder and Assault with Intent to Commit Murder – by a jury of all combat veterans. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with Hard Labor. It was commuted to 20 years imprisonment then to 10 years imprisonment. President Nixon, without bothering to investigate the truth (being the political poll watcher he was), commuted Calley’s sentence to three years house arrest.
This floating moral standard has serious consequences. Professor Milgram’s experiment portrayed a characteristic of the American psyche remarkably similar to the German populations idolizing of Hitler, i.e. how quickly so many rolled over belly up to the government’s 1984 -ish COVID 19 dictates – how rabidly many Americans enforced draconian restrictions with the zeal of the Gestapo.
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, American troops have never been required to obey an illegal order. Americans have a long tradition of disobeying illegal laws – or they used to.
“How could obedience be so deeply ingrained that even individuals of a country which prides itself on freedom for the individual and vehemently resists being ‘pushed around’ fall victim to its pressure?” – Norman F. Dixon, (Our Own Worst Enemy, 1987; pgs. 125-129),
In 2010, I asked a class of 30 enlisted soldiers training to be intelligent analysts at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center & School, Ft. Huachuca, AZ. how many of them thought people in Africa and the Third World had the same basic desires in life – safety, health, quality of life (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). Only one student raised his hand.
This is how race-baiters keep ethnic hostility alive. This is how political and gender extremists thrive to create continued social chaos.
