My Lai bibliography and court-martial transcripts.
posted by neel master at 3:57 PM

I also found this review of Mother Night, a Vonnegut book that focuses squarely on the problem of moral confusion.

The force of Vonnegut's questioning is such that one has to sit sown to think, to define degrees: Vonnegut simply cannot bear what we are, of course--like a lot of writers. The growl, the wince, the scream, that come off so many pages is due to this. But no other writer's sorrow, no other writer's refusal to play the child's game of Goddies and Baddies, is strong enough to make me remember, for instance, that before 1939 a great many people were shouting we should stop Hitler, that Nazism could be stopped if America and Britain wanted to. He makes me remember- -he rubs our noses in the results of our missed chances--that when Nazism was not stopped, but flowered (to succumb to the associations of the word) into the expected and forecast war, how soon our judgments became warped by the horribleness of what was going on. The horribleness of the Nazis, of course: for almost at once Good and Evil became polarized into Us and Them and quite forgotten was the knowledge that the war could have been prevented if our governments had wanted. What Vonnegut deals with, always, is responsibility: Whose fault was it all--the gas chambers, the camps, the degradations and the debasements of all our standards? Whose? Well, ours as much as theirs.

posted by neel master at 3:54 PM

Like so many people of the latter half of this century, I am gripped by the conundrum of decent people doing extremely aberrant and harmful things. I want to recognize the foolishness in the broad attribution of simple evil to acts that have awful consequences. Bad acts do not present an opportunity for conclusions, only for profound moral confusion.

So I've collected a bunch of links about My Lai. "My Lai" refers to both a town in Vietnam and an incident in which more than 100 Vietnamese civilians were killed by American soldiers during the spring of 1968. The killing was conducted by the men of Charley Company, under the command of Lieutenant William Calley. The Army investigated, although cover-up by higher-ranking officials is often alleged. The complaints of combat soldiers who were or knew witnesses to the incident brought public attention to it, and in 1970, Calley was brought back to America, court-martialed, and sentenced to life imprisonment for his leadership of the killing.

The reason I started all this was because there is a line in Vonnegut somewhere about Calley, and I didn't know who he was. Some inexplicable mental occurence caused me to remember the name Lieutenant Calley the other day, which prompted the beginning of the search whose results you will read now. I can see now why Vonnegut was attracted to this allusion; the responses to the killing, cover-up, trial, and sentence by both the involved and the public are so varied that they rule out the possibility of any sort of morally simple approach.

The material available on the web documents the multitude of moral outlooks quite nicely.

Many Americans were sympathetic to Calley. Some felt he should not be tried. Congressman Mendel Rivers said he would do all he could to keep the Government from prosecuting the men charged with the massacre. Herbert Rainwater, national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said: "There have been My Lais in every war. Now for the first time in our history we have tried a soldier for performing his duty."

The White House received more than 100,000 telegrams, roughly 100 to 1 supporting Lieutenant Calley in some way. Many people felt Lieutenant Calley was being made a scapegoat; that he was being singled out for punishment while many higher-ranking officers escaped their share of blame. (Charges against two generals for covering up the massacre were dropped, although the generals were demoted.) (more)

----------

The cover-up of the My Lai massacre began almost as soon as the killing ended. Official army reports of the operation proclaimed a great victory: 128 enemy dead, only one American casualty (one soldier intentionally shot himself in the foot). The army knew better. Hugh Thompson had filed a complaint, alleging numerous war crimes involving murders of civilians. According to one of Thompson's crew members, "Thompson was so pissed he wanted to turn in his wings". An order issued by Major Calhoun to Captain Medina to return to My Lai to do a body count was countermanded by Major General Samuel Koster, who asked Medina how many civilians has been killed. "Twenty to twenty-eight," was his answer. The next day Colonel Henderson informed Medina that an informal investigation of the My Lai incident was underway-- and most likely gave the Captain "a good ass-chewing" as well. Henderson interviewed a number of GIs, then pronounced himself "satisfied" by their answers. No attempt was made to interview surviving Vietnamese. In late April, Henderson submitted a written report indicating that about twenty civilians had been inadvertently killed in My Lai. Meanwhile, Michael Bernhart, a Charlie Company GI severely troubled by what he witnessed at My Lai discussed with other GIs his plan to write a letter about the incident to his congressman. Medina, after learning of Bernhart's intentions, confronted him and told him how unwise such an action, in his opinion, would be.

If not for the determined efforts of a twenty-two-year-old ex-GI from Phoenix, Ronald Ridenhour, what happened on March 16, 1968 at My Lai 4 may never have come to the attention of the American people. Ridenhour served in a reconnaissance unit in Duc Pho, where he heard five eyewitness accounts of the My Lai massacre. He began his own investigation, traveling to Americal headquarters to confirm that Charlie Company had in fact been in My Lai on the date reported by his witnesses. Ridenhour was shocked by what he learned. When he was discharged in December, 1968, Ridenhour said "I wanted to get those people. I wanted to reveal what they did. My God, when I first came home, I would tell my friends about this and cry-literally cry." In March, 1969, Ridenhour composed a letter detailing what he had heard about the My Lai massacre and sent it to President Nixon, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and numerous members of Congress. Most recipients simply ignored the letter, but a few, most notably Representative Morris Udall, aggressively pushed for a full investigation of Ridenhour's allegations. (more)

----------From an essay on journalist and Calley biographer John Sack:

Sack told Esquire editor Harold Hayes, who had already had three writers turn down the assignment, that before he could agree to write a story on Calley he had to meet him. Sack later explained to Schroeder that he needed to find out if Calley was "a homicidal maniac." Had that been the case, Sack said he would have had no interest in the story, as it would have shown little other than sometimes "homicidal maniacs get into the Army." At that first meeting in the spring of 1970 Sack began a friendship with Calley which would develop over the intervening months through the trial and would continue long after all the stories had been published. Sack even risked a jail sentence for refusing to help prosecutors in their case against Calley. Despite warnings from Esquire's attorney that he would not be protected by existing shield laws, Sack declined to answer questions by prosecutors when they called him to the stand, nor would he surrender his notes and sixty hours of taped interviews with Calley. Sack was subsequently arrested and indicted on federal felony charges for refusing to testify and refusing to deliver evidence. He did not go to trial because prosecutors, in their charges against Sack, swore that he had refused a direct order from the judge. Transcripts of the exchange between the judge and Sack, however, showed that the judge had never formally ordered the reporter to testify or surrender his notes or tapes. At risk of facing perjury charges themselves, prosecutors let the matter drop.

The articles, republished in book form in 1971 as Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story, are a sympathetic portrayal of Calley, which Sack wrote in the soldier's own voice. In Sack's description, Calley was not the cold-blooded monster depicted in the press, but was essentially a scapegoat for a system that ordered, or at least promoted, behavior such as Calley's.(more)

----------From a letter written by Calley prosecutor Aubrey Daniel to President Nixon:

When the verdict was rendered, I was totally shocked and dismayed at the rea6tion of many people across the nation. Much of the adverse public reaction I can attribute to people who have acted emotionally and without being aware of the evidence that was presented and perhaps even the laws of this nation regulating the conduct of war.

These people have undoubtedly viewed Lieutenant Calley's conviction simply as the conviction of an American officer for killing the enemy. Others, no doubt out of a sense of frustration, have seized upon the conviction as a means of protesting the war in Viet-Nam. I would prefer to believe that most of the public criticism has come from people who are not aware of the evidence, either because they have not followed the evidence as it was presented, or having followed it they have chosen not to believe it.

Certainly, no one wanted to believe what occurred at My Lai, including the officers who sat in judgment of Lieutenant Calley. To believe, however, that any large percentage of the population could believe the evidence which was presented and approve of the conduct of Lieutenant Calley would be as shocking to my conscience as the conduct itself, since I believe that we are still a civilized nation.

If such be the case, then the war in Viet-Nam has brutalized us more than I care to believe, and it must cease. How shocking it is if so many people across the nation have failed to see the moral issue which was involved in the trial of Lieutenant Calley -- that it is unlawful for an American soldier to summarily execute unarmed and unresisting men, women, children, and babies.

But how much more appalling it is to see so many of the political leaders of the nation who have failed to see the moral issue, or, having seen it, to compromise it for political motive in the face of apparent public displeasure with the verdict. (more)

posted by neel master at 3:47 PM

Also, dig the 404 message from the Marxists International Archive:

the dialectics of opposites:
you found much
but this, you did not

Sorry comrade, we didn't provide the page you are looking for.
posted by neel master at 12:29 PM

As our more obsessive readers will recall, I blogged recently about pragmatism. I'm glad to see it's come up again in Jason's latest post re: Posner.

So I both and don't have an axe to grind with Posner. I have a nearly innate skepticism about theoretical approaches to social life that require actors to be self-interested rational actors. But I can't defend this skepticism; it's just a feeling. Since policy isn't poetry, I feel a not-a-little flaky whining about how Posner's outlook subordinates human beings to the maintenance of system (free markets) that can't properly address transcendental values. Because since when did I have some kind of corner on what transcendental values are?

I wish my breaks were longer. I've run out of time for this entry, but I'll be linking like mad tonight. Check back for a Dewey-James-Holmes-Rorty-Kuhn extravaganza!
posted by neel master at 12:28 PM

I don't think I have ever been quite so sobered by a turn of events as I was this morning when I turned the television on to discover that Michael Kinsley has Parkinson's Disease. In fact, Michael Kinsley has secretly had Parkinson's Disease for 8 years. In an entry six days ago, I called him "owl-looking." Well, let me swear, here and now, that I mocked Kinsley with no knowledge of his condition. I join the rest of his admirers in wishing him continued health, and note with pleasure that he has shaved off his beard.
posted by neel master at 8:24 AM

I'm at work now, and "Share the Land" came on. This is the kind of hippieish southern rock that makes my American heart beat proudly. This song could convince me to do just about anything. If they played this at the right moment, I'd probably up and enlist.

And as someone with a broad and ridiculously idealistic conception of social possibility, I've gotta love lyrics like this:

Every day come sunshine, every day everybody laughin'
Walkin' together by the river
Walkin' together and laughin'
Everybody singin' together
Everybody singin' and laughin'
Good times, good times
Everybody walkin' by the river now
Walkin', singin', talkin'
Similin', laughin', digging each other
Everybody happy together
I'll be there to worry if you need me
Call on me, call on me
Call my name, I'll be runnin' to help you
Everybody walkin' by the river now
Everybody, everybody laughin'
Everybody singin' and talkin'
Smilin', laughin', digging each other...

Learn to play it. Learn about the Guess Who. Learn that their ability to make my American heart beat proudly is especially amazing in light of the fact that they are Canadian.

So let's talk about a real American southern rock single. I vote for "Amie" by Pure Prairie League. What is weird is that this song means absolutely nothing in the North. I had never heard it till I drove through the South, where it is a staple on various kinds of rock and oldies stations.

My break is over. Peace.
posted by neel master at 11:11 AM

The "Stolen Feminism" Hoax
By Laura Flanders for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

In arguing against feminist claims that wife-beating was tolerated in English common law, [author of Who Stole Feminism Christina Hoff] Sommers quotes the 18th Century legal historian William Blackstone: "The husband was prohibited from using any violence to his wife...." The ellipsis conceals a Latin phrase that Sommers either didn't bother to translate or decided to ignore. In English it reads: "other than that which lawfully and reasonably belongs to the husband for the due government and correction of his wife." (Linda Hirshman, L.A. Times op-ed, 7/31/94)

The rest of this article is so defensive and desperate that I'm inclined to distrust it. But I trust Sommers less. Her faux-feminist Independent Women's Forum is a total crock.
posted by neel master at 11:57 PM

Deconstructing essentialism itself:

essentialism is most commonly understood as a belief in the real, true essence of things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the 'whatness' of a given entity. . . . Importantly, essentialism is typically defined in opposition to difference. . . . The opposition is a helpful one in that it reminds us that a complex system of cultural, social, psychical, and historical differences, and not a set of pre-existent human essences, position and constitute the subject. However, the binary articulation of essentialism and difference can also be restrictive, even obfuscating, in that it allows us to ignore or deny the differences within essentialism. (Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking [1989]: xi-xii).

posted by neel master at 11:54 PM

Is Bad Writing Necessary? George Orwell, Theodor Adorno, and the Politics of Literature
by James Miller

These are trying times for the left in America, which may be one reason why a bitter debate has erupted among avowedly left-wing academics and intellectuals over a venerable topic--"Politics and the English Language," to borrow the title of George Orwell's famous 1946 essay. Must one write clearly, as Orwell argued, or are thinkers who are truly radical and subversive compelled to write radically and subversively--or even opaquely, as if through a glass darkly? That is the question.

On one side stand academic luminaries like University of California at Berkeley rhetorician Judith Butler and University of Pittsburgh English professor Jonathan Arac, who take their inspiration from critical theorists like Michel Foucault and Theodor Adorno. Arguing that their work has been misunderstood by journalists on the left, these radical professors distrust the demand for "linguistic transparency," charging that it cripples one's ability "to think the world more radically."

On the other side are ranged a variety of public intellectuals and journalists like UCLA historian Russell Jacoby, feminist writer Katha Pollitt, and NYU physicist Alan Sokal. Intolerant of bewildering jargon, they cannot see how deliberately difficult prose can possibly help change the world. As their patron saint, they often nominate George Orwell, the very image of a man who spoke truth to power and spoke it plainly.

posted by neel master at 11:47 PM

How Civilizations Fall
by Kenneth Minogue

Behold the perils of essentialism:

The history of Western civilization is a succession of clever men developing the set of traditions or inventing the benefits which, intertwined, constitute the West. And from Thales and Euclid to Einstein and George Gershwin, nearly all of them were male. They constitute the set of “dead white males” whom the radical revolutionaries in the sub-academic culture have denigrated and vowed to remove from their pedestals.

[..] To say that men created all these things is true, and significant, but it is rather like stranding a lot of fish on a barren shore. It leaves out the medium of social and political life without which none of this could have happened. Like all social life, Europe was a world of sexual complementarity, and there is no reliable way of sifting out what was contributory from what was not. But of women we may say what Falstaff said of himself—namely that he not only had wit but also was a cause of wit in others. But by seeming to set women up as a weak team in relation to inventive men, I am merely pointing to the mistake radical feminists, who have accepted the abstract idea that the one thing that counts is who invented this or created that, themselves make. It is in pursuit of this mistake that they have attempted to set up a competing canon of writers, philosophers, painters, and so on whose talents were suppressed by the patriarchy. These resuscitated figures are often worth looking at in their own terms, but they cannot serve as a new canon. Camille Paglia famously said that if we had waited for women to invent civilization we should still be living in grass huts. It is also true that if we had waited for men to make life comfortable we should still be living in pigsties.

posted by neel master at 11:44 PM

Dilemmas of Care - Mothers and Attention Deficit Disorder
by Claudia Malacrida

Attempting to locate the 'truth' about ADD can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, making it difficult for mothers of children with ADD to make decisions about diagnosis and treatment for children who are identified as problematic. As part of my doctoral research, I have been interviewing mothers in both Canada and the UK to ask them what it is like, within such a controversial climate, to attempt to find answers about and solutions for their troubled children. I anticipated that mothers of children identified as having ADD, despite the particulars of the UK or Canadian setting, would share profound experiences of stigmatization, ostracization and encounters that are ambiguous at best with those very professionals that should provide support to children with disabilities and their families.

Persistently, when mothers in both sites reported on interactions with teachers, physicians, pediatricians, psychiatrists, special educators, principals or administrators, they understood that their personal character and their family's moral fiber were part of the scrutiny attached to their children's difference. Women who pressed too hard to achieve a diagnosis, or who insisted that there was something their children needed in order to achieve their full potential, were named by professionals as over-protective, over-achieving or simply in denial of their children's 'true limits.' Women who were reluctant to have yet another assessment or to attend another therapy session, or who were loath to medicate their children, were accused of being negligent or in denial of their children's problems.

posted by neel master at 11:40 PM

War in the Mind
By James M. McPherson

Eric Dean first challenges the myth of the troubled and scorned Vietnam veteran. The myth goes something like this: Sent to fight a dirty and unwinnable war, whose purpose they never understood, against an enemy they rarely saw in menacing jungles and rice paddies, amid a civilian population that hated and betrayed them, American soldiers in Vietnam turned to drugs and "fragging" and returned to a nation that scorned and spit upon them. As a consequence, many of these veterans formed a pathological subculture of unemployed addicts, criminals, and underachieving misfits who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and astronomical suicide rates. These experiences contrasted sharply with those of veterans of other American wars, who came home to victory parades, the GI Bill, and other kinds of preferential treatment, and who therefore readjusted quickly to civilian life with few psychiatric complications.

Dean convincingly demolishes every part of this myth. Citing numerous surveys and studies, he demonstrates that in the 1970s and 1980s Vietnam veterans had higher median incomes than their nonveteran peers and were unemployed at the same rate, had similar rates of drug use and addiction, and, in percentage terms, used more GI Bill benefits to attend college than had veterans of the Second World War.

posted by neel master at 11:31 PM

Psychiatric Casualties in War
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

During World War II, 504,000 men were lost from America's combat forces due to psychiatric collapse--enough to man 50 divisions. The United States suffered this loss despite efforts to weed out those mentally and emotionally unfit for combat by classifying more than 800,000 men 4-F (unfit for military service) due to psychiatric reasons. At one point in World War II, psychiatric casualties were being discharged from the U.S. Army faster than new recruits were being drafted in.

posted by neel master at 11:25 PM