Tomorrow marks the grisly anniversary of one of the United States’ most shameful days. At dawn on the 16th March 1968 three platoons of US troops, commanded by Lieutenant William Calley arrived in the tiny Vietnamese village of My Lai. It was what the US called a ‘search and destroy mission’.
The actual amount of people massacred in My Lai as Calley and his troops moved through the village has never been fully established, but even the lowest estimate put it at 175, with figures rising to over 500. The My Lai memorial contains 504 names, ranging from babies to people in the eighties. What was never disputed was that the dead were overwhelmingly civilian, and women, children and the elderly. One Sergeant from the platoon later said he saw no-one who could have been possibly considered to have been military, and that the troops met no resistance as they moved through the village shooting indiscriminately.
An examination of the US justice system in the wake of My Lai doesn’t give much hope for the relatives of those killed last weekend in Afghanistan as the staff sergeant accused of the murder of 16 civilians, including women and children, is spirited out of the country.
A number of US soldiers were charged with the atrocities in My Lai… all of them were acquitted with the exception of Lt. William Calley. Despite his ‘Nuremberg Defence’ that he was only following orders, Calley was found guilty of the premeditated murder of 22 villagers, and felt the full weight of the US legal system. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but the day after his sentence he was, under the direct orders of President Richard Nixon, transferred to the US Army base at Fort Benning where actually served just over 3 years under house arrest before being released.
In 1974 Nixon awarded Calley a Presidential Pardon (something Nixon himself received later that year when Gerald Ford scratched his back over the Watergate scandal).
The soldier flown out of Afghanistan could be tried in the US and if found guilty be subject to the death penalty. For those grieving back in Kandahar, the message from My Lai is, don’t pin your hopes on justice from the US courts.
All good stuff as far as it goes. But what would you want the Yanks to do with the Sarge who ran amok in Iran? Would you want to be the Army Shrink who has to decide whether or not he’s fit to stand trial? (Unlike Calley and his platoon, there seems to be no doubt that was acting on his own say-so, and not as part of the war effort.)
Psychology may be a human universal, but psychiatry is a product of economic surplus, which few in Afghanistan enjoy. So why should they sign up for the psychiatric world-picture? And if we do, does that make us racist? (These are of course the very questions that shrinks never ask themselves.)
Yet if these are not the pertinent questions, I must assume that you would have written about this if it had take place elsewhere – in an Army married quarters, perhaps, with American children, women and seniors as victims. Even though I somehow doubt you would have done…
Afghanistan, Mike, not Iran.
As it happens both the US and Afghanistan have the death penalty, so I wouldn’t particularly recommend trial in Afghanistan either, but there is a precedence for war crimes involving civilians, so why not the Hague?
On your last point, no, I probably wouldn’t because the comparison with My Lai wouldn’t be terribly similar.
A typical example of Piper-esque sloppy thinking in which two events with infinitely more differences than similarities are linked.
The first was a ‘mass’ murder in the sense that a mass of victims were slaughtered by a mass of American troops under command. The second was a single individual soldier running amok and thereby displaying every sign of severe psychiatric disorder, or, under the influence of drugs.
I do realise, Counciller, that being a socialist you do have a tendency to think in collective terms but you really must try and rid yourself of it.
A typical piece of Duff-esque sloppy thinking, I’m afraid. The post wasn’t so much about the similarities in the style of the US executions (although it is interesting to note that you think mass murder of innocent civilians is perfectly rational behaviour as long as you can claim you were acting under orders – that would have gone down well with the death camp guards) but about the likelihood of this bloke being bought to justice given William Calley’s gentle slap of the wrists for mass murder… and it is encouraging that you are already providing his plea of mitigation.
Incidentally, Calley’s defence that he and his men were, in your words, ‘under command’ was never accepted, either by the army or by the court so he was judged to be acting in a none to dissimilar manner to the soldier in Kandahar, although with a little help from his friends.
Not true Bob, he was given a pardon.
He was granted a Presidential Pardon by Nixon.
Just a quick observation (and…by the way…I agree with Bob’s post)… why is it that if a US soldier slaughters 16 civilians at random he’s “gone mental”, “lost it” and the rest? They don’t say that when it’s a local bloke from Afghanistan doing the opposite?
Now, before some of the reader start arguing the toss…NOTE that I find both situations abhorrent and utterly wrong. Clear? Both types of indiscriminate killing. Wrong. Both. BOTH.
I’m just remarking on the (very) selective use of words like “gone berserk”, “mad”, “crazy”, etc…
Spot on Claude