but about which too many Americans have either chosen to forget or else never learned.
That, for those who do not remember, is the date of the My Lai Massacre.
Troops of the Americal Division, from Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment of the 11th Brigade, killed between 347 and 504 civilian, mainly women, infants, children and elderly.
Some of the bodies were later found to be mutilated.
Only one person, Lt. William Calley, was ever convicted - in his case of klling 22 civilians. Sentenced originally to life imprisonment, he served less than four years under house arrest.
When you consider more current atrocities by American service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the recent murders by a US Sergeant in Kandahar Province that have enraged the Afghan leadership, remember this - they pale compared to what happened 44 years ago.
This was systematic slaughter.
You can read details in lots of places, for example, this Wikipedia article. Or perhaps follow the links in this google search for more, including video.
The Commander of Company C, Captain Ernest Medina, had told his troop that the villages in question should have been largely evacuated and anyone left should be considered as NLF (Viet Cong) or their sympathizers. The troops in question had suffered numerous booby traps earlier in the month in an ongoing conflict with a particular NLF unit which were suspected as being in the villages that were attacked this day. It is worth noting our allies South Korean Marines had previously perpetrated their own massacre nearby.
The blame for the massacre goes further up the chain. This was an effort of Task Force Barker, a three company task force
led by Lieutenant Colonel Frank A. Barker. Colonel Oran K. Henderson urged his officers to "go in there aggressively, close with the enemy and wipe them out for good."[11] Barker ordered the 1st Battalion commanders to burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy foodstuffs, and perhaps to close the wells. quoting from Wikipedia, which cites the Peers report
I will not recapitulate the entire massacre.
I will note the heroism of Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot who saw what was happening and attempted to intervene. He was originally awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and his crew Bronze Stars, but
In 1998, the helicopter crew's medals were replaced by the Soldier's Medal, "the highest the US Army can award for bravery not involving direct conflict with the enemy."
Thompson reported the massacre to his commanding officer in near real time, and his reports were confirmed by other pilots and air crew. His reports included the terms "murder" and "needless and unnecessary killings".
It is not that there were no "investigations." Colonel Henderson was responsible for one, which resulted in a report
in late April claiming that some 20 civilians were inadvertently killed during the operation. The Army at this time was still describing the event as a military victory that had resulted in the deaths of 128 enemy combatants.
Six months later a soldier named Tom Glen wrote a letter directly to General Creighton Abrams which resulted in an investigation by a 31 year old Major named Colin Powell which basically cleared Charlie Company, but was later characterized as a "whitewash."
A soldier who was not in the unit at the time of the massacre, Ronald Ridenour, heard about the massacre and began writing letters in March 1969:
detailing the events at Mỹ Lai to President Richard M. Nixon, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and numerous members of Congress.[34] Most recipients of Ridenhour's letter ignored it, with the exception of Congressman Morris Udall and Senators Barry Goldwater and Edward Brooke. Ridenhour had learned about the events at Mỹ Lai secondhand, by talking to members of Charlie Company while he was still in the Army.
Further investigation did follow, include the most detailed, done by Lt. General William Peers.
One cannot discuss My Lai without mentioning Seymour Hersh, who in November 1969 broke the story, and it was picked up by numerous press outlets, as one can read here You can read Hersh's original dispatches (and see one horrifying picture) here
It is worth noting that many in the United States condemned those who reported the massacres. That included public figures and newspaper editorial boards. I remember being horrified to see such 'defenses' and attacks on those who informed us. If we ever want to make a claim of "American Exceptionalism" we should NOT be excusing our misdeeds, but holding our own to account for the wrongs they do.
I think My Lai should be taught to all Americans, and especially to all in the military. It is worth noting that My Lai contributed to the leadership of the Army arguing for an all volunteer military - Calley was relatively uneducated in both civilian life and in the military. The military also seemed to have a culture of unconditional obedience to orders that played a part in the massacre - although I note that in my own Marine Corps training in 1965 we were seriously instructed in the principles deriving from the Nuremburg trials. I acknowledge that the real conflict in Vietnam was only beginning at that point, and in the midst of ongoing combat things might not seem as clear - the fog of battle and all that. But is not then when proper training and control should be applied?
In the aftermath of World War II we executed a Japanese General named Tomoyuki Yamashita under the doctrine of command responsibility - he had not ordered his troops to commit the massacres they did, but we held him responsible and executed him. By that standard one man (Calley) serving less than four years of House Arrest is a travesty - there should have been far more serious punishments, at least up to the level of Lt. Col. Henderson.
I wonder what if anything we have learned. We cannot learn if we do not examine, if we do not teach. We will not learn if we are not honest.
My Lai did not occur in isolation. Allow me to quote once more from Wikipedia:
In May 1970, a sergeant who participated in Operation Speedy Express wrote a confidential letter to then Army Chief of Staff Westmoreland describing civilian killings on the scale of the massacre occurring as "a My Lay each month for over a year" during 1968-1969. Two other letters to this effect from enlisted soldiers to military leaders in 1971, all signed "Concerned Sergeant", were uncovered within declassified National Archive documents. The letters describe routine civilian killings as a policy of population pacification. Army policy also stressed very high body counts and without regard to who was killed. Alluding to indiscriminate killings described as unavoidable, Commander of the Ninth Division, then Maj. Gen. Julian Ewell in September 1969 submitted a confidential report to Westmoreland and other generals describing the countryside in some areas of Vietnam as resembling the battlefields of Verdun.
Somehow as I read about reports of drone strikes and supposed terrorists killed thereby, I am reminded of the body counts of Vietnam, and to what that led.
When I listen to words of Leon Panetta saying that we should simply look forward and thereby not fully examine the wrongdoings in the CIA in the last administration, I hear again the voices that condemned those reporting My Lai, and am not at all surprised that we continue to commit what can only be called atrocities, that we have troops like the sergeant who deliberately killed 16 civilians recently, that we had Marines urinating on the corpses of the dead.
I read about this things and I am ashamed - as a former Marine, as an American for my country, as a human being.
I am ashamed - and angered.
But I am not surprised.
Too many argue that to criticize our own wrongdoing somehow makes America weaker. If our President apologizes for American wrongdoing somehow that makes him too weak to be our leader.
Bullshit.
I try to teach my students to take responsibility for when they are wrong and to learn from it.
I model that in apologizing for my mistakes, to them, publicly.
Why should we expect them to be honest and responsible when too many in leadership or aspiring to it refuse to do so and criticize those who do?
There is a lesson from My Lai.
It is older than My Lai - it can be seen in the Sand Creek Massacre, in the Fort Pillow Massacre, at Wounded Knee, at No Gun Ri, in Ludlow Colorado, and so on.
We do not learn because we do not want to learn.
We do not hold accountable ourselves and our own the way we impose punitive measures on those who act similarly towards us and ours.
Oh, we may occasionally punish the lower ranking - the enlisted and junior officers in the military, the clerks and lower supervisors in intelligence and civilian agencies. But not those who make the policy.
We have learned something from My Lai. Or rather, the power structure has learned something. It is to swiftly and viciously punish those who expose the wrong-doing.
Ask Thomas Drake, or our own Jesselyn Radack, or Bradley Manning.
Today I will do something that may cause me some problems.
Today I will tell ALL my students about My Lai.
I consider it a sacred responsibility.
All Americans should remember My Lai.
All Americans should be ashamed of what happened this day in 1968.
That we are not is worse than sad.
It is a moral judgment upon this nation and its people.