Reflections on the My Lai Massacre
Lt. William Calley, perpetrator of the massacre and the lone convict in the case, has died at age 80.
Given that I was born in 1967, the war in Vietnam was not a war for my generation. By that, I mean that while my cohort dealt with the aftermath of it, we were not subject to the draft for that war and, due to the fact that it ended while we were children, we never served in it.
We were supposed to be the good guys.
We were there to protect South Vietnam from the onslaught of the Soviet-backed communist forces of North Vietnam. Our advisors (Co-Vans) were supposed to be working with South Vietnamese forces to give them the training and resources to fight the Viet Cong (VC) and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).
Just as we beat back Hitler and Tojo in WWII—and saved the world—we were supposed to be doing God’s work: fighting back those Atheist, murderous, totalitarian bastards so the good people of South Vietnam could live peaceable lives and we could stop Lenin’s World Domination Tour.
And while most of our troops in theater served honorably in a very difficult war that presented unique ethical challenges, a marginal number of them acted just like the very people we were supposed to be fighting: they targeted civilians for rape, torture, murder, and even mass murder.
Of those atrocities, the My Lai Massacre became the portrait of our dark side. Today, we rightfully look back at that in horror and indignation.
Had it not been for an exceptional helicopter crew and a tenacious reporter, the record of that massacre may never have made it to our attention. But even as the severity of our atrocities became inescapable, we continued to turn and look the other way, as much of our establishment was dismissive and sought to whitewash it.
As I said, Vietnam was not a war for my generation. But many years ago, as I was studying another Vietnam-related matter, I dug into the details of My Lai. As I studied that horrible chapter in our history, the more I thought about the kinds of people involved in that massacre.
The People Involved in My Lai
I pondered the Vietnamese men, women, and children who sure as Hell didn’t ask to be raped, beaten, tortured, or murdered in cold blood. We were supposed to be on THEIR side!
(Even then, if they were enemy combatants, we still had an obligation to treat them with dignity. We were, after all, signatories of the Geneva Conventions.)
I pondered the men in that operation—officers and enlisted alike—who committed murder and other assorted atrocities. They were not trained to target civilians. We even have standards for the dignified treatment of enemy soldiers; our soldiers were trained in that. Did our society raise them to have such callous disregard for the wellbeing of other human beings?
What got into our men, that they thought that such evils were morally permissible in any universe?
We’re not talking about soldiers killing other soldiers in a firefight; we’re talking about TARGETING NON-COMBATANTS and committing atrocities against them that we won’t even tolerate against legitimate combatants.
Of 26 Soldiers who were charged in the massacre, Calley was the sole convict; he served only 3-1/2 years of a life sentence that was commuted by President Nixon, after which he lived a quiet life and recently died at age 80.
But I also pondered that brave helicopter crew—Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, and Specialists Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn—who intervened to stop the massacre. I mention them by name because they were heroes.
They, like the men who committed rape and/or mass murder, were also products of America. They had the same training that the men who raped and murdered had. And yet they had the moral courage to not only not participate in the massacre, and not only to act to stop the massacre, but also to testify to the truth, even as the entire establishment—from the military to two of the three branches of federal government—was against them.
Why did one helicopter crew have the moral courage to act to stop the massacre whereas other crews—who corroborated Thompson’s account—did not take action?
Why did none of the men on the ground act to countermand an immoral and unlawful order—which they are trained to do when given such orders—from a lowly Second Lieutenant?
(Seriously…telling a 2nd Lieutenant, giving an order like that, to do something anatomically impossible would have carried no penalty, neither then nor now. Why no NCOs rebuked him is mind-boggling. All it would have taken was ONE MAN to tell Calley to go pound sand.)
I also pondered the public response. At the time, as word of the massacre became public domain, public opinion was solidly on the side of Calley and the My Lai perpetrators. Thompson, Colburn, and Andreotta—who was killed in action in another mission shortly after My Lai—were thought of as troublemakers.
Some sought to dismiss My Lai as a fake story, instead spinning the operation as a legitimate battle where our troops made hard but necessary decisions. Except that narrative was false: the massacre was in fact a large-scale atrocity where our soldiers murdered as many as 508 civilians. The pictures didn’t lie; the receipts showed a massacre.
Thankfully, over time, public opinion would change.
Today, we look at Thompson’s crew as heroes. They acted according to the best ideals of America, showing great virtue and regard for human dignity.
Today, we view Calley as a reprobate who committed great evil, and the soldiers as men who, at best, were cowards who “went along to get along”, and—at worse—were cold-blooded rapists and murderers.
Today, we view the government actors—from the officers who tried to cover it up to the elected officials, up to and including Nixon—with rightful contempt.
From all of this, we gain important lessons.
Beware of Institutional Betrayal
I don’t care if it’s a small business, a corporation, a government entity, or even a church or religious organization, remember this: the institution is for the institution. Being a whistleblower—even if you are the victim—carries a cost, and sometimes that cost is massive.
Today, if you are in a church and you are abused by a pastor or anyone else on staff, you cannot trust the church leadership to act in your best interests. They may get you in touch with their lawyers, they may push you into a mediation hearing where the mediator is beholden to them, you cannot trust them to report the abuse to law enforcement, you cannot trust them to not arrange a sweetheart deal for the offending minister to go elsewhere. If they offer a settlement, it may be on paltry terms and may require a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
And in churches, the general membership has a vested interest in the stability of the institution. The offender may be a respected pastor, or a pillar of the community. They may turn on you for raining on the parade. Others on church staff may see you as a threat to their job, as they are dependent on the institution. They will have a monetary incentive to minimize your suffering and make you go away.
In truth, what Hugh Thompson and Lawrence Colburn—the surviving members of the heroic aircrew in Muy Lai—experienced was not unlike what victims of other institutional abuses incur.
Doing the right thing does not guarantee a reward
We all won’t be witnesses to an atrocity on the scale of My Lai. But a lot of us have known—or will know—a victim of abuse who came forward, whose abuser was/is someone of high regard.
It could be a church or parachurch setting (Willow Creek, Ravi Zacharias, Gateway Church/#churchtoo), a corporate setting (entertainment industry/#metoo), or an athletic setting (USA Gymnastics, Penn State, University of Michigan). In every case, victims who tried to report were railroaded, stonewalled, and even maligned. And, as Rachael Denhollander’s case against Larry Nassar showed, they could not always trust law enforcement—not even the FBI—to do their jobs.
Even worse, I witnessed, firsthand, the blowback that many of the victims incurred. Lori Anne Thompson—a victim of Ravi Zacharias—was dragged through the mud, and Christianity Today was complicit in that.
And while Lori Anne Thompson and Rachael Denhollander—and other victims of Ravi Zacharias and Larry Nassar—were vindicated, I can also attest that they are the exception to the rule. I know victims who, today, are persona non grata in their own families. I know incest victims whose families abandoned them for telling on their fathers or uncles. I’ve seen churches vilify victims who came forward.
Just as with Hugh Thompson and Lori Anne Thompson, telling the hard truth in these situations will carry blowback. And if you advocate for them, you will also take a lot of heat.
If you’re looking for approval or awards, forget it. Doing the right thing is its own reward. Even those who do get vindicated, with few exceptions they will lose far more than they materially gain. You must resolve for yourself what that means to you. If you are a Christian, you should care about what I call the Final Analysis, that great judgement day where God settles all accounts decisively.
But not everyone reading this has such orientation. Even then, you can still act with moral agency. Ravi Zacharias would likely have gone uncontested if not for the dogged, hard work of Steve Baughman, an atheist attorney who unceasingly told the truth about Ravi to a Christian world that didn’t want to listen.
Beware who your real friends are
In the Ravi Zacharias case, it was an atheist lawyer—a very liberal one I might add—who did Christians the greatest service. The investigators at Christianity Today (who have since reversed course) gave Ravi a pass at every turn, even allowing him to smear Lori Anne Thompson after he paid money to settle his own lawsuit!
Steve Baughman was not popular among Christian conservatives. Nor was Lori Anne Thompson for that matter. I personally witnessed the scorn and derision that Lori Anne received from people who should have been on her side.
Likewise, Hugh Thompson did not receive a lot of support for his actions in My Lai or his reporting of the atrocities. The very people who should have been on his side were heavily against him.
Like Lori Anne, Hugh Thompson’s best support came from outside those systems.
Sometimes, your best allies are going to be those who do not necessarily share your ideological orientation.
(This is because they are not beholden to the system whose leaders—while being in your religious or political camp—have a vested interest in protecting the institution.)
The Long Game is important
It would be more than 30 years before Hugh Thompson and Lawrence Colburn were recognized as heroes for their actions. Their teammate—Glenn Andreotta—would not live to see the day, as he was killed in action in Vietnam.
In the intervening years, they were reviled, threatened, and largely dismissed in the court of public opinion. Thompson would suffer greatly from the trauma and rejection. It would take decades for the public to recognize them.
In 1998, he was awarded the Soldier’s Medal, which is the highest award possible for a Soldier that doesn’t involve contact with the enemy.
(Personally, I think they should categorize the perps of the massacre as the enemy, and upgrade Thompson and his crew posthumously to the Medal of Honor.)
Ravi Zacharias had many victims over the years, from Shirley Steward—whom he coerced into having an abortion in 1973—to several massage therapists, to Lori Anne Thompson. In their investigation of Ravi Zacharias, Miller and Martin found one case that legally qualified as rape. Those victims would not see vindication until after Ravi was dead.
In the Baptist world, Christa Brown—who was sexually abused by her youth pastor in her teen years—is still incurring blowback from the Southern Baptist Convention more than 50 years later, even as she brings the receipts and as other victims of the institution come forward.
Today, we recognize Thompson and his crew for their heroism, but in the 1970s they were reviled and hated. At least one Congressman sought to have Thompson court-martialed.
During World War II, a prominent Italian cyclist—Gino Bartali—was known for his training rides, even while the big races were on hold due to the war. For many years, Bartali, at great risk to his life, would carry falsified ID papers to a Catholic priest, who would then use them to help smuggle Jews out of the occupied zones and into safety.
It would be decades before Bartali’s actions would become known, as he remained secretive about it over the years. Today, he is more than a great cyclist who once won the Tour de France; he is also Yad Vashem: Righteous Among the Nations.
Bartali, a belligerent, mercurial cyclist who had a reputation for being surly, was—in truth—a bona fide hero who, for most of his life, even after the war, kept his wartime exploits secret.
Beware The Narrative
Ovet the years, I’ve learned that, whenever I hear a story about “police officer shoots unarmed man”, we need to wait for the evidence.
Sometimes, it’s a case of officer brutality, and that brutality may be racially driven.
Sometimes, it’s a media Narrative™️ that’s designed to spin a racial component to a legitimate officer use of deadly force.
Sometimes, the case might be unresolvable, as the evidence is simply not complete. We tend to forget that, in this era of bodycams and cell phone videos, that such technology was nonexistent until the late 2000s.
Nowadays, police officers are increasingly wearing bodycams. This is a good development: bodycams acquit the innocent and convict the guilty. Cell phone videos are also effective. Today, we let the bodycam give us the story. And if an officer doesn’t have that bodycam turned on, we are rightfully suspicious.
Sometimes, such as with the Trayvon Martin shooting, there is no corroboration. George Zimmerman walked due to a lack of supporting evidence: no cameras, no audio, no eyewitness accounts that definitely show us who escalated the conflict. (A “not guilty” verdict is not an affirmation of character; it merely acknowledges that the evidence doesn’t support a conviction.)
But a lot of times, even if we don’t have an audio/visual evidentiary trail, we still have plenty of corroboration. And it may be our job to look for it when the institution gives us the Narrative™️. Gateway Church is a recent example.
When Cindy Clemishire e-mailed Robert Morris to seek compensation for his sexual abuses of her, the elders bought the Narrative™️ and didn’t bother to check for corroboration, as Cindy had plenty of it. It was their responsibility to look, and they chose not to. Today, that Narrative™️ is dead, Robert Morris is gone, and the elders are in very hot water.
In the aftermath of My Lai, the Narrative™️ from our government was that the story was all being driven by anti-war supporters who wanted the Communists to win. Seymour Hersh was seen as a rabble rouser. The powers that were cast Thompson and his crew as stooges for the anti-war movement.
The problem? The evidence shot down that Narrative™️. Thompson and Colburn saw what they saw. And other helicopter crews corroborated that. And even the words of the Soldiers on the ground unwittingly corroborated it.
But it took decades before the public would repudiate the Narrative™️.
What I’m getting at: beware what you hear from the institution coming out of the gate. Wait for the evidence.
But most importantly, as Reagan famously said, “Never be afraid to see what you see.”