http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/04/28/isn-t-it-about-time-to-learn-the-lessons
April 28th, 2010
Gary G. Kohls, MD
Forty-two years ago this week, on March 16,1968, a company of green,
battle-untested US Army combat soldiers from the Americal Division,
swept into the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, rounded up the 500+
unarmed residents, all unarmed women, children and old men, and
efficiently executed them in cold blood, Nazi-style. No weapons or
Viet Cong soldiers were found in the village, and the whole operation
took only 4 hours.
Although there was a serious attempt to cover-up this operation
(which involved a young up-and-coming US Army Major named Colin
Powell), those who participated in this "business-as-usual" war zone
event did not deny the details of the slaughter when the case came to
trial several years later. But the story did eventually filter back
to the Western news media, thanks to a couple of courageous
eye-witnesses whose consciences were still intact. An Army
court-marital trial eventually convened against a handful of the
soldiers, including Lt. William Calley and Company C commanding
officer, Ernest Medina.
According to many of the soldiers in Company C, Medina had ordered
the killing of "every living thing in My Lai," which included all the
noncombatants living there and their farm animals. Calley was charged
with the murder of 109 civilians. In his defense statement he stated
that he had been taught to hate all Vietnamese, even children, who,
he had been told, "were very good at planting mines."
The end result of the raid, part of a mission called Task Force
Barker, had been recorded by military photographers, but the Army
still tried to cover it up. The trials were conducted in censored
military courts with juries of Army officers who had no legal
credentials to try war crimes. These "courts" eventually dropped the
charges against all the soldiers involved, or acquitted them (as is
typical in such cases) except for Calley. Medina and all the other
shooters of the 500 dead Vietnamese went free. Calley was convicted
of the murders of "at least 20 civilians." He was sentenced to life
imprisonment for his crime, but, under pressure from patriotic
pro-war Americans, President Nixon pardoned him within weeks of the verdict.
The trial stimulated a lot of interest because it occurred during the
rising outcry of millions of Americans against the war that was
acknowledged by fair-minded observers as an "overwhelming atrocity."
Many ethical Americans were sick of the killing and the economic
costs. However, 79% of Americans who were polled strenuously objected
to Calley's conviction. Some veteran's groups even voiced the opinion
that instead of condemnation, he should have received the
Congressional Medal of Honor for killing "commie gooks."
Just like the Jewish Holocaust of World War II, the realities of My
Lai deserve to be revisited so that perhaps it will happen "never
again." The Vietnam War was an excruciating time for conscientious
Americans because of the numerous moral issues surrounding the mass
slaughter in a war that physically killed 58,000 American soldiers,
physically wounded hundreds of thousands more, spiritually wounded
millions of soldiers and psychologically traumatized countless others
on both sides of the conflict. People of conscience were sick of the
war that killed 3 million Vietnamese, most of them innocent and
unarmed civilians, making those deaths international war crimes and
crimes against humanity, punishable in the International Court at The Hague.
Of course the Vietnam War was much worse for the farm families of
that doomed land than it was for the American soldiers. The
Vietnamese people were victims of decades of invading armies
consisting of brutal, trigger-happy adolescents from foreign lands
who were taught, in the case of France and the United States, that
the "little yellow people" were pitiful sub-humans who thus deserved
to be killed - with some soldiers preferring to inflict torture
first. "Shoot first and ask questions later" is, all too often,
standard operating procedure for frightened military combat units,
and it is that fear that motivates the killing of every soldier of
every era, of every political persuasion, especially in jungle warfare.
Many Vietnam veterans have told me that there were scores, maybe
hundreds, of smaller My Lai-type massacres in that futile war. Not
surprisingly, the Pentagon has consistently refused to acknowledge
that reality. Execution-style killings and the torture of suspected
"insurgents" were as common in that war as it continues to be in
current wars. Many combat units "took no prisoners" (a euphemism for
murdering captives, rather than having to follow the nuisance Geneva
Conventions which require humane treatment for prisoners of war). The
only unusual thing about the My Lai Massacre was that it was found
out, despite the shameful attempted Pentagon cover-up.
Very few soldiers or their commanding officers have ever been
punished for the many war crimes that have occurred in the dense "fog
of war." Those in charge of giving the orders thought that the
killing and torturing of innocent civilians during war-time had to be
done "to save lives.". The euphemism used for the killing of
civilians is "collateral damage." "Stuff happens" in the battlefield
was another euphemism for collateral damage used by the lamentable
ex-US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Water-boarding, the infamous torture technique we all know about now
and a recognized international war crime - was aggressively
employed in Viet Nam. The "stuff that happened" to the
indiscriminately imprisoned and frequently falsely charged "suspects"
at Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay is nothing new.
Those who plan wars, profit from them, send their unaware sons or
daughters into war or otherwise participate in war, yet also profess
to be Christian, have a huge moral problem. Professed Christians must
have to studiously ignore the ethics of Jesus as summarized in the
Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6 and 7 and Luke 6) and Matthew
25:31-46. Such war supporters have to explicitly reject what their
religion's namesake repeatedly taught about the issue of homicidal
violence. Jesus says, in so many words: "violence is forbidden for
those who wish to follow me". And of course, what is equally
blasphemous is the fact that pro-war Christians also have to reject
Jesus' Golden Rule command to "do onto others as you would have them
do unto you."
The rejection of the Way of Jesus includes the rejection of his clear
teachings on how his followers are to treat the neighbor, the
stranger, the hungry, the naked, the captive, the enemy and all
humans who are in need of mercy and understanding. In order to
participate in the legal homicide that takes place in all wars, the
followers of Jesus have to not only reject those teachings but also
have to ignore (or mis-apply) the principles of the Just War Theory
of Augustine (which first appeared 3 centuries after Jesus' death).
There is no ethical way for the follower of the nonviolent Jesus to
participate in or support the indiscriminate mass slaughter of modern
war, even if utilizing the Just War Principles. The follower must
choose between two irreconcilable realities homicidal violence or
nonviolence.
The whole issue of the justification of war, with its inherent
atrocities, never seems to be thoroughly examined, either by those
giving the orders or by those who are the ones that will be pulling
the triggers. Full understanding of the realities of war and its
spiritual, psychological and economic consequences for the
perpetrators (and their victims) is rarely attempted, even for church
leaders who have been taught the Just War Theory. If we who are
non-soldiers ever truly experienced the horrors of combat and then
simply applied the Just War Principles, the effort to abolish war
would be a priority (although we would still be opposed by the
current crop of "Chicken Hawk" warmongers in both the the Bush and
Obama administrations).
If we truly understood the gruesome realities of war (or simply
comprehended the immorality of spending trillions of dollars on war
and war preparation while hundreds of millions of people are
starving, thirsty and made homeless and jobless) we would refuse to
cooperate with the things that make for war. That, of course,
wouldn't be good for the corporations that profit from war. So those
"merchants of death" try to hide the gruesome realities of war and
instead try, with aggressive propaganda, to make war look glorious or
patriotic, with, for example, sloganeering like "Be All That You Can
Be," flags waving in the background. And the propagandists try to
convince the soon-to-be-childless mothers of doomed, dead or dying
child-soldiers that their loved one had died fighting for God,
Country and Honor instead of for corporations and the control of the
Middle East's oil reserves, opium, the building of permanent US
military bases and Israel's security.
Let's face it. The US's standing army system, continually practicing
and itching for war, has been bankrupting America at the rate of 500
to 700 billion dollars a year - year after year even in times of
so-called "peace." The cost of maintaining one soldier in the current
war zone for one year is $1,000,000! The warmongering spirit of the
Pentagon (not to mention the White House and the Congress) is alive
and well, particularly in those who had wanted to "nuke the gooks" in
Viet Nam and now have a chance to overcome the shame of losing that war.
Un-elected policy-makers of the ChickenHawk persuasion are still in
charge of US war-making foreign policy today, and they have been
solidifying their power with the huge profits made off the deaths,
screams, blood, guts and permanent disabilities of those hood-winked
soldiers who were told that they were "making the world safe for
democracy" when in fact they were making the world safe for predatory
capitalism and obscene profits for the few. And the politicians, most
of whom are well-paid lapdogs for the war profiteers, don't want the
gravy train to be derailed.
Things haven't changed much from the World War II mentality that
conveniently overlooked the monstrous evil that was perpetrated at
Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, a war crime so heinous that the
psychological consequences, immune deficiency disorders and cancers
from that nuclear holocaust are still being experienced in
unimaginable suffering of the Japanese and the exposed American
"atomic veterans" 6 decades later.
Things haven't really changed when one witnesses the political
mentality that allowed the 500,000 deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians
in the aftermath of the first Gulf War or the 1,000,000 civilian
deaths in the current fiasco in Iraq.
So it appears that our military and political leaders haven't really
learned much since My Lai. And it looks like the churches in our
highly militarized, flag-waving nation haven't learned anything
either. The person sitting next to you in the comfortable church pew
may be, like most unaware Americans today, ignorant of the hellish
realities of the war-zone. They are likely to be unaware of the
severe spiritual damage that is likely to happen to their baptized
and confirmed boys and girls who patriotically joined the military to
"avenge 9/11." The person in the pew also may be a blind patriot and
therefore indifferent to the plight of the innocent "others" who are
being targeted by the most lethal and unaffordable collection of
weapons known to mankind. He may even agree, contrary to Jesus' clear
teachings, that some people are less than human, and, therefore
deserve to be killed "for Volk, Fuhrer und Vaterland."
As long as most American citizens continue to glorify war and
militarism and marginalize the peacemakers, and as long as the
American public endorses the current spirit of nationalistic
militarism and exploitive capitalism, and as long as the American
church leadership remains prudently silent (and therefore consenting
to the anti-Christic homicidal violence of war) there will be no
turning away from the influence of the powerful war-mongers and war
profiteers.
Prophets and peacemakers are never valued in militarized nations (or
their churches) when war fever is cunningly orchestrated by the
powers-that-be. Prophets and peacemakers are never asked to give
balancing testimony in the court of public opinion (much less in the
White House). Indeed, the wisdom and warnings of the prophetic voices
are pointedly ignored. No Secretary of Peace sits on the President's
cabinet. When, after being consistently ignored, conscientious
objectors to war and killing raise the decibel level of their
warnings, they are shuffled off to obscure "free speech zones",
threatened with police violence, pepper-sprayed, beaten, arrested,
tried, fined and/or imprisoned (rarely are they acquitted like
commonly happens to soldiers accused of the murder of civilians in
military tribunals).
As long as we allow ourselves to be misled by unapologetic and
merciless war-makers and their wealthy elite (who are conveniently
exempted, along with their children, from military service) and as
long as the nuclear giants and ethical infants on Wall Street and in
the nation's capital continue to be corrupted by the big money
bribes, there is no chance America or the world will ever achieve a
meaningful peace.
And as long as America's Christian leaders and their followers do not
reject war and violence, as Jesus surely would have had them do,
humanity will be condemned to future wars, poverty, pestilence and
starvation and the planet will become increasingly unlivable and life
on the planet will become increasingly unendurable.
And unless America stops the carnage, fully repents and then
compensates its victims for the damage done, its turn as a recipient
of retaliatory violence will eventually come (as happens to all
tyrannical empires such as Greece, Rome, Austro-Hungary, Russia,
Britain, Germany and Japan) will eventually come, and it will come
from the foreign and domestic victims that our nation has treated so
shamefully and violently over the past half-century.
Empires that perpetuate international war crimes such as My Lai,
Nagasaki, Fallujah and Abu Ghraib and then deny culpability so as to
avoid punishment will eventually fall, at least partly from internal
rot unless they eventually do what is morally right: admit the
evils that have been done, repent of them and then reconcile with the
victims. At this point the past and current leadership seem incapable
of doing the ethical thing.
--
Dr. Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN who treated many
primary and secondary victims of combat-induced posttraumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) in his holistic mental health practice, severe
illnesses that were totally preventable.
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