This article was originally published in The Abolitionist: A Publication of the Radical Libertarian Alliance Vol. II, No. 4, July 1971, pp. 6-7. I wrote it under the pseudonym Robert Giley.
by Robert Giley
Conservatives, fascists, Randians, and other Consciousness I types are hero worshipers. They like to hear of heroic exploits. They believe in valor even when it doesn’t exist. They manufacture heroes. Carefully screened government apologists are sent to the moon and come back certified champions. That is what these people like. What they don’t like is to hear about how miserable life is for many people. They are fed up with the news media reporting uninspiring events. So detached from reality are they that they blame the media for creating the events.
From the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 to the recent invasion of Laos, the press and TV news shows have been blamed for trying to make trouble.
These Consciousness I people, championed by Spiro Agnew, like to be told how great America is, how noble it is, how honorable. They think the only thing wrong with America is that some people don’t appreciated how great it is. It is no wonder they hate the press for reporting the news when the news proves the contrary.
The My Lai massacre is a fact they refuse to face. It is hard to find anything beautiful, noble, or heroic about it. Lt. Calley has complained that his conviction stripped him of his honor. It may also strip these American hero worshipers of their carefully nurtured illusions. But first they have to accept the verdict (if not the sentence). And judging by the volume of letters and telegrams sent to the President after the verdict, and Nixon’s subsequent actions, they have not accepted it. They are even trying to make a hero out of Lt. Calley. He has his own song “The Ballad of Lt. Calley.” It will go on their record racks alongside “Everything Is Beautiful” and “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” I have even seen a poster reading “Calley for Secretary of Defense,” but I don’t think Calley is ready for the job yet, he hasn’t killed enough. He needs more experience. After all, the Secretary of Defense doesn’t slaughter mere handfuls, he slaughters thousands. Calley does show promise though. The tactic he so painstakingly executed at My Lai is the only final solution to the problem of communism in Vietnam. None of the people he slaughtered will have to suffer under a communist dictatorship. The only way to free the Vietnamese people from the threat of communism is kill them all. As long as one lives, there is the possibility that he will become a communist. But if Calley was merely following orders, as he claims, he doesn’t deserve credit for the idea, only for its implementation. He won’t be qualified for Secretary of Defense until he can think of such stratagems by himself.
The Secretary of Defense should be regarded as a greater murderer than Lt. Calley and so should the President and so too, many of the pilots who drop bombs on the Vietnamese people. They should all be considered responsible for their crimes and kept from committing more. Millions of Americans have protested in one way or another that Lt. Calley should not be blamed for all their crimes and all the crimes of the army. But the fact is, no one is blaming Calley for all those crimes! He is being blamed for murdering 22 Vietnamese civilians. If he is dishonored and disgraced, that is as it should be. If the Secretary of Defense and the President and other murderers are not dishonored and disgraced it is too bad. Perhaps someday Americans will overcome their irrational and unjustified reverence for those who wield power and we can have more complete justice. But in the meantime let’s not make a hero out of Lt. Calley.
Lt. Calley is no hero, he is a murderer. The fact that he is also a scapegoat does not change the verdict.
For various reasons many people who think no punishment would be too much for Charles Manson refuse to term Calley a murderer, even after his trial and conviction. A key issue in the Calley controversy is obedience to authority. If Calley was merely following the orders of his superior officers, then, some people claim, he is not responsible for the murders. This should make the survivors of the massacre happy to know. It wasn’t anything personal. Calley had nothing against them. It wasn’t his idea. The victims would be relieved if they knew that Calley didn’t shoot them because of anything they did. Presumably, Calley would have killed anyone he was ordered to kill, regardless of race, color, or creed. Should such a man be allowed to run free? Rather than being an argument in favor of freedom for Calley, this turns out to be the strongest reason for locking him up! He is admittedly unable to think for himself. He is an automaton, a machine, whose function is to kill people. He is the ideal defender of the State, the perfect G.I.! It is no wonder that the Commander-in-Chief wants to intervene. He wants to secure the safety of one of his agents. It is like having Charles Manson judge his alleged entranced girlfriends, or worse, like having Hitler judge Eichman.
It has always seemed to me that proving a defendant was not mentally or emotionally able to realize the immorality of the crime he committed makes the strongest case for locking him up. If Calley can’t judge the morality of his orders, if he is only an irresponsible boy and not accountable for his actions, he shouldn’t be given a gun! He shouldn’t be allowed out by himself!
The verdict in the Calley case substantiates the position held by conscientious objectors. People have to be judged by their actions. Even a G.I. is still an individual with a mind of his own and a will of his own. He is responsible for what he does, even if he is acting as an agent for someone else.
Some people attempt to justify the My Lai slaughter on the grounds that the victims, or some of them at least, were combatants. Even though they weren’t armed, they were potentially dangerous. True perhaps, but irrelevant. Since when is it acceptable procedure to slaughter prisoners of war, even if they are combatants?! When American soldiers in Korea were captured and shot during the Korean war, the American public was outraged. Has something changed the moral law since then? If so, then what should the North Vietnamese do with the captured American pilots who have bombed and murdered them by the score?! In their blind nationalism, the same Americans who think Calley did the right thing also think the North Vietnamese have been treating American POWs too harshly!
Bleeding heart liberals have gotten into the act too, defending Calley in their own foggy way. They say the whole nation is guilty. We are all sinners. Our society is responsible. They say we are all guilty for the My Lai massacre. This assertion seems to me to be obviously false. But if they are serious, we each deserve a trial and a chance to refute whatever evidence these liberal, confessed murderers may have against us. In any case, it does not get Calley off the hook. He has had his trial and has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that Calley was part of a criminal conspiracy (the U.S. government) does not make him less guilty.
I suppose what these guilt-ridden social democrats have in mind, if anything, is the old myth about the government being of the people, by the people, and for the people. If the government and the army represent the people and are, in truth, agents of the people, then the people share in the guilt for the My Lai murders.
But it is up to the accuser to prove that we are guilty, and I don’t think they have much of a case against the majority of us. Most of us are not part of the government, and the government cannot prove that it represents us or acts, in any way, as our authorized agents. They cannot prove that we voluntarily agreed to let them do what they do. They cannot pass the buck to us.
Another contention of the guilt-ridden liberals is that Calley is all of us. He is what we made him, he represents the sickness of our society. We brainwashed him and trained him to kill. Therefore, we are morally responsible for what he did. Maybe many Americans do identify with Calley, and maybe they would have done the same thing at My Lai if they were ordered to. Much of the American public seems to have had their brains washed, as their defense of the My Lai slaughter shows. If Calley and others are being brainwashed of their humanity and taught to kill innocent civilians, they deserve to be pitied. But pity for the inhumane becomes a luxury as the inhumane become the majority. Though you may pity a mad dog, it is more important to keep away from him. And what of the people who are the corrupters? They must be found and dealt with. They must be relieved of their power over captive, weaker wills. They are guilty of conspiring to commit murders and other particular crimes. The liberals are wrong when they say we are all responsible. Such charges only obscure the issues and prolong the problem. Different people are guilty of different crimes. Some people are guilty of no crimes, and society or the nation as a whole doesn’t exist and cannot be brought to trial.
Lt. Calley is by no means the only one guilty of war crimes, and if he now understands that the government cannot confer on him the right to commit murder, then I think he should be let free, rather than be singled out for punishment, but the record should stand that Calley was a murderer and not a hero, and the chain of command responsible for the order constitutes a criminal organization.
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