A Word on the Calley Case
Bromwich, David
EVERY AGE has its public drama, a scene jarred loose of context which illuminates that longer, impassive flow of events that leaves most people happily unconcerned. From the first it should...
...The trial is the culmination of a war that has rotted and decayed our nation severely...
...judgment on every possibility, confusing "is" with "ought"—and that so long as we go on clamoring for heads there is the chance of setting a precedent...
...There is no talk about a stab in the back or anything of the sort...
...Yet perhaps there is a danger of being too easily satisfied...
...In all this, it should be plain that the court-martial of Lieutenant Calley has brought the war home more forcibly than radicals ever could have hoped to do...
...And yet the public reaction to Hersh's story was deceptively placid...
...It is rather on a level with that sentiment that announces its distrust for all politicians and then produces votes for George Wallace, as one who speaks his mind...
...Calley is the little guy being handed a bum rap by the Army brass, who naturally want to cover up their own side of the show...
...One further point may be worth mentioning...
...The war has done incalculable harm to this nation, and the further prosecution of war criminals may be one way, though hardly the most direct or efficient, of assuaging the wound...
...For in order to defend him on moral grounds it would be necessary to feel a certain sympathy for the man, and that it is not possible to do...
...They are saying this in Kansas...
...About any such retort I must say that I remain skeptical in a "practical" way, but not on principle...
...That he did have an important share in the slaughter, however, makes all the difference...
...So the change of mood could not be gradual...
...At any rate, those who say that Calley has been made the scapegoat certainly have a point...
...Calley spoke his mind—he followed orders...
...From the first it should have been apparent that the My Lai massacre would become just such a drama for all of us...
...Of course, this kind of feeling isn't unhealthy— it is "typically American"—but it is not in any sense pre- or proto-radical...
...Straight off, the moral problem was complicated by the fixing of blame, arbitrarily, half-way down the chain of command...
...EVERY AGE has its public drama, a scene jarred loose of context which illuminates that longer, impassive flow of events that leaves most people happily unconcerned...
...It is often feared that as we wind down the war a "stab-in-the-back" myth will gain currency, as the logical focus of a national sense of frustration...
...And for that reason he is not so much respected as trusted...
...But they do not see the situation as it is, For there can be little hope of appropriating the pro-Calley sentiment for left-wing purposes, looking toward the eventual trial and conviction of Westmoreland et al...
...The outrage was sounding peculiarly without object, and it must therefore have been all the more painful...
...Here, I am afraid, the radical defense of Calley runs aground, for if the moral basis of the prosecution is once forgotten then the chain-of-command notion is left in charge, and only a very few can be guilty...
...This may yet happen, but one odd feature of the public reaction to Calley is that it has nothing to do with the antiwar movement...
...There are leftists who defend Calley as the circumstantial victim of some much wider ambit of guilt, and no doubt their instinct is right...
...A resolution of the Kansas state legislature says that we all "share this guilt to the degree that we have permitted our leaders to lead us into this war...
...Something had to come between the man who couldn't bear to kill a reindeer and the man who slaughtered untold numbers of Vietnamese, and what came between was the Army...
...Why is it necessary for Fidel Castro to continue to change so blindly the image of a revolution that was so dear to us...
...It might be objected, for example, that this is arguing moral from fact —turning the existing state of affairs into a Inevitable...
...DISSENT readers will recall the study on Cuba and its failures which appeared in our September-October 1970 issue and was written by Rene Dumont, renowned agricultural expert and original sympathizer of the Castroite revolution...
...Where jingoism ought to come into play, there is only a feeling of unbearable sadness...
...Granted that the war in Vietnam ranks among the more formidable atrocities of a century rich in barbarous acts, still, when has the punishment for such crimes been exacted from those who enforced the will of a nation not at last fully defeated and humiliated...
...One is almost tempted to cry out "only in a democracy," but such a happy rebound, in the face of all the bloodshed, might smack of something worse than complacency...
...Where reaction of another kind has its first real chance, it is not even putting in an appearance...
...Now that the verdict has been delivered and shock waves have been sent reverberating through the nation, we can begin to see the significance of the case...
...But at the time nobody much bothered about it...
...So much is obvious, and leads to a well-worn and quite sensible observation...
...He has gotten one of his highest functionaries, after two years of imprisonment, to confess to having been an agent of the CIA and to having passed along information to another `agent' none other than our friend Professor Rene Dumont...
...it was sudden and absolute...
...he is comprehensible...
...JEAN DANIEL, Editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, in the issue dated March 8, 1971 P.S...
...The gradations of guilt and innocence must surely be finer than that: one should bear this in mind with respect to future war crimes tribunals as well...
...I think that a good part of the sentiment COMMENTS AND OPINIONS lined up with Calley has to be understood as a perversion of rooting for the underdog...
Vol. 18 • August 1971 • No. 4
