Dear Editor
Dear Editor Galley Hans J. Morgenthau ("Calley and the American Conscience" NL, April 19) says that Calley should have been neither tried nor convicted, since his crime was "... an integral part...
...To understand why this is so requires a knowledge of what goes on in a school, no...
...T suspect, though, that the dinner he has in mind was the well-publicized one which marked the end of the anti-Pompi-dou campaign following the groundswell of public indignation provoked by the Pompidous' convocation by Judge Patard...
...spoken about and thus assumed to be in effect...
...Colonel Robert B. Rheault, former commander of the Special Forces in Vietnam, says: "Nobody ever had a policy of mowing down women and children...
...Calley is not the first to have been tried for a war crime in Vietnam and perhaps won't be the last, but his trial and conviction will serve as a reminder to our military in Vietnam that war is not an excuse for murder...
...His actions were deliberate, the effects unmistakable and, to a normal man, heartbreaking...
...Face-to-face with unresisting civilians pleading for their lives, he mowed them down, women, children, infants, all...
...If he is really as ignorant as this, and genuinely interested in the subject, he should read French press reports of the exode and contact the Association of French North-African rapatries...
...If his peers, those best able to judge him, cannot excuse his actions, how can anyone...
...As a student of history, de Gaulle surely knew how the British policy of appeasement led to the rise of Hitler and to the destruction of France and Europe...
...It is certainly futile to argue that the moral and political issues do not exist because "Every gi arriving in Vietnam is given a card to keep in his wallet which reads, 'All persons in your hands . . . must be protected ajgainst violence...
...this was blocked by the Anglo-Americans...
...I happen to prefer franker politicians...
...But Calley committed an atrocity...
...It set me up for the day...
...The authors' formula represents no significant change...
...And this is not a product of sinister intentions...
...If Calley's platoon had received one round of fire from Mylai 4, a return of fire would have been called for...
...Sanders quotes Dwight Macdonald against me, unaware of the fact that I have made exactly the same point in the article...
...This is unfortunately true, but it is not the same thing as gathering unresisting people together in groups and methodically machine-gunning them to death...
...Although Calley said during his court-martial, "I thought of them as the enemy," the fact remains that we are not at war with the South Vietnamese population but supposedly are there to protect it from Communist oppression...
...Visich should not oversimplify...
...He confessed to personally killing 22 of these people, among them children and infants...
...Visich's first paragraph...
...Their concern is actually the size of the "principals' pie" and who nets the pieces...
...It would be as rash to accuse de Gaulle or Couve de Murville of working to "destroy" Pompidou (denigration is not destruction) as it would be to accuse Debre of organizing the bazooka plot or another well-known person of supervising Ben Barka's murder...
...This phenomenon, first noted in World War II, is sad but familiar, insensitive but very human...
...It is too early to give a definite judgment of a complex personality like de Gaulle...
...Politicians frequently have dinner with people they dislike...
...People have argued that, since others who have committed atrocities in Vietnam were not convicted, Calley should not be convicted...
...The civil and military circles the young de Gaulle moved in were, if anything, more anti-English than anti-German, and for historical and religious rather than specifically political reasons...
...S. VISICH Ray A tan replies: I fail to see the point of Mr...
...attempt to eliminate the guerrilla base the rural population constitutes through the physical removal of rural Vietnamese civilians...
...For qualitative changes to occur by design and not neglect, they must emanate from a faculty with the authority to institute them...
...That is his right—there is no accounting for tastes...
...The authors haven't done their homework thoroughly on Ocean Hill and Newark...
...British leaders like Clement Attlee announced the dates of their colonial withdrawals well in advance, gave everyone affected fair warning, and in most cases transferred power in a reasonably orderly fashion to more or less representative administrations—even after savage local conflicts and in defiance of their domestic jingoes...
...Thev discuss the selection of principals but say nothing about the principal's role in a school...
...Simone de Beau-voir has told us how her family used to argue over whether Germany or England was France's "eternal enemy...
...Mandating change in a factory is basically a mechanical problem...
...The alienation of de Gaulle should have taken place immediately after World War I, when "France sought security after 1918 by a series of alternatives...
...After all...
...It may produce principals of different skin color and ethnic background, but in carrying out their functions they will not differ from their predecessors...
...But he forgot to mention a significant detail: In the midst of the Delon affair, the Pompidous were de Gaulle's dinner guests at the Elysees...
...Alan is right that the alienation of de Gaulle dates long before the Bahamas Conference...
...In fact, what the authors have to say is hardly about education at all...
...I am grateful to Mr...
...And is it a war waged against a whole people...
...What sometimes happens in such cases is that a senior aide or senior "gorilla" thinks he has read his master's thoughts and takes it upon himself to make the great man happy...
...A principal who really wanted to bring about qualitative change would have to relinquish significant authority to those who are best informed—the teachers...
...Selecting Principals Naomi I.evine and Richard Cohen have written a very strange article ("The Principle of Testing Principals," NL, May 3) about a problem affecting the nature of public education in New York City...
...Similarly, even if people are seen being injured or killed, it is assumed they are Vietcong: Civilians aren't supposed to be there...
...In the 1930s an important section of the French bourgeoisie preferred the Right-wing regimes of Germany and Italy to Anglo-American liberalism...
...The authors* failure to view the selection of principals in its true perspective—as a problem in education—is reflected in their naive assumption that a modification in the present selection procedures will provide better administrators and better schools...
...Naomi Levine and Richard Cohen's formula will not produce such principals, because a principal who receives his mandate from an authority outside his school is not going to cede any significant part of it to a group within the school...
...There is a difference...
...While removal violates the 1949 Geneva Convention—which prohibits "individual and mass forcible transfers . . . regardless of their motive"—and what follows violates the 1907 Hague Convention—whioh prohibits "attack or bombardment...
...I agree with Carroll Quigley, but, here too...
...How can the American public exonerate William L. Calley Jr...
...The faot that de Gaulle was too scared of the French Army to do this suggests that he was a lesser statesman...
...Of his own volition, Calley determined to "waste" the village, giving the order to kill more than 100 individuals...
...What policy does he refer to...
...So, I've heard, do some nonpoliticians...
...Our policy was to protect women and children as much as possible" (Time...
...Are we to assume that because not all offenders are indicted, those who are indicted commitCONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE Dear Editor continued ted no offense...
...ROBERT B. SWIFT First Lieutenant (USAR) Vietnam Veteran De Gaulle It is indeed a journalistic interpretation of history to claim, as Ray Alan does in his reply to Alain A. Chaillet ("Dear Editor," NL, March 8), that de Gaulle caused "chaos and suffering in Algeria" because "he did not give fair warning of his intention...
...But Morgenthau's analysis confuses the issues as much as if he had maintained that premeditated murder is no worse a crime than manslaughter or negligence...
...Wisdom begins when one realizes that mandated changes in a school—changes instituted via directive from the top level to the bottom, the teachers—change nothing...
...We have committed crimes under international law, but these are completely different from and do not imply or excuse Calley's crime...
...Can the unpopularity of this war make a confessed murderer a hero...
...by the highest authorities" and ". . . the inevitable concomitant of a war waged not against a hostile army but against a whole people...
...or merely ignored...
...Mew York Citx SIDNEY WAXLER...
...No form of violence is acceptable...
...Yet no aggressive action was taken against Calley's platoon, and the potential for hostilities was effectively eliminated when the village was secured and the inhabitants searched...
...Or can it be that the victims were mere "gooks," "dinks" or "slopes...
...of towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended"—these acts are still part of a war against the Vietcong, not "against a whole people...
...what the tons of printed matter say goes on...
...Norristown, Pa...
...Obviously, in Alan's mind de Gaulle was working behind the scene to destroy Pompidou...
...But even now I would rather accept the opinions of some outstanding men of our time, such as David Ben Gurion, Walter Lippman and Andre Malraux, than of some journalists...
...Efforts to achieve change in a school through intimidation or administrative prerogatives only lead to the weeding out of the kind of individuality a school requires and the creation of an obedient mediocrity...
...At no time, however, do they explain what is wrong with present administrators, or what could characterize a better school...
...Washington, DC...
...this was prevented by the Anglo-Americans...
...But I must disillusion him...
...in fact, even from only a mile away a U.S...
...A wink is as good as a nod to a gorilla as well as to a blind horse...
...When a village is bombed or fired upon it is because that village presents a threat to American lives...
...an integral part of a policy ordered...
...Visich for that delightful "significant detail" in his second paragraph...
...Destroying from a distance suppresses contemplation of the target...
...As a first choice, it wanted to detach the Rhineland from Germany...
...Neii' York City ALBERT SANDERS Hans J. Morgenthau replies: The point I was making in my article, and which obviously escaped Mr...
...they believe that good principals make good schools and that only the uninformed know what constitutes the "good" in education...
...There can be no excuses of military necessity or carelessness...
...As Dwight Macdonald said in an essay on World War II, "If everyone is guilty, no one is guilty" and...
...Have our morals deteriorated to such a degree that we can condone, in fact commend, the killing of noncombatant old men, women, children, and babies...
...I am not arguing that we should stay in Vietnam a day longer...
...one should not oversimplify...
...What kind of politician would he have been if he did...
...In short, the article is about the politics of principalships...
...What counts is not an abstract instruction like that but the actual practices condoned and frequently ordered by higher authority...
...but he can fairly be criticized if, when he does find out, he contentedly lets matters drift and fails to slap down those responsible...
...Morgenthau apparently refers to the U.S...
...The cause is more complex because teaching is complex...
...As a second choice, France wanted a 'League with teeth,' that is, a League of Nations with an international police force empowered to take automatic and immediate action against an aggressor...
...Most probably de Gaulle shared those views and acted accordingly...
...The master may not be immediately aware of what is being done...
...The weapon of French politicians is the epee, not the blunderbuss...
...Tn so many issues where the French were overruled by the Anglo-Americans, time was to prove that the French position was correct...
...The New York Times News Service conducted a cross-sectional sampling of Army Officers throughout the nation and stated that "Not one of the professionals excused Calley...
...they have been ordered away...
...Is he trying to suggest that General de Gaulle's shilly-shallying in Algeria did not cause chaos and suffering...
...to him they were apparently enjoyable...
...Sanders, is that Calley's conviction is legally justified but raises moral and political issues by far transcending what Calley did...
...Or is he simply eager to proclaim his admiration for politicians who come to power on one policy and put into effect its opposite...
...In a school, it's a human problem...
...It has been mentioned in Calley's defense that innocent civilians are also killed by indiscriminate bombings and artillery strikes...
...These are not the views of a Frenoh historian, but of a distinguished American professor of history, Carroll Quigley, in his Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time...
...airman can't see whether his bombs inflict injury upon civilians...
...Every gi arriving in Vietnam is given a card to keep in his wallet which reads, "All persons in your hands . . . must be protected against violence...
...Nevertheless, I cannot agree with people who regard every aspect of the war as a crime and indict as criminals not only our political leaders but the American population itself...
...I would say that it began long before 1949...
...from that moment on, individual morality and responsibility cease to exist...
...From 30,000 feet a U.S...
...April 12...
...I did not, of course, say that de Gaulle's alienation "began" in 1949...
...They are either absorbed in current practices, where they lose any innovative force they were supposed to have had...
...Alan also says that "a serious effort was being made to link the Pompidous to the Delon affair...
...soldier can't see in real detail (and doesn't care to imagine) what damage his shells are doing...
Vol. 54 • May 1971 • No. 11
