Calley and the American Conscience

...One of our elected representatives in Washington even suggested that Calley be invited to address a joint session of Congress (one wonders on what subject...

...A second answer draws a different conclusion from the assumption of collective guilt...

...But what if the government upholds the legal order with one hand and undermines it with the other --commanding and sanctioning violations as a matter of policy...

...Calley did kill unarmed, unresisting civilians...

...I have cited elsewhere instances of bombs being dropped deliberately into open fields rather than on villages, of artillery fire being misdirected on purpose, and so forth...

...That answer exonerates Calley by pointing to the nature of war (a demonstrable historic fallacy) or by stipulating a collective guilt--of the Armed Forces or of the American people as a whole...

...We will simply extend our moral and political solidarity to cover not only our political and military leaders but also Calley, who did what he was ordered to do and what many others did who were lucky enough to escape public attention...

...Apparently no measure of demonstrated lack of political judgment, of disastrous policies obstinately pursued, entitles a political or military leader to permanent retirement...

...it was an integral part of a policy ordered and sanctioned by the highest authorities...

...And if the German leaders were guilty of crimes against humanity, as they undoubtedly were, so were the Russian leaders responsible, for instance, for the massacre in the Katyn Forest...

...And of the answers they have given, the most popular one places the moral decay of America in stark relief...

...The Calley case will appear in retrospect as nothing more than a passing ripple on a placid sea...

...for multiple murder has raised with welcome clarity the basic moral issue of the Indochina war...

...The government's moral authority resides in its guardianship of the law...

...He is being treated if not as a hero, then at least as a kind of American Dreyfus, a scapegoat for the sins of others, the victim of political manipulation, a soldier who is innocent or in any event no more guilty than a thousand others who have gone free...

...however, that is the inevitable concomitant of a war waged not against a hostile army but against a whole people...

...Yet beneath the placid surface the war between our collective conscience and our deeds, between what we ought to do and what we are doing, will go on...

...We will then condone or even praise the misdeeds carried out in our name because we do not have the courage to face their full reality and expel those responsible for them from active participation in our affairs...

...Those who put this argument forward must be reminded, however, of the fatal legal flaw in the standards of the war-crimes tribunals: They were imposed by the victors of World War II...

...To understand the moral issue from which this reaction springs--healthy in itself, but unhealthy in the direction it tends to take--let us first remember that Calley has committed murder, premeditated and multiple...

...Meanwhile, some who would like to return to the forefront of public service after having voluntarily retired for other reasons are busy claiming that they were opposed to the Indochina war very early, if not from the outset...

...They should be judged by the same principles that provided the legal standards for the Nuremberg and other war-crimes trials...

...If that were all there was to the case, it could be closed at this point...

...Those who led us into our present morass still lead us today...

...It is the contrast between the judgment of condemnation handed down by the military court in the case of Lieutenant Calley and the judgment of acquittal issued by the court of public opinion every day in the case of our leaders and ourselves that deprives the Calley verdict of moral validity...

...In general terms, a crime is an isolated transgression of the legal order upheld and enforced by the government...

...Demonstrations of solidarity with Calley abound...

...But hardly a trace of determination to settle our moral and political accounts can be found in American public life...

...It is questions like these that trouble the American people...

...In this argument it is Calley's trial rather than Calley's murders that appears as an aberration from the moral and legal norm...

...they were the legal cover for the vengeance wrought by the victors upon the vanquished and consequently are not susceptible to serving as general legal ground rules to be applied by the government of the United States to itself...

...What we would not tolerate in our economic affairs--that leaders responsible for the bankruptcy of their enterprises should continue to make vital economic decisions --we take for granted in our political affairs...

...That will satisfy our desire for order, if not our dedication to morality and law...

...Similarly, if the Supreme Court was right in confirming the death sentence for General Yamashita--a judgment I opposed at the time in correspondence with the dissenting Justices, Frank Murphy and Wiley Rutledge--where would one find a tribunal to judge our leaders, who are much more closely connected with the outrages in Indochina than General Yamashita was with the outrages in the Philippines...

...But Calley's crime was not an isolated violation of the law to be punished accordingly...

...Calley had a choice, and he chose murder...

...For that reason, it will undoubtedly be modified to the point where it is barely distinguishable from acquittal...

...The Calley case will become a milestone on a road which leads to the identification of what we ought to do with what we happen to be doing--that is, to the destruction of moral sensibility altogether...

...In a profound sense, the application of the Nuremberg principles to our performance in Indochina would require the transgressors to judge themselves, to condemn themselves not only for wrong policies but also for the misdeeds flowing from those policies...

...Thus, either what Calley has done is inevitable in war and therefore not worthy of blame, or else because there is something wrong with all of us--or at least with all the military--there is nothing especially wrong with Calley...

...Such an extraordinary feat--a legal judgment rendered by a government and, in a sense, by a society upon itself--requires as a necessary condition a moral and political judgment: placing moral and political responsibility upon the architects of what we have done and arc still doing in Indochina...

...Probably in Hanoi, but no more in Washington than General Yamashita would have found judges in Tokyo to condemn him...

...The facts of the case and of its aftermath are clear: Calley killed unarmed and unresisting civilians, he was found guilty of murder according to the law, and his conviction has been received with a storm of protest in the land...

...Since moral and legal judgments are predicated upon a distinction between the guilty and the innocent, collective guilt renders both impossible...

...If Calley is guilty, the men in the military and political hierarchy who ordered, sanctioned and tolerated his and many similar deeds should also be brought to justice...

...While it is certainly unrealistic to expect a soldier operating under battlefield conditions to thoroughly examine the legality of an order to kill and explicitly reject it, there is always the possibility of sabotaging an unacceptable order...

...More particularly, as I pointed out in America of December 7, 1946, if the German leaders were guilty of conspiring to wage aggressive war, as they undoubtedly were, so were the leaders of France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union in trying to deflect Hitler*s aggression from East to West, and vice versa...

...The public record does not show their opposition, they tell us, only because they preferred to be discreet...

...His argument that he received orders to that effect does not exculpate him...

...That war will end either with the victory of conscience cleansing our public life, or, more likely, with the transformation of conscience into the ideological justification and rationalization of whatever it is we happen to do...

...But Lady Macbeth, pointing her accusing finger at her husband and herself, is an unlikely denouement of the drama...

...If it is itself the principal transgressor, what is its moral authority to punish one man who committed his deeds only upon the orders and with the encouragement and toleration of the government...

...Is it morally right for the accomplices in breaking the law to single out for punishment a relatively low-level officer who happens to stand in the public limelight...

...Since Calley cannot be held responsible for the kind of war being fought in Indochina, how can he be held responsible for actions that are essential to such a war...

...This is perfectly logical in view of our refusal to call those who are responsible for what Calley did to moral and political account...