Word: calley
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...tempting to view all this with some amusement, to watch the government and the military screwing each other while each seeks to maximize good results and minimize embarrassment. But there has been some serious reflection over this case, and the huge public reaction to Calley's conviction demands notice...
...Calley is a simple sort of soldier, from a working-class family and not too bright. Most American families who think the ADA is some sort of weed-killer know someone personally very much like Calley. News reports about "ground fire at Fire-base Six" and antiwar slogans about napalm can seem quite divorced from everyday realities of American life, but Calley is someone to identify with...
...spite of the loud antiwar demonstrations of past years, an appalling ignorance of the nature of the Vietnam war is widespread. Until the Calley trial, many people didn't know what a Free Fire Zone was, didn't know that it is calculated American policy to kill anything that moved. Calley's trial gave the needed personal tie to the war for many Americans to take an interest in what is going on. Why, they ask, is Calley being prosecuted for doing what any good soldier in his position would...
...course, their first reaction, as the bumper stickers point out, is to say that war is necessarily brutal, that murder in war is not murder, that women and children are still "the enemy." Calley, then, becomes the victim of an ungrateful government...
...what to do then with Capt. Medina? -who says that the entire country shares the guilt with Calley since "he and I did not dictate policy in Vietnam." The policy is the crime, a point obvious to Medina and Calley, and through them, a point made apparent to the people who sympathize with the soldiers' duty...