Word: lai
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...Lai massacre became part of our national psyche by a number of coincidences: that one honest man--Ron Ridenhour--was troubled enough by reports of what had happened there to write letters and make speeches calling for an investigation: that a courageous and unbelievably persistent reporter--Seymour Hersh--was enterprising enough to see what a three-paragraph press release from the Army might mean and to devote more than a year of his life to tracking down that meaning: that an Army photographer had saved color photographs of the killing which could burn the truth of the reports into...
...elevation of My Lai from routine to scandal to archetype took a decision from the nation, its press and its people. And the massacre became important because it was a human act, one committed by individual human beings with M-16s, bayonets, and grenade launchers, confronting a group of Vietnamese on the ground. Horror though it was, the massacre was more palatable than the real horror of the war, which is the mechanization of slaughter, the progressive removal of any elements of the human will from the act of killing. To confront Charlie Company was to confront a group...
...powers that had created My Lai gladly left Calley to symbolize their way of war. The Army which fights with nauseating gas, white phosphorus, napalm, fragmentation bombs, and dum-dum bullets tried and convicted Calley. Medina was acquitted, Koster was reprimanded, Henderson will get off: Johnson, Rostow, Bundy, and MacNamara are above suspicion. In the center is Rusty Calley...
...life examined, sensitive, sincere...." Sack's editing of the transcript, however, does not make Calley come across as the bright, likeable fellow whom he, perhaps, intended to portray. Calley is confused, tentative, and reluctant to draw any conclusions, to accept or give blame for what happened at My Lai. But he is normal, as intelligent and humorous as the next fellow, and aware. At times, he is even appealing, as when he satirizes the reporters who pursue him, asking him to explain himself in twenty-second film clips: "Lieutenant Calley! Did you really kill all those women and children?" "Lieutenant...
...eloquent enough--nor is the editing skillful enough--to allow the book to serve the only useful purpose it could have. Calley as an individual is not all that important in the story of the Vietnam war: but Sack's book could have helped us grapple with My Lai if it had more definitely killed the Calley mystique, and made it clear that Calley is wholly within the American experience. The book as it stands is still readily susceptible to willful misreadings such as that of Styron, who saw it as further evidence that Calley was a malevolent, unrepentant destroyer...