In this post, I'd like to talk about M. Scott Peck's discussion of the My Lai Massacre in his book, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil.
Wikipedia defines the My Lai Massacre as: "the Vietnam War mass murder
of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16,
1968, by United States Army soldiers of 'Charlie' Company of 1st
Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the America[n]
Division. Most of the victims were women, children, infants, and
elderly people." The American troops did this because they believed
that these South Vietnamese civilians were helping out the Viet-Cong,
which the U.S. was fighting.
To what does Peck attribute this act
of group evil? Peck says that the American soldiers had become
accustomed to bloodshed on account of their experience in war. He
also states that they were under an extreme amount of stress, for they
could be unexpectedly injured or killed by booby-traps, plus the enemy
was hard to find. Peck also notes that the massacre occurred
in 1968, which was before the U.S. military forces in Vietnam consisted
largely of draftees, and so the Americans in the Vietnam War at that
time were mostly people who wanted to be there (the implication perhaps
being that some of them gravitated towards a killing role), or they may
have included people who were sent there because they were
troublemakers. Another consideration is the emphasis on following
orders within the military culture.
But Peck also condemns U.S.
involvement in the Vietnam War in general. He believes that it was
narcissistic, as the U.S. became more deeply involved in order to save
face. Peck also disputes the narrative that we needed to
contain Communism, as if Communism were an expanding empire, for
Communist nations were not monolithic and often acted against one
another. Moreover, the U.S. was disingenuous to criticize
Communism for its repressive regimes, when the U.S. itself supported
oppressive regimes. On a similar note, on pages 286-287 of The Different Drum,
Peck portrays Ho Chi Minh as a nationalist up-riser against colonial
imperialism, and Peck avers that the U.S. pushed Ho Chi Minh into the
arms of Communist Russia by siding with Vietnam's colonizers rather than
Ho Chi Minh's nationalist movement.
Another issue that Peck discusses in his chapter on the My Lai Massacre in People of the Lie
is the avoidance of responsibility. For one, compartmentalization
passes the buck and thus enables people to avoid responsibility, for
it's ambiguous where exactly the buck stops. This is especially the
case in governmental institutions. Second, a number of Americans prior
to 1969 were not invested in the Vietnam War, for they were not paying a
significant amount of taxes to support it, plus not many of the
American forces in the region consisted of draftees, but rather of
volunteers. According to Peck, it was when the draft became
more of a looming force in people's lives that anti-war activism entered
the mainstream. Peck's point may be (and I'm open to correction) that
the American people themselves bore some responsibility for the war in
Vietnam, but certain factors enabled them to avoid recognizing their
responsibility for it.
What are my reactions to Peck's
analysis? First of all, I could identify with Peck's statement that
extreme stress can encourage people to compromise their morality. Peck
talks about when his wisdom teeth were pulled and he was especially
self-centered and temperamental immediately after that experience! It's
a challenge to be considerate to others when one is under stress or in
pain, physically and emotionally. Consequently, I admire people I know
who do not feel well, yet they still manage to be kind. I stand in awe
of that kind of strength.
Second, would I label the
Vietnam War as evil? I don't consider it to be an entirely narcissistic
endeavor on the United States' part, for the U.S. was fighting
Communism, which was a repressive force, and it also sought to assist
South Vietnam's economy. But there were evils that came out of it, the
deaths of Americans and Vietnamese people perhaps being the greatest. I
agree with Peck that we were staying in the Vietnam War for a
questionable reason, namely, to save face. I can understand the
argument that we need for other countries to respect us if we are to
successfully stand up to evil and be a peacekeeper, but I often wonder
if saving face is really worth the cost and sacrifice. In The Different Drum,
Peck says in his discussion about the arms race that someone needs to
be the bigger person and back down (or Peck says something to that
effect, if my recollection is accurate). When I read that, I thought
about Gorbachev, who was willing to dismantle the Communist empire in
Eastern Europe. Gorbachev probably had ulterior motives: he realized
that Russia couldn't continue its involvement in the Cold War and
sustain its economy at the same time. But I admire Gorbachev for being a
big person (which is not to say that I believe that leaders should
always back down).
Third, do I agree with Peck on whether
Communism was a real problem? I don't know. I've long heard the
leftist narrative that we pushed revolutionary forces in other countries
into the Communist camp through our own failure to support them. But
then there are right-wingers who come back and say that some of the
revolutionary leaders made pro-Communist statements before we supposedly
pushed them into the Communist camp. Some attempt to correct me when I
call certain revolutionaries Communists, for they tell me that the
revolutionaries were nationalists, not Communists. Whether they're
entirely correct on this or not, they may be on to something, for I
doubt that people became revolutionaries simply because they desired the
expansion of the Communist empire; rather, there were serious problems
in their country that they wanted to redress. Do I agree with Peck that
Communist nations were at odds with each other? There were
right-wingers who argued that Communist nations also cooperated on
projects. And yet, a significant assumption behind Richard Nixon's
foreign policy was that Communist countries were not necessarily on the
same side, so he could use them against each other in conducting the
Vietnam War.