The My Lai Massacre: A Crime of Obedience ?

-March 16, 1968-crime of obedience-rapes, tortures, killings of innocents

-begin with orders: vague, rarely survive with clarity from transition down

-commander Medina, Mexican, upwardly moble, wanted army career; eager; "Mad Dog Medina" -Wiliam L Calley; admired Medina; claimed "i'm the boys" ; platoon leader

-under Lt Col Frank Barke's command

-unclear that he ordered the killing of civilians-definitely didn't specify what do do with civilians

Calley-orginally charged with 109 killings, convicted for 22; only one convicted for My Lai Crimes

1. warfare, subjecto to limits and rescissions including the inadmissibility of killing unarmed noncombatants or disarmed prisoners 2.

Orders; subordinate is included to follow orders unless act is beyond the scope of authority or a person of ordinary understanding would know act is illegal or carries out act in a wanton manner

-other ordinary men thought it was unreasonable to kill innocents and those who kept going anyways showed great stress

-after massacre My Lai people had lunch with soldiers

nickanme reflecting the villagers' reputed communist sympathies

-indiscriminate, ruthelss, systematic mass violence carried out by military or paramiliarty personnel while engaged in officially sanctioned campaingns, the victims of which are defenseless and unresisting civilian,s including old men, women and children

contexttarget

-explicitly or implicity genocidal: designed to destroy all or part of a category of people defined in ethnic, national, racial, religious or other terms -extermination, pacification

no evidence of specific genocidal intent

-tagets have not themselves threatened or engaged in hostile actions toward perpetrators of violence ;often defenseless civilians

-cannot be explained by psychological forces

authorization routinizationdehumanization

-situation becomes so defined that the individual is absolved of the responsibility to make personal moral choices -acts of violence explicitly ordered, implicitly encouraged, tacitly approved, permitted by legitimate authorities -people respond to role obligations rather than personal preferences; can openly disobey only by challenging the legitimacy of authority

-acts become so organized there is no opportunity for raising moral questions -reduces necessity of making decisions, minimizes the occasions in which moral questions may arise-makes easier to avoid the implications of the action since the actor focuses on detail of job and not meaning -use of euphemisms avoids true meaning of killing

-actors' attitudes toward the target and themselves become os structures that it is neither necessary nor possible for them to view the relationship in moral terms -victims are derived of identity (standing as independent, distinctive individuals capable of making choices and entitled to live their own lives) and community (fellow membership in an interconnected network of individuals who care for each other)