Wednesday July 5: Representing a Massacre and the Lessons of War

Despite the remarkable resilience of the Vietnamese today, it seems that we can never get too far from the painful history of war, and especially the war with America. The My Lai massacre has become infamous worldwide as a terrible example of the horrors of war and inexcusable and unexplainable evil. As we traveled from the Central Region along the coast to the Central Highlands, we visited the site of the massacre, where American GIs slaughtered 500 residents of the cluster of hamlets, primarily women, children, and the elderly. The operation had been designated a “search and destroy” mission to eliminate the Viet Kong from the villages and “neutralize” the area once and for all. When the soldiers landed on that Saturday morning, March 16, 1968, they quickly discovered that there were no armed soldiers in the area at all; somehow they had all escaped. Yet, frustrated with months of casualties without any real enemy to shoot back at, the Americans vented their fury with a vengeance, carrying out their “search and destroy” instructions to the letter, rounding up packs of old, crippled, young, infant, and pregnant residents, bringing them to irrigation ditches and road intersections, and executing them en masse.
The site was moving, to say the least. I bought a copy of “Four Hours at Mai Le” to read before we visited, so by the time we arrived, I was sort of sick from reading about American atrocities. Page after page was a litany of American crimes. My older readers (ie those alive during the war) probably remember this story vividly, and most likely have quite a different memory of what happened their. I’d be extremely interested in learning what the reaction was like in America at the time the story broke, in an atmosphere filled with both war protestors and troop supporters. From what I understand, there was never really any particular sympathy for the actual lives of either North or South Vietnamese army or civilians beyond the propaganda power for protestors to point to casualty counts. For us, the war is called a lost of American innocence, and as we mourn that tragedy, it seems that the much bigger loss here is somewhat forgotten.
However, the way the Vietnamese government has constructed the memorial and reconstructed the village at My Lai, along with the script our local guide had to read for us really made me sort of cynical, looking for ways to defend what the Americans did. The mock-up of the village is complete with slain concrete animals, entrails and all. There is unquestionable power in the irrigation ditch where GIs slaughtered hundreds of women and children. The mass graves that my country’s troops are responsible for speak volumes. The memoirs of entire families wiped out are enough to make the most hardened veteran cringe or cry. Defacing it all with captions about “the evil, terrible Americans,” the “sweet, peace-loving, innocent villagers,” and “the entirely unimaginable and unprovoked raid” takes away so much of that power.
History, after all, is not so black and white. The “peace-loving” village had been the site of hostile fire for weeks leading up to the attack. Yes, the soldiers had vanished before the raid, but to say that they were never there is just a lie. As the lies add up, the memorial lost a lot of credibility for me. This is unfortunate, because as I read my book, I realized that there was very little in the way of a real defense for American actions. The particular day of the massacre, there really wasn’t any enemy fire and women and children were gathered into small groups before being shot. The rapes that accompanied the killing can’t begin to be justified in any situation. Even more disturbing was the way the political process played out to shield the accused from suffering any real punishment. Nixon was so desperate to maintain his image that he robbed our country of moral credibility that cannot be restored.
What would have happened if the South Vietnamese had won the war? Certainly there would not be a My Lai reconstruction. Perhaps, instead there would be a memorial in Hue to the 3000 civilians massacred by the Viet Kong out of frustration similar to that of the Americans unable to determine who was on the “right” side. War’s winners definitely get to write the story of choice. I certainly was not proud to represent America at the sight of the massacre, but I think what I came away with more than anger at our country was anger at war in general and its enormous costs, ordered almost callously by politicians who never see a front line.
I guess more importantly though, would be to question what we (the US) are doing now. (The question can certainly be asked to many countries other than the US, but let’s start at home where we have even a tiny bit of input with our vote). In just over three months now, I have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, the Killing Fields in Cambodia, and now this massacre site in Vietnam, and every time I shake my head and ask “What type of person could commit such a hideous travesty?” Why do we keep doing this? What’s going on in Iraq? The prison scandals are disturbingly similar to what we condemned the Northern Vietnamese for during the war. And at Guantanemo Bay, we are holding uncharged foreigners in small wire cages. Have we lost sight of what our actual goal is? Was there ever a clearly defined goal? How can we stop it all? Maybe when we can answer those questions, we’ll have some insight into genocides in other countries. The night of our visit we stayed in Quang Ngai, a major war city that was completely destroyed during the war. It was rebuilt with Soviet assistance into a hideously ugly industrial city with not much going for it. The dreary town was just depressing. We stayed in the skeleton of a once grand hotel, now moldy and musty,huge and empty. The whole night was sort of eery. We tried swimming in the pool but quickly came out after it felt like we were in a slimy soup. The karaoke rooms were dark and dreary. One man was singing alone. Eventually we just entertained ourselves with the odd art on the hotel walls and chalked the city up to the scars of war.