Forty Years On, Memory of My Lai Massacre Raises Parallels

On March 16, 1968, in the midst of the Vietnam War, U.S. soldiers massacred almost 500 villagers in My Lai, Vietnam. The victims were unarmed elderly men, women, and children, slaughtered in an orgy of killing by members of Charlie Company out on a "search and destroy" mission. Charlie Company hadn't come under attack; they simply went looking for Viet Cong fighters, searched My Lai, and then snapped and began killing civilians.

It's hard to understand or explain how soldiers from a modern democracy, which values individual life, could mow down women and children without mercy. Analysts have cited the soldiers' fear of the Viet Cong, their frustration at their inability to find this elusive foe that blended in with civilians or melted into the jungle, or their inability to understand the culture of the Vietnamese people.

Whatever the reasons, the 40th anniversary of My Lai brings to mind parallels with a much more recent atrocity in Iraq: the 2005 Haditha Killings. Twenty-four unarmed civilians were massacred in Haditha, Iraq, allegedly by seven Marines and a Navy medic. The parallels with My Lai are chilling. In both cases, the U.S. military personnel were having limited success in their search for enemy insurgent fighters. In both cases, the U.S. had recently suffered losses in those same areas, priming the soldiers' thirst for revenge. In both cases, news of the atrocity trickled out slowly, hitting the media back home only months after the massacres occurred. Finally, in both My Lai and Haditha, criminal charges against the personnel involved generally fell apart in court, leaving the majority of participants at liberty despite the heinous nature of their crimes.

What can the U.S. military do to prevent future recurrences of this type? Proper supervision by superior officers is one key. More effective training on the local culture would also be very useful for helping soldiers understand the civilians' mindset, and see them as fellow human beings rather than faceless threats. Finally, the U.S. military needs to make sure that it's troops are reasonably intelligent, don't have a history of violent crime, and have access to effective mental health care not only when the return to the States, but also in the field. Perhaps, if these measures are all in place, the 50th or 80th anniversaries of My Lai won't bring up parallels with newer massacres still.