"My" Turn.

I have mentioned the My Lai Massacre a few times on the blog. For those of you that don’t know what it is I turn you to the infamous Wikipedia:

The My Lai Massacre Vietnamese: was the mass murder conducted by a unit of the U.S. Army on March 16, 1968 of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, all of whom were civilians and a majority of whom were women, children, and elderly people. Many of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated.[2] The massacre took place in the hamlets of Mỹ Lai and My Khe of Sơn Mỹ village during the Vietnam War. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre)

Someone’s comment in class got me thinking today. Both FMJ and Platoon showed the power struggle that went on in Vietnam, especially within each battalion. Animal man (I think that is his name?) and Cowboy’s struggle in FMJ epitomized the conflict soldiers have in fighting a war they do not believe in. This conflict was more of a humanistic one than wanting power. However, this is the first time, in either movie, that a soldier has directly disobeyed a commanding officer’s orders. The problem with this whole psychological nonsense they pound into the heads of the soldiers at boot camp is that it teaches them to not question authority. Had soldiers disobeyed authority at My Lai, those people would still be alive today. But no. Soldiers are supposed to take orders from their commanding officers; no if’s and’s or but’s about it. It is far too easy to slip into the cycle of following people’s orders because you perceive they are right. However, what happens when they don’t have your best interest in mind or the best interest of others? My Lai happens.

Dehumanizing the opposition was the crux of boot camp, well besides psychologically torturing the soldiers and eradicating their previous souls. War, especially the Veitnam War when soldiers did not believe in what they were fighting for, would not work without dehumanizing the victims because, unless you are a ruthless killer, it would not be possible or plausible to expect people to be able to kill someone else in cold blood. Dehumanization is the process by which members of a group of people assert the "inferiority" of another group. It became evident that the soldiers had dehumanized the Vietnamese people in both movies: the vulgar slurs directed toward the opposition and the comments made about how “these people” weren’t appreciative of what the USA was doing for them. In the end, it wasn’t enough. Soldiers started losing interest in the war because it wasn’t a “cause worth fighting for.” The USA lost a war, but according to St. Patton the
“USA will never lose a war.” My Lai happened. It was an awful event. I relate it to the psychological abuse the soldiers take at boot camp and the rigid hierarchy the military employs. I digress.