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Individual and Collective Responsibility
297 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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July 12, 2022
This collection of essays deals with the issue of responsibility with regard to the My Lai massacre of March 16, 1968.
The authors analyze how the American government created a war structure that was psychologically and organizationally designed for atrocity, that is, an environment in which a rational person is capable of committing atrocities. They call it an atrocity-inducing situation and assert that My Lai was such a situation for Charlie Company.
The men of Charlie Company received basic training, often conducted by veterans, in which the underlying message was one of racism and cruelty. Furthermore, the military strategy of counterinsurgency, which included free-fire zones and search-and-destroy missions, provided favorable conditions for random killing. Back in Washington, Secretary of State McNamara pushed forward his bodycount logic, the number of dead enemy fighters becoming the only means of measuring progress in an unconventional war, whatever the falsifications of this count. Then there were the deaths of comrades that the soldiers experienced. In the case of Charlie Company, the men were dealing with the death of a beloved sergeant who had been like a father figure to them. This tragic event ignited a strong feeling of anger in them, which was fostered by Mad Dog Medina, their commander, who delivered an operation briefing that was a combination of a religious sermon and a call to essentially kill everyone alive. The bodycount philosophy combined with Medina's words created an illusion that briefly convinced Charlie's men that they would get their revenge on their enemy if they killed the women, children, and old men in the village of My Lai. According to the authors, people are susceptible to such illusions in atrocity-producing situations.
Interestingly, the Viet Cong structure put the Communist fighters in a similar atrocity-producing situation that led to them committing war crimes no less gruesome than My Lai. As Michael Dedrick narrates in his book Southern Voices: Biet Dong and the National Liberation Front, an evocative account based on interviews with cadres of the National Liberation Front, the Viet Cong special squads, the Biet Dong, had strict rules of secrecy, which included the rule that no member was allowed to know the identity of other members. This hindered any opportunities to build trust with fellow squad members, similarly to the American Army's twelfth-month policy that constantly rotated officers and soldiers in and out of brigades, making it impossible to create meaningful bonds. This put units into an atrocity-producing situation because any group whose members do not know each other well and do not trust each other is more susceptible to deviations in behavior.
However, as the authors underscore, atrocity-producing situations do not absolve the perpetrators of war crimes from individual and collective responsibility for their actions. This is the tragedy of atrocity-producing situations – they are a deadly combination of circumstances and culpability. Although mentally putting yourself in the shoes of the men of Charlie Company will allow you to understand their position better, they are still guilty of what they did, and you cannot excuse the atrocities that they committed. Similarly, if parents who have found themselves in an atrocity-producing situation abuse their children, they are nevertheless responsible for the abuse despite the fact that it was their desperation that had made them abusive.
INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY was an interesting study to read. I liked the term atrocity-producing situation and the explanation for it that the authors used. By the time I read this book, I had figured out that a range of factors had made My Lai and similar atrocities possible, but I could not summarize it as well as this work did. This book is thought-provoking.
The authors analyze how the American government created a war structure that was psychologically and organizationally designed for atrocity, that is, an environment in which a rational person is capable of committing atrocities. They call it an atrocity-inducing situation and assert that My Lai was such a situation for Charlie Company.
The men of Charlie Company received basic training, often conducted by veterans, in which the underlying message was one of racism and cruelty. Furthermore, the military strategy of counterinsurgency, which included free-fire zones and search-and-destroy missions, provided favorable conditions for random killing. Back in Washington, Secretary of State McNamara pushed forward his bodycount logic, the number of dead enemy fighters becoming the only means of measuring progress in an unconventional war, whatever the falsifications of this count. Then there were the deaths of comrades that the soldiers experienced. In the case of Charlie Company, the men were dealing with the death of a beloved sergeant who had been like a father figure to them. This tragic event ignited a strong feeling of anger in them, which was fostered by Mad Dog Medina, their commander, who delivered an operation briefing that was a combination of a religious sermon and a call to essentially kill everyone alive. The bodycount philosophy combined with Medina's words created an illusion that briefly convinced Charlie's men that they would get their revenge on their enemy if they killed the women, children, and old men in the village of My Lai. According to the authors, people are susceptible to such illusions in atrocity-producing situations.
Interestingly, the Viet Cong structure put the Communist fighters in a similar atrocity-producing situation that led to them committing war crimes no less gruesome than My Lai. As Michael Dedrick narrates in his book Southern Voices: Biet Dong and the National Liberation Front, an evocative account based on interviews with cadres of the National Liberation Front, the Viet Cong special squads, the Biet Dong, had strict rules of secrecy, which included the rule that no member was allowed to know the identity of other members. This hindered any opportunities to build trust with fellow squad members, similarly to the American Army's twelfth-month policy that constantly rotated officers and soldiers in and out of brigades, making it impossible to create meaningful bonds. This put units into an atrocity-producing situation because any group whose members do not know each other well and do not trust each other is more susceptible to deviations in behavior.
However, as the authors underscore, atrocity-producing situations do not absolve the perpetrators of war crimes from individual and collective responsibility for their actions. This is the tragedy of atrocity-producing situations – they are a deadly combination of circumstances and culpability. Although mentally putting yourself in the shoes of the men of Charlie Company will allow you to understand their position better, they are still guilty of what they did, and you cannot excuse the atrocities that they committed. Similarly, if parents who have found themselves in an atrocity-producing situation abuse their children, they are nevertheless responsible for the abuse despite the fact that it was their desperation that had made them abusive.
INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY was an interesting study to read. I liked the term atrocity-producing situation and the explanation for it that the authors used. By the time I read this book, I had figured out that a range of factors had made My Lai and similar atrocities possible, but I could not summarize it as well as this work did. This book is thought-provoking.
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