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At Issue in History - Vietnam War Crimes
Few events in recent American history are as controversial as the United States' intervention in Vietnam, and one aspect of that intervention often debated revolves around war crimes committed by or against American soldiers. This volume addresses these debates, the "My Lai Massacre," and Vietnamese war crimes and atrocities.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published September 9, 2005
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December 19, 2022
This book is a collection of essays written by scholars, journalists, activists, military men, and civilians that present different perspectives on the war crimes that were committed by both sides of the Vietnam conflict. I have never before seen a compiler strive to be as objective as Samuel Brenner does. Instead of trying to make the Americans or the Communists seem better, he shows that both committed atrocities, as is expected in a long, brutal war in which the enemy could not be clearly defined.
The book is divided into three main sections. The first section deals with American war crimes in general, while the second focuses on the most infamous of them, the My Lai massacre, in particular. The third section is dedicated to the war crimes committed by the Communists.
The essay of Washington Post writer Myra MacPherson, which introduces the first section, stood out to me because it can also be a great introduction to the topic of war crimes in Vietnam for anyone who doubts their existence. MacPherson interviewed many veterans of the Vietnam conflict, among them a lot of those who claimed that they committed atrocities there, and she came to know that although some of the stories she heard might have been exaggerated, each one of the American soldiers that she spoke with knew at least one soldier who had committed war crimes in Vietnam. This meant that the My Lai massacre was not, as the American military tried to prove, an aberration, but the norm. MacPherson's short essay is definitely not the most insightful and convincing take on this heavy subject, but it is a good start.
In a brief address to the Senate, Vietnam Veterans Against War member John F. Kerry argues that the blame for the American atrocities in Vietnam should be shared not only by the soldiers who committed them, but also by the high-ranking officials who gave the orders. He focuses on My Lai and its scapegoat, Lieutenant Calley, but his words could be applied to any other war crime. He speaks of the glorification of body counts and the wrong idea that to save a village one had to destroy it. Again, like in MacPherson's case, the briefness of his address limits the scope and depth of his analysis significantly, but the message is clear. For those who do not want, or have the time, to read long books on the topic, his essay will be thought-provoking and informative.
Professor Guenter Lewy represents the opposing view as he dedicates his essay to proving that, My Lai and other individual instances aside, the American tactics in Vietnam were not criminal, but justified and effective. I disagree with his position and his arguments. He claims, for instance, that since the status of South Vietnam as a country was questionable at the time, the Americans had the right not to follow the international law of war. This implies that if it was not clear whether the civilian population of South Vietnam was on its government's or on the Communists' side, these people were not civilians, and the American soldiers could treat them as cruelly as they saw fit. I do not think that such thinking is right. Furthermore, he attempts to justify the killing of civilians by pointing out that even "women and children placed mines and booby traps." Of course, some of them probably did so, but testimonies from participants in the My Lai massacre and other atrocities demonstrate that no one tried to establish if the woman or child he was about to kill was guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Interestingly, the second section starts with an account of what happened in My Lai written by the People's Army of Vietnam. I expected a much more partial account, but they admit that the villagers of My Lai were helping the Communists by "causing them [the Americans] to eat and sleep uneasily." Nevertheless, the account is propagandistic as it mentions that the American soldiers received explicit orders to destroy the village, which is not precisely correct.
This essay is followed by the testimony of Ta Linh Vien, a former official from South Vietnam, who believed that the My Lai massacre was necessary and effective, and diminished Communist activity in the area greatly. He excuses the Americans' atrocities by claiming that the people of My Lai and other villages were warned in advance that if they did not support the Communists, they should leave the area because there would be an operation in it. I doubt that this actually happened because informing the villagers would have deprived the Americans of the element of surprise that they needed for their operation to be a success. Vien is distorting facts to fit them into his version of events.
There are two more essays about My Lai, with whose authors' views I disagree. The first one expresses displeasure at the fact that William Calley, "the main perpetrator" of the My Lai massacre, became a national hero, while the second defends the American government's response to what happened in My Lai. Calley was not the main perpetrator of the My Lai killings. Ernest Medina was just as guilty as him, if not guiltier, and so were all the other soldiers who participated in the atrocities – nothing to say of the military men higher up who deserved to shoulder the blame just as much. The American government tried to sweep the My Lai massacre under the rug, which was in no way a good response to it.
The last section is the weakest one in the collection. Aside from the informative article by Douglas Pike, which chronicles the atrocities of the Communists during the Tet Offensive mostly correctly – he exaggerates the number of killed civilians by about a thousand – the essays are mostly heavily partial to either the American or the Communist side. As is typical for him, Communist sympathizer Gareth Porter insists that the massacre of Hue did not happen. Activist Jane Fonda claims, falsely, that American prisoners of war were well cared for in Vietnam. Ngoc Bao claims the same in a radio broadcast from Hanoi, saying that the American government was trying to discredit the Communists on purpose. This is true, but neither side treated POWs well. They were tortured for information or out of desire for revenge.
VIETNAM WAR CRIMES also includes helpful directions for further research, such as books and online archives. If Brenner compiled these essays to demonstrate that, as the Chinese proverb goes, "There is my truth, your truth, and the truth," he has succeeded. This book is a great collection for those who want to compare different views on the topic of war crimes in Vietnam.
The book is divided into three main sections. The first section deals with American war crimes in general, while the second focuses on the most infamous of them, the My Lai massacre, in particular. The third section is dedicated to the war crimes committed by the Communists.
The essay of Washington Post writer Myra MacPherson, which introduces the first section, stood out to me because it can also be a great introduction to the topic of war crimes in Vietnam for anyone who doubts their existence. MacPherson interviewed many veterans of the Vietnam conflict, among them a lot of those who claimed that they committed atrocities there, and she came to know that although some of the stories she heard might have been exaggerated, each one of the American soldiers that she spoke with knew at least one soldier who had committed war crimes in Vietnam. This meant that the My Lai massacre was not, as the American military tried to prove, an aberration, but the norm. MacPherson's short essay is definitely not the most insightful and convincing take on this heavy subject, but it is a good start.
In a brief address to the Senate, Vietnam Veterans Against War member John F. Kerry argues that the blame for the American atrocities in Vietnam should be shared not only by the soldiers who committed them, but also by the high-ranking officials who gave the orders. He focuses on My Lai and its scapegoat, Lieutenant Calley, but his words could be applied to any other war crime. He speaks of the glorification of body counts and the wrong idea that to save a village one had to destroy it. Again, like in MacPherson's case, the briefness of his address limits the scope and depth of his analysis significantly, but the message is clear. For those who do not want, or have the time, to read long books on the topic, his essay will be thought-provoking and informative.
Professor Guenter Lewy represents the opposing view as he dedicates his essay to proving that, My Lai and other individual instances aside, the American tactics in Vietnam were not criminal, but justified and effective. I disagree with his position and his arguments. He claims, for instance, that since the status of South Vietnam as a country was questionable at the time, the Americans had the right not to follow the international law of war. This implies that if it was not clear whether the civilian population of South Vietnam was on its government's or on the Communists' side, these people were not civilians, and the American soldiers could treat them as cruelly as they saw fit. I do not think that such thinking is right. Furthermore, he attempts to justify the killing of civilians by pointing out that even "women and children placed mines and booby traps." Of course, some of them probably did so, but testimonies from participants in the My Lai massacre and other atrocities demonstrate that no one tried to establish if the woman or child he was about to kill was guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Interestingly, the second section starts with an account of what happened in My Lai written by the People's Army of Vietnam. I expected a much more partial account, but they admit that the villagers of My Lai were helping the Communists by "causing them [the Americans] to eat and sleep uneasily." Nevertheless, the account is propagandistic as it mentions that the American soldiers received explicit orders to destroy the village, which is not precisely correct.
This essay is followed by the testimony of Ta Linh Vien, a former official from South Vietnam, who believed that the My Lai massacre was necessary and effective, and diminished Communist activity in the area greatly. He excuses the Americans' atrocities by claiming that the people of My Lai and other villages were warned in advance that if they did not support the Communists, they should leave the area because there would be an operation in it. I doubt that this actually happened because informing the villagers would have deprived the Americans of the element of surprise that they needed for their operation to be a success. Vien is distorting facts to fit them into his version of events.
There are two more essays about My Lai, with whose authors' views I disagree. The first one expresses displeasure at the fact that William Calley, "the main perpetrator" of the My Lai massacre, became a national hero, while the second defends the American government's response to what happened in My Lai. Calley was not the main perpetrator of the My Lai killings. Ernest Medina was just as guilty as him, if not guiltier, and so were all the other soldiers who participated in the atrocities – nothing to say of the military men higher up who deserved to shoulder the blame just as much. The American government tried to sweep the My Lai massacre under the rug, which was in no way a good response to it.
The last section is the weakest one in the collection. Aside from the informative article by Douglas Pike, which chronicles the atrocities of the Communists during the Tet Offensive mostly correctly – he exaggerates the number of killed civilians by about a thousand – the essays are mostly heavily partial to either the American or the Communist side. As is typical for him, Communist sympathizer Gareth Porter insists that the massacre of Hue did not happen. Activist Jane Fonda claims, falsely, that American prisoners of war were well cared for in Vietnam. Ngoc Bao claims the same in a radio broadcast from Hanoi, saying that the American government was trying to discredit the Communists on purpose. This is true, but neither side treated POWs well. They were tortured for information or out of desire for revenge.
VIETNAM WAR CRIMES also includes helpful directions for further research, such as books and online archives. If Brenner compiled these essays to demonstrate that, as the Chinese proverb goes, "There is my truth, your truth, and the truth," he has succeeded. This book is a great collection for those who want to compare different views on the topic of war crimes in Vietnam.
August 9, 2023
I have a problem with this book, I don't dispute the evidence it presents but I find its concentration on 'atrocities' and 'war crimes' and the attempts to prove/disprove and compare/contrast USA actions with that of the Communists (a totally loaded and inaccurate term for those the USA was fighting against because this was more then anything else a civil war) distracts and obscures how the attitudes and actions of the USA combatants towards ordinary civilian Vietnamese impacted on the ability of the US to 'win' this war. You will not understand what happened in Vietnam via the minutia in this book and it is only through understanding the war that you will really understand the true horror of what happened there. But before even trying to do that it is useful to look at what happened in Europe in WWII after there was large scale fighting in civilian areas.
Twentieth century wars in Europe had brought home what colonial wars had always made plain, that victory would come at high civilian cost. In the lead up to and in the course of the allied invasion of mainland Europe in WWII there was vast destruction and thousands of civilian deaths in France, Belgium, etc. as the Germans were driven out and these countries liberated. Despite their suffering and much as they hated what liberation cost the civilians of the liberated areas never regarded the allied armies as enemies and the allies never looked upon the civilians as enemies - they were glad the Germans were gone - even in Germany, when it was it was invaded, the civilian population welcomed the allies and we're grateful to be free from the madness of the Nazi gotterdammerung.
This is in total contrast to what happened in Vietnam (and would-be replicated again in Iraq and Afghanistan). America was intervening in a civil war - they were fighting 'communism' America's enemy, who were not the enemy of the Vietnamese people in the way the Nazis/Germans were the enemy of, for example, ordinary French people etc.
Added to all this is the problem of fighting a war in a country were your soldiers don't speak the language or understand or have any sympathy with the culture. Armies are utterly impractical instruments for fighting long term amongst civilians or in urban areas (the UK's experience in Northern Ireland is almost textbook - how many people remember that the army went into Belfast originally to protect the catholic population against protestant pogroms and were greeted by the Catholics with applause as saviours? It didn't last long because soldiers are an impossibly blunt instrument to deal with civilian disturbances).
The problem is not that American troops did some bad things, or worse things then their opponents, but that they were in Vietnam fighting the wrong war, for the wrong reasons, and almost all the reasons that were given to the troops, and to their families back home, were lies. The US was not liberating anything or anyone - this was a civil war and as long as the 'North Vietnamese' (an inaccurate but inevitable term) existed they had not lost and the more destruction, death and horror that the USA unleashed to beat 'the communists' the more they alienated the local population (can you not hear the same talk of fighting 'terrorism' as the civilians of Iraq and Afghanistan died?) - is it no coincidence that both in Vietnam and Iraq the only accurate figure you will not find and which no attempt was made to keep track of was that of civilian deaths).
Recognising that atrocities happened is essential - but separating them out into categories like war crimes conceals that these deaths were an inevitable consequence of distortions and lies told about the war and why America was there and, a much larger, reason the way the war was fought and the way 'deaths' were recorded as of those enemy on the flimsiest of evidence. To get bogged down in legalistically defining certain events as war crimes distracts from the overall criminality of the war itself and, until that is recognised, repetitions will continue.
Twentieth century wars in Europe had brought home what colonial wars had always made plain, that victory would come at high civilian cost. In the lead up to and in the course of the allied invasion of mainland Europe in WWII there was vast destruction and thousands of civilian deaths in France, Belgium, etc. as the Germans were driven out and these countries liberated. Despite their suffering and much as they hated what liberation cost the civilians of the liberated areas never regarded the allied armies as enemies and the allies never looked upon the civilians as enemies - they were glad the Germans were gone - even in Germany, when it was it was invaded, the civilian population welcomed the allies and we're grateful to be free from the madness of the Nazi gotterdammerung.
This is in total contrast to what happened in Vietnam (and would-be replicated again in Iraq and Afghanistan). America was intervening in a civil war - they were fighting 'communism' America's enemy, who were not the enemy of the Vietnamese people in the way the Nazis/Germans were the enemy of, for example, ordinary French people etc.
Added to all this is the problem of fighting a war in a country were your soldiers don't speak the language or understand or have any sympathy with the culture. Armies are utterly impractical instruments for fighting long term amongst civilians or in urban areas (the UK's experience in Northern Ireland is almost textbook - how many people remember that the army went into Belfast originally to protect the catholic population against protestant pogroms and were greeted by the Catholics with applause as saviours? It didn't last long because soldiers are an impossibly blunt instrument to deal with civilian disturbances).
The problem is not that American troops did some bad things, or worse things then their opponents, but that they were in Vietnam fighting the wrong war, for the wrong reasons, and almost all the reasons that were given to the troops, and to their families back home, were lies. The US was not liberating anything or anyone - this was a civil war and as long as the 'North Vietnamese' (an inaccurate but inevitable term) existed they had not lost and the more destruction, death and horror that the USA unleashed to beat 'the communists' the more they alienated the local population (can you not hear the same talk of fighting 'terrorism' as the civilians of Iraq and Afghanistan died?) - is it no coincidence that both in Vietnam and Iraq the only accurate figure you will not find and which no attempt was made to keep track of was that of civilian deaths).
Recognising that atrocities happened is essential - but separating them out into categories like war crimes conceals that these deaths were an inevitable consequence of distortions and lies told about the war and why America was there and, a much larger, reason the way the war was fought and the way 'deaths' were recorded as of those enemy on the flimsiest of evidence. To get bogged down in legalistically defining certain events as war crimes distracts from the overall criminality of the war itself and, until that is recognised, repetitions will continue.
April 4, 2026
The only full account of the My Lai incident that I’ve ever read. Horrible and shocking that war crimes were committed by both sides. Kissinger should have been charged with the prolongation in all aspects instead of being praised. Opened up my mind to the truth about what actually transpired. Was difficult to read through a couple sections due to the horrific nature it presented. Yet, still worth reading.
January 9, 2013
real sad book I feel ashamed to call myself an American ) :
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews