Notable passing. William J. Calley.

 

William J. Calley, who was convicted for his commanding role in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War, has died at age 80.

Calley only served three years under house arrest at his military apartment for the crime, before being released and cashiered from the Army.  About 500 Vietnamese civilians were killed before a helicopter pilot heroically intervened, with some ground troops assisting him.  Calley was convicted on 22 counts of murder, having been originally charged with about 100, but only served three days behind bars before President Nixon confined him to house arrest.

He kept to himself after release, but maintained the classic "only following orders" defense, which is no defense at all.  He became a successful businessman in Columbus Georgia.  In later years he admitted to friends that he'd committed the acts charged with.  In 2009 he issued a public apology, stating:

There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.

He was in some ways an interesting example of the officer corps at the time, in that he had gone to, but failed to complete, college. He entered the Army due to poverty in 1966.

Four solders were charged with crimes due to the massacre, but only Calley went forward to conviction.  There was at the time some reason to believe his "following orders" story, but in a general, rather than specific, sense.

Oddly, on this day, I'm drinking Vietnamese coffee.  I have some baseball type "patrol" caps from Australia around here that were made in Vietnam.  Vietnam is courted by the US as an ally against the country's traditional enemy, China, even though it remains a Communist state controlled country and economy.  A vast amount of the shrimp served on American tables comes from Vietnamese waters.  The country has become a tourist destination for Americans, and there is, bizarrely given the build of the Vietnamese, a Victoria's Secret in Hanoi.

Most Americans, and Most Vietnamese, were born after his conviction in 1973.

The world moved on, save for those whose lives ended that day, or were impacted by those events over 50 years ago.  Calley, at 80, was a member, however, of the generation which is only now beginning to lose its grip on power.  Joe Biden is just about the same age.  Donald Trump, who was not impoverished, is two years younger and obtained four student draft deferments while being deemed fit for military service.  In 1968, the year of My Lai, he was classified as eligible to serve but later that same year he was classified 1-Y, a conditional medical deferment, and in 1972, as the draft was winding down, he was reclassified 4-F due to bone spurs.  No combat veteran of the Vietnam War has been elected President and none every will be, as they begin to pass on.  Al Gore, agre 76, who served in the country as a photographer, was a Vietnam Veteran, however, and George Bush II, age 78, was an Air National Guard pilot who did volunteer for service in the country, but who did not receive it.

Calley's generation, which is now rapidly passing, was the most influential in American history, and in many ways which were not good ones, which is not to say that there weren't ways in which they were positive influences.  They'll soon be a memory, like the generation that fought World War One became some twenty or so years ago, and the generation that fought World War Two basically has been.  

Calley's death serves as a reminder and a reflection of a lot of things.

Some more Hamas Israeli War observations

1. What is "proportionality" in a war with an opponent that's genocidal?

So what, exactly, is proportional to people who will do that?

We keep hearing the response should be proportional, but proportional to what? 

How far does being proportional with homicidal forces go?

What it doesn't mean is that "you killed ten, so we get to kill ten."

What was proportional to the Holocaust, if that was the measure during World War Two?  It wasn't, of course, but was proportional to being invaded by the Nazis?

2.  Why should the response be proportional?

Mind you, I think it should, but I'm a Catholic.  Catholics developed the theory of just war. 

Most peoples don't have a theory of just war, although the Israeli's by Jewish tradition would, as the Old Testament at least tangentially discusses it.

Does Islam?  I have no idea.

Anyhow, when people say a war should be proportional, what they're implying is that the war should be fought as if it's being fought by Christians, which implies that the Christian world view is correct.  It's an entire package.  If you adopt just part of it, you reject all of it, which means, in the end, accepting that fighting war the old way is just fine.

Most non-Christian people, when they fight wars, don't worry about proportionality.  We instinctively know that. That's why we are horrified by the Germans in World War Two, but pretty much yawn about Japanese atrocities. And that's why were are justifiably horrified by My Lai in Vietnam, but don't really worry that much about the NVA in Hue.

It's probably also, at least partially, why we worry about what the IDF does in Gaza, but are pretty acceptable of Hamas being willing to kill everyone, pretty much in Israel.

We ought not to think that way.

3.  Why does Hamas get a pass with so many people and Israel does not?

What the root of that?

It's either anti-Semitism (which a lot of it is) or that we, ironically, hold Israel to a higher standard, which means that we hold Hamas to  a very low one.  We discussed that above.

The most disturbing part is that there remains a lot of people who really hate the Jews.  And it comes out, strangely, in the left in recent years, which is more closely associated with that demographic than the right. 

But perhaps we should not be surprised. The extreme left has always surfaced in the popular left, and since the early 20th Century it's always been genocidal.  It loved bloody Lenin, then Stalin, and so on. That it would love Hamas, in the same spirit that it loved the Reds, isn't really too surprising.

4.  Why do we keep saying that "Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians?".  

There's no evidence of that, except that the last election in Gaza was quite a few years ago.  So we really don't know.  Hamas might represent the views of the majority of Palestinians.  What if that's true?

And why do the Palestinians uniquely get a pass this way.  People would shout down somebody stating that "most Germans weren't Nazi's".

Tuesday, June 8, 1943. The explosion of the Mutsu.

The ammunition magazine of the Mutsu exploded during very hot weather while the ship was anchored at Hashirajima.  The explosion killed 1,222 people, only one of whom was not a crew member of the ship.

The ship had been built in 1918 and had largely spent the war as a training ship.  The Japanese Navy investigated the explosion and concluded, while physical examination was still ongoing, that the ship had been sabotaged by a disgruntled seaman.  In reality, its aft magazine may have exploded due to environmental conditions.

The Battle of Porta commenced in central Greece between the Italian Army and the Greek People's Liberation Army.  It was the first time the latter fought a conventional battle.

Sarah Sundin notes on her blog:

Today in World War II History—June 8, 1943: US begins the “Victory Home” campaign to encourage conservation, scrap collection, war bond purchases, and other patriotic wartime activities.

William J. Calley, who would be convicted for his role in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War was born on this day.  He remains alive at age 79.

 Calley would only serve three years under house arrest for the crime.

Thursday, March 29, 1973. Collapse.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 29: 1973  The United States completes it's withdrawal from Vietnam.

U.S. Army General Frederick C. Weyand, for the U.S. forces, stated: "Our mission has been accomplished," 

General Cao Văn Viên, for South Vietnam, stated to the departing U.S. troops: "We are going to do everything we can to see that your great sacrifices were not in vain."

The sentiments were no doubt sincere, but the mission had not really been accomplished and the sacrifices would have to be qualified.  We took a look at the war in that fashion here:

Looking at the Vietnam War differently. Not a war, but as a campaign in the Cold War.

General Cao would go into exile in 1975 with the fall of South Vietnam, and died in 2008 at age 86 in the United States.  Gen. Weyland died in 2010 at age 93.

The war effectively destroyed the combat capabilities through moral decay of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. The Marines and the Air Force came through it much less impaired.  The lessons learned caused the post Vietnam War military to abandon conscription, something it had relied upon since 1940, and a wholesale return to the pre World War Two volunteer/National Guard based force, something that has been a success.  It would take several years for the Army and Navy to return to combat effective, but it happened much quicker, with the volunteer force, than might have been guessed.  By the early 1980s, the service had been effectively restored and the damaging impacts of the Vietnam War largely put behind it.

The war would have a lingering effect on the military in other ways, of course, perhaps one of the most visual being the adoption of the M16 to such an extent that it has obtained record longevity, in spite of being a widely hated weapon by troops of the era.

Blog mirror item:

60 Days, 50 Years Ago

On the same day:

Today In Wyoming's History: March 29 By odd coincidence, this is also the day that Lt. William Calley was sentenced in 1971 in a courts-martial for his role in the My Lai Massacre, although his prison sentence ended up not being a long one.

Also on that day, the second to last group of US POWs left Vietnam.  The last POW to board the aircraft out of North Vietnam was U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Alfred H. Agnew.

Somehow oddly emphasizing the spirit of defeat at the time, the well regarded television drama Pueblo, about the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo, aired on television.  Only tangentially related to the war, it was impossible not to notice that North Korea of that era felt that the US was so impaired that it could get away with this, which it did. 

It would not, now.

And making the day all the worse, President Nixon set a maximum for prices that could be charged for beef, pork and lamb.  This was in reaction to a consumer revolt in which consumers, mostly housewives charged with home economics, to boycott the same in reaction to rising prices.

Oddly, of course, this is the day that rationing had commenced on the same items in 1943.

You'd think that I'd remember some of this, but I don't on a personal level.