Honorary Last Essay as an Undergrad

Thought I'd post this as a milestone. The next one'll be written in legalese!

COM 469
Final Paper
10 March 2009


Seymour Hersh, My Lai, and the Ethics of Kant


The Vietnam War is considered by many to be one of the lowest points in modern American history. Taking place against the backdrop of the dramatic social upheaval of the 1960s, amidst the Civil Rights movement, counter-cultural revolution, and other civil strife, the Vietnam War was the focal point of American foreign policy for nearly a decade. Unlike previous wars, where domestic dissent was either effectively muted or simply non-existent, this war featured a large and vocal anti-war contingent, in numbers great enough to effect serious government attention. Adding to the dilemma was the fact that the Vietnam War was a complicated, murky entanglement, which was difficult to justify and even more difficult to explain to the general public. The government's inability to clearly do so led to a progressively growing sense of distrust amongst the population, perpetuating the “us vs. them” mentality that clouded, for example, the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.
1968 was perhaps the darkest moment of the conflict, as massive civil unrest rocked the country at home while casualty reports from the war reached record highs. That year, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, racial and political riots erupted nationwide, and anti-war protests reached critical mass. Yet one of the worst stories of 1968 would not be told until November of the following year, when Seymour Hersh first broke the story of the My Lai Massacre. In 3 reports, produced independently and carried by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Hersh told the shocking story of the massacre of 347 Vietnamese civilians (many of them women and children) by American troops in the small village of My Lai. These reports, a clear example of Kant's Categorical Imperative operating in Hersh's journalistic ethic, greatly changed the course of the debate surrounding the war, and provoked domestic and international outrage. “No one wants to hear about U.S. Troops as 'bad guys' too,” Hersh later said (Eberting, 2000). But without this effort, the government might have been able to control public support indefinitely, tenuous or not. Instead, his report blurred the line between the good and the bad, focusing alternatively on the right and the wrong, while providing firm and actionable evidence to those with moral opposition to war.
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In March 1968, an Army squadron, led by Lt. William Calley, attacked the small Vietnamese village of My Lai in an attempt to flush out suspected Viet Cong. Hersh's initial report, published on Nov. 13, 1969, suggested only Calley's involvement in the massacre, noting that “the Army is completing an investigation of charges that he deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians in a search-and-destroy mission” (Hersh, 1969). The first report includes many tentative details about “Pinkville,” the Army code word for My Lai, as well as interviews with Calley's fellow soldiers, who generally defend him (“They're using this as a Goddamned example... he's a good soldier,” says one) and try to place his actions in the context of the fog of war (“You can't afford to guess whether a civilian is a Viet Cong or not---either they shoot you or you shoot them,” says another). Generally, however, the first article is relatively non-committal, focusing primarily on the yearlong military investigation of the event which resulted in Calley's official charges.
It is the second article, provocatively titled Hamlet Attack Called Point-Blank Murder (Hersh, 1969), published exactly one week later, which introduces the larger story and conspiracy. In this story, Hersh interviews actual witnesses to the event, and reports that the investigation is not limited to Calley but includes several others from his squad as well. Unlike the first story, which indicated several possibilities but offered no hard evidence, this story is full of graphic and shocking detail, much of it likely difficult for the average American reader of the time to digest:

“They just marched through shooting everybody,” said Michael Terry, then a member of the C Platoon. “Seems like no one said anything... they just started pulling people out and shooting them.” At one point, he said, more than 20 villagers were lined up in front of a ditch and shot. “They had them in a group standing over a ditch---just like a Nazi-type thing... I don't remember seeing any men in the ditch. Mostly women and kids.” Later he and the platoon team he headed... noticed “some of them were still breathing... they were pretty badly shot up. They weren't going to get any medical help, so we shot them. Shot maybe five of them... a lot of guys feel that they (the South Vietnamese civilians) aren't human beings; we just treated them like animals.” (Hersh, 1969)

In addition to shocking first-hand accounts such as these, Hersh also introduces Ronald Ridenhour, a former GI and close acquaintance of several of the accused, whose “persistence prompted the Army to begin its high level investigation in April.” Casually, yet pointedly, Hersh leaves unanswered the question of whether the Army would have started the investigation unprompted. Without directly saying so, Hersh here raises the specter of conspiracy in not just the low levels of the isolated squadron, but in the high levels of the US military itself.
Hersh's third and final article, published five days after the second, raises the number of civilians murdered from 109 to 370 (it would later be officially notated as 347), and contains even more first-hand accounts of the atrocity. In a 2008 interview entitled 40 Years Later, Hersh retells the story of his exchange with Paul Meadlo, a soldier involved directly with Calley in the incident, who is the primary focus of the third article:

One of the mothers in the bottom of the ditch had tucked a boy underneath, and he climbed up...and began to run in a panic. Calley said to Meadlo, this kid from Southern Indiana, plug him. Meadlo, one on one, couldn't do it... So Calley, with great derring-do, took his carbine, ran behind the kid and shot him in the back of the head. Everybody remembered that. The next morning, Meadlo gets his leg blown off, to the knee, and they call in a helicopter to take him out. And while he's waiting he starts issuing an oath, a real oath, chant: “God has punished me, Lieutenant Calley, and God is gonna punish you.” (Gladstone, 2008)

Although this story is described briefly in the third article, the words of the oath were omitted, and it is interesting to hear Hersh's retrospective emphasis on it---especially as it highlights his ethical bias.
The third article nonetheless excoriates the military through its selective quotation. “We were all under orders,” Meadlo said. “We all thought we were doing the right thing. At the time it didn't bother me” (Hersh, 1969). Hersh's continued selection of quotes containing phrases such as “We just thought we were supposed to do it” and “I know it was far more than 100 as the Army now says” helps him push along his categorical theme, calling out a previously unchallenged U.S. Military for its systematic wrongdoing. It is a theme he has returned to frequently throughout his career, most recently in breaking the Abu Ghraib story, and it is a theme reflective of the philosophies of Immanuel Kant.
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Hersh's motives in breaking the My Lai story lie not in directly attacking, nor directly impugning, the military and its role in our society. Rather, Hersh wants to hold the military accountable to the same standards which apply to all citizens, and he continually chafes at the leeway afforded to those who commit atrocities in the midst of war. To Hersh, and to Kant, murder is never acceptable, under any circumstances. As Merrill states, “Kantian journalists would not act so as to bring about some kind of consequence; rather, they would simply act in accordance with duty to a guiding principle... Such a duty binds a journalist” (Merrill, 1994).
Indeed, Hersh has had to operate for most of his career as an independent, separated from the mainstream press by a determination for investigative reporting and a slightly cantankerous style. David Carr notes this in his tributary article From My Lai to Abu Ghraib: “Unlike his colleagues at newspapers or on television, Mr. Hersh can be quite subjective in his judgments, anyone who is reading his current magazine articles is well aware he is against the war” (Carr, 2004). In addition, Hersh has always been more than willing to make public appearances in defense of his positions, and is not afraid of using his public persona as a soapbox. When asked by Brooke Gladstone, during the 40 Years Later interview, if we'd learned anything from history, Hersh immediately replied: “Are you suggesting that the American leadership learns from the past? I don't think there's much evidence for that. As we had hell to pay after Vietnam, we're going to have hell to pay (after Iraq)” (Gladstone, 2008).
Merrill notes that “a categorical duty would be one that, regardless of the agent's particular desire, should be done” (Merrill, 1994). In a 2000 panel discussion with other investigative reporters, Hersh sounds a ringing endorsement of this philosophy: “There is a certain time when you've got to stop being defensive about the stories you write. You just have to. You can't go around explaining everything that people say... there's a point when you say 'look, there's a story there. If you don't want to believe it, there's not much I can do about it' ” (Eberting, 2000). This sort of ethic, while most refreshing in today's era of packaged and sterilized journalism, does have its consequences---one doesn't make many friends. David Carr, in comparing Hersh to the more affable and famous Bob Woodward, indicates that Hersh may actually enjoy this status: “While Mr. Woodward is on a first-name basis with many of the administration's highest ranking officials, Mr. Hersh sticks to the back channels for articles that often countervail the official wisdom” (Carr, 2004).
Holding everyone accountable to the same standards, especially those in power who have been entrusted with protecting the Constitution, should be one of the primary goals of any Kantian journalist. While it may ruffle the feathers of the powers-that-be, it is the journalist’s duty to provide citizens with cold, hard facts, allowing them to be informed in their democratic decision-making. Regardless of the impact on powerful citizens or the national pysche, it is categorically imperative that the rule of law pertains to all citizens of any country interested in preserving its freedom.
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The impact of the My Lai scandal was instantaneous, and for quite some time dominated the news. From the initial Hersh reports through the conviction of Lt. Calley in spring 1971, the My Lai massacre was an ongoing media firestorm. It became a two-pronged scandal, as other journalists investigated not only the actual event, but the cover-up that followed.

As evidence of the crimes committed in My Lai began to emerge in the wake of Hersh's revelations, a New York Times editorial declared that the atrocities 'may turn out to have been one of this nation's most ignoble hours.' In April 1971, Time magazine asserted that 'the crisis of confidence caused by the Calley affair is a graver phenomenon than the horror following the assassination of President Kennedy. Historically, it is far more crucial.' In these renderings, the My Lai massacre was a pivotal event, not just in the history of the Vietnam War, but also in that of the American nation as a whole. (Oliver, 2006)

In light of this story and its place in history, it is important to remember that it might not have ever been published in the first place. Hersh even had to create his own wire service in order to convince newspapers to initially run the story: “Nobody wanted to take responsibility for publishing it, so we found a way to take away the responsibility. Once you get the onus off the individual newspaper, they feel like publishing it” (Eberting, 2000). It is, of course, impossible to know how events would have progressed had the atrocity not been brought out into the light. But it suffices to say that things would have been different.
Throughout the early years of the war, the government was generally able to control the message on the war, despite progressively increasing casualty numbers and dwindling public support. However, all of this changed with Seymour Hersh's My Lai reports, and for the first time, the government was put on the defensive, forced to publicly condemn the actions of its own soldiers. For an aggressively anti-war investigative reporter such as Hersh, as well as those searching for ways to bring the war to a close, the reports were a milestone and a real turning point. They were not only a critique of war conduct in the present tense; they were also a talisman and warning to those contemplating war in the future. Hersh, fueled by Kant's Categorical Imperative and sense of justice, was uniquely able to show that in any war, the distinction between good and bad is cloudy at best; there will always be good guys amongst the enemy and bad guys amongst ourselves. Instead, the proper approach is to simply and clearly ask what is right and wrong, and to pursue a sense of standardized justice for all.









Bibliography
Carr, David. (2004) Dogged Reporter's Impact: From My Lai to Abu Ghraib. The New York Times, May 20, 2004.

Eberting, Cindy. (2000) Uncovering War Atrocities – Stories Have Always Been Tough Sells.
The IRE Journal, September/October 2000.

Gladstone, Brooke. (2008) 40 Year Later: Hersh on My Lai. NPR, “On the Media,” August, 15, 2008. Produced by WNYC, New York, NY.

Hersh, Seymour (1969) Ex-GI Tells of Killing Civilians at Pinkville. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 25, 1969.

Hersh, Seymour. (1969) Hamlet Attack Called Point-Blank Murder. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 20, 1969.

Hersh, Seymour. (1969) Lieutenant Accused of Murdering 109 Civilians. St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, November 13, 1969.

Merrill, John C. (1994) Legacy of Wisdom: Great Thinkers and Journalism. Iowa State
University Press, Ames, Iowa.

My Lai Massacre. (2009, March 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.phptitle=My_Lai_Massacre&oldid=276401557

Oliver, Kendrick. (2006) Coming to Terms with the Past: My Lai. History Today, February 2006.