The My Lai Massacre and U.S. Military

Paper Summary:

The following paper examines how the U.S. military dealt with the moral issues of human death in the Vietnam War, with particular reference to the 'My Lai Massacre'. This paper illustrates and discusses in detail how such an event happened, and examines how the massacre affected the way Americans view the Vietnam War, the government's participation in the war, and the moral issues that go along with the human deaths that are inevitable during wars and conflicts with other nations or enemies of the United States.

From the Paper:

"The My Lai massacre was triggered by a series of events that led to many deaths of the American troops in Vietnam, particularly the 11th Brigade of the 1st Infantry Battalion of the Charlie Company, the troop of soldiers that were later accused of mass murdering the civilians in the village of My Lai. In a comprehensive report by Mark Gado (2001) of The Crime Library entitled, "Into the Dark: The My Lai Massacre," the author discussed in detail several events that have occurred which may be attributed as one reason why the soldiers of the 1st Brigade of the Charlie Company were able to kill many people, civilians who were defenseless against them. Gado discussed the difficulty the Americans were facing in looking for the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, and one of the solutions that the American military were able to formulate to indirectly inflict harm to the enemy is by destroying all resources that might prove to be helpful to them."

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